TRoaches

I have yet to meet a high school student that gets dressed thinking "I want to wear something that will prompt men to beat me up". The motivation of the students is irrelevant, just as the reason for the women to wear the provocative dress is irrelevant. What is relevant is the crime that was committed. There is no positive result to be gained by scrutinizing the thoughts, motivations, or actions of the victim and allowing that scrutiny to lead you to place the blame on the victim. The two situations are apples and more apples. In both situations a person is attacked because of their manner of dress. In both situations there are people who prefer to place the blame on the victim rather than the attacker. In both situations there are people who tell the victim that they should have known what was going to happen if they dressed like that.

True, but you may as well add "Reform Campaign Finance" to the list of stuff that congress will never allow. Why would they want to limit their ability to profit personally from their office? As long as they can keep the people occupied by putting on a big show of arguing about whatever else is happening in congress the Republicans and Democrats will be united in their support of the campaign finance gravy train.

Nobody abused anything, except maybe the violent students who took Cinco de Mayo as an excuse to attack other students for their clothing choices. The "hoops" were intended to demonstrate the illogicality of your premise, which is based entirely on the semantic difference between the shirts being banned for being "offensive" versus the shirts being banned for "provoking/instigating/sending the students over the edge". They are all different ways of saying the same thing, and your argument is therefore pedantic and semantic. What is the difference between being "offensive" and "sending the students over the edge"? If you can differentiate between those two concepts then I could perhaps answer your question. Without that differentiation any answer that I provide will simply be dismissed semantically by saying "The attackers were not offended...they were provoked/sent over the edge/etc".

You are suggesting that they were perhaps attacked, not because of their shirts, but because of being "instigators in past instances". If this is true why ban the flag shirts?

Apply this logic to a rape situation: "It wasn't specifically the dress that you were wearing, it was WHY you were wearing it that made you a target. Any other scenario it would just be another dress. But, if you flat out STATE that you are going to wear X dress to Y nightclub to arouse some segment of the population, what do you expect?" Just imagine how insane a police officer or judge would sound if they said something like that to a rape victim while dismissing their complaint and enacting a "protective" restriction on their clothing choices to prevent future rapes. I very clearly stated early in the thread that I understood and recognize the school's right to restrict the student's clothing choices. I am only questioning whether the way that the school handled it was right or wrong. If the school prohibited the depiction of MLK because it may provoke a gang of white supremacists and cause racial tension at the school they would be within their rights to do so, but they would be doing the wrong thing. Having the right to do something is not the same as doing the right thing.

Women are often warned that their manner of dress could make them a target for rape. If a woman ignores those warnings and dresses as provocatively as she pleases, and is raped while wearing those provocative clothes it is unacceptable to place the blame on her, regardless of the warnings she received. She has a right to wear whatever clothes she prefers, just like these kids have the right to wear a US flag to school, and in neither case is it appropriate to blame the victim of the crime instead of the perpetrator.

I am not dodging the question. The answer to my question will provide the answer to yours. If you can describe why the students were attacked without describing the attackers as being "offended", or some synonym of "offended", then I would cede the point and accept your premise. If you cannot describe the motivations of the attackers without describing them as "offended" or some synonym of "offended" then it indicates that the motivation for the attacks was the offense given by the shirts. Can you describe the possible motivations of the attackers without using the word "offended" or some synonym of "offended"? The correlation between the rape example and the flag shirts is that in both situations the victim is being blamed for the crime, and and discouraged from exercising their free will in exchange for some level of safety. Instead of the school defending its students against the attack and punishing the attacker they are telling the victim that they shouldn't have been dressed that way, and prohibiting them from dressing that way in the future. Your use of the phrase "red herring" is, itself, a red herring.

Why were they attacked? Try to explain why without using any of the words listed here: http://thesaurus.com/browse/offend If a female student was raped by a violent gang within the school how should the school react? Should they take action against the rapists, or simply "protect" the female students by restricting their choice of clothing and expression?

These are all good ideas, but most of them would never have any hope of being be implemented. Here is why: Eliminate our standing army and cut future defense spending by 3/4 Cut the corporate tax rate by 1/2 for companies that maintain more factories on the US mainland than offshore Cut foreign spending by 3/4 Eliminate most of the bureaucracy surrounding medicare and medicaid and get the paperwork required for hospitals down to a single sheet in order to help them cut costs of healthcare Place a cap on interest that can be accrued from loans to 5% End the federal reserve, place the responsibility and accountability of printing capital back to the US Congress No more interest on student loans Deflate the artificial price of university education ....would all be lobbied out of existence by the companies that would stand to lose if these measures were implemented. Congress will not act in the interests of the US public if doing so would upset their corporate financial backers or interrupt the support that they receive from them.

No. Why do you think they were banned? Why does that make my example moot? A gang of violent white supremacists are racially motivated to attack a student who is wearing a Mexican flag on their shirt. The school administrators, concerned about the threat of hostility and disruption to the school, decide to ban such shirts. There is no political agenda or conspiracy. They only want to "cover their ass". Is this acceptable to you? Is the school doing the right thing in this example? Why should the school capitulate to the will of the gang instead of protecting the victim? The whole thing reeks of the same kind of victim-blaming that is done when a rape victim is told that they invited the rape by dressing provocatively. There is no valid excuse for a person to commit violence against another person. It does not matter how abhorrent, detestable, obscene, repugnant, repulsive, ghastly, creepy, disgusting, distasteful, foul, repellent, yucky, hideous, horrid, outrageous, objectionable, obnoxious, dysphemistic, nauseating, provocative, or offensive the clothing of the victim is to the attacker. If a gang of serial rapists were violently attacking other students, and the school administration's response was require all of the girls in the school to wear burkas so as to not provoke the gang to violence against them, would this be acceptable to you? I would prefer that they address the problem by removing the violent gang instead, and allowing the students to dress and express themselves as they please without fear of violence.

If a Mexican American student wore a Mexican flag shirt to school on Independence day and was attacked the other students what would the correct course of action be for the school administration? What about if an African American student was attacked for wearing a shirt depicting MLK? What about a Jewish student who wore a shirt depicting the Star of David? If there was a gang that was attacking Jewish students would you tell the Jewish kids that they should stop provoking that gang? Is that really an appropriate reaction from the school? You depicted them side-by-side as analogous situations. You drew a direct correlation between a shirt with a US flag worn on Independence day and a shirt with a Confederate flag being worn on MLK day. It is not in my head. It is in your post. In that post you were describing a person wearing a swastika and a person wearing a US flag as analogous situations. What is the connection between wearing a US flag and wearing a swastika? In what ways are they similar?

@MajKrAzam: Well said! Nobody has advocated cancelling anything. I have no idea what you are talking about there, or what relevance it has to the topic. If three trolls showed up at a MLK day service wearing inflammatory t-shirts and they were violently attacked the police would not simply look the other way while the attacks occurred, because being offended/provoked by a t-shirt is not a sufficient reason to violently attack another person. They would intervene on the behalf of the victims of the attacks, and would attempt to arrest the attackers. In the case of this school situation some students were attacked for displaying a flag on their shirts, and basically took the side of the attackers by blaming the victims of the attacks. It is interesting that you draw a correlation between what the confederate flag represents to African Americans and what the US flag represents to Mexican Americans. At the MLK rally the confederate flag would be inflammatory because it represents the enslavement and oppression of African Americans. Does the US flag represent the same to Mexican Americans? What is the correlation there?

That is, literally, what "synonym" means. As I illustrated above, these both mean the same thing. It is fine if you want to apply your own personal definitions to these terms, but for the rest of us they are interchangeable terms. If any group of students were attacking any other group of students, for any reason whatsoever, I would expel those students. If a kid born in Mexico decided to wear a shirt with a Mexican flag on US independence day and any of the other students decided to attack him for wearing that shirt I would expel those violent students. I would not blame the student who was attacked for "provoking" the other students, and I would not demand that he invert his shirt to prevent offending the other students. I think you meant to say "Reading carefully seems not to be your forte....". Did I read that carefully enough? Regarding the rest of your post, I don't dispute that the school administration was within their rights in prohibiting the shirts. I do think they did the politically correct thing instead of the "right" thing, which would have been to recognize and uphold any student's right to express themselves in a civil way and refusing to capitulate to the will of a group of violent students.

People were getting beat up at that school for wearing a US flag t-shirt. Even if we disregard the school's policy that specifically banned the display of the US flag, or if we justify the policy as a necessary step taken to protect the students, the fact remains that people in the US were being attacked for wearing a US flag on their shirts. The school prohibited students from wearing US flags. while allowing other students to wear Mexican flags. You could perhaps argue that they did not actually draft a policy, but if a school administrator is making a student do something under their authority it is fair to describe it as a de facto policy of the school, even if it is not official or written policy. Go here: http://thesaurus.com/browse/offend ...and notice that "provoke" is listed as a synonym for "offend". Hopefully this will stop any further semantic arguments about the difference between being offended and provoked.

"We banned the flag because it offends people" "We banned the flag because it provokes people" They are the same thing. The article does not say anything about a "street gang" wearing flag t-shirts, as you stated. It says that a "street gang" was attacking people for wearing flag t-shirts. The school banned the flag shirts because they were capitulating to the will of a racist street gang, and thereby condoning the existence of a gang in their school and validating their overt racism.

@colourwheel: You asked for an example and I provided one. There is no mention of gangs being a factor anywhere in that article, so I have no idea that is coming from. If the school wants to enforce a dress code that is fine and they are within their rights to do so but why would they ban the US flag while allowing Mexican flags?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/court-considers-calif-schools-may-5-us-flag-ban

Advocating a position that you are opposed to is not the same as shoving that viewpoint down your throat. You are free to ignore it or actively act in opposition to it, but if your efforts fail and that position is codified as a law it is not accurate to say that it was "shoved" on you. You are making the same mistake that people who oppose the ACA make when they cry about it being "shoved" on them. If legislation is proposed that you are opposed to the only viable civil actions that are avialable to you are telling your representatives how you feel about it and subesquently voting them out of office if they ignore you.

Religious belief is not the only reason that people oppose abortion. There are plenty of non-religious arguments that can be made against it. Even if the motivation for such a law is purely religious in origin it does not invalidate that position. Declaring a person's political belief to be invalid because that belief is rooted in a religious belief is an example of religious intolerance.

What is the connection between religion and the mandatory ultrasound laws?

You should hardly say this about any political party in the United States. Doing so would make you sound a bit silly, because nobody from any party advocates anything even remotely similar to what you describe. Their policies are not "completely based on religious beliefs", just as a Jewish politician's policies towards Israel are unlikely to be completely based on religious beliefs. A person's political opinion is informed by the totality of their experience and worldview, which includes but is not limited to their religion. There is no such thing as a belief, religious or otherwise, that everyone shares. It is not required that everyone agrees on government policy. In a republic it is even possible that the popular majority opinion is considered invalid and unrecognized by the law if following that popular opinion would violate the rights of the remaining minority.

For many Democrats their ideology does cling to their religion. Jewish Americans vote overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats. It would be ignorant to condemn them for having a common political view that is influenced by their common religious beliefs, just as it is ignorant to condemn Christians for doing the same.

That depends on what you mean by "religious belief". The Zionist movement is difficult to separate from the religious beliefs of its adherents, and Zionist ideology has had an undeniable influence on US foreign policy for a very long time. The politics are rooted in the religious beliefs of the supporters. This is a fine thing, regardless of who does it. In your example a Christian politician dared to publicly and honestly state his religious beliefs, built a platform that is unabashedly influenced by those beliefs, and was democratically elected to office based on that platform. You take issue with the policies that the person is advocating, and respond by condemning and mocking the person's religious belief. This is a fine example of a "politically correct" form of religious intolerance. If the same tactic were taken towards an Orthodox Jewish politician who was advocating some form of support towards Israel you would be labeled a bigot for not separating his religious viewpoint from his political viewpoint. This is absurd, because there is a large area of overlap between a person's religious philosophy and their political philosophy. If a person is devoutly religious those two aspects of their worldview become impossible to separate.

He is a FORMER Senator, not a spokesperson for the party. Nothing to see here. That partial quote comes from his memoir, where he was talking about his religious philosophy. Many religious doctrines dictate gender roles, particularly among married couples. He was stating his religious beliefs. He was advocating that all people think this way, and he was not speaking about political policy. Here is some more from that memoir: "“The husband’s part is to show up during the times of deep stress, take the leadership role and be accountable for the outcome, blaming no one else. The wife’s submission is not a matter of superior versus inferior; rather, it is self-imposed as a matter of obedience to the Lord and of love for her husband.” So this person wrote a memoir in which he discusses his religious beliefs, and you have decided to trash those beliefs. You are demonstrating that religious intolerance is the only socially acceptable form of bigotry in modern politics as long as it is directed towards a Christian political enemy. Orthodox Jews hold the exact same belief. Would you like to attack Jack Lew as well for holding those beliefs?

This fairy tale makes no sense at all. When you sit down with a potential employer to be interviewed and perhaps hired you have no idea what the other employees are earning. How could you, as the potential employee, possibly negotiate equal pay if you have no knowledge of what other people are earning? You claim to have done this "many times", so how did you know how much the other employees were getting and, therefore, know how much to ask for? If an equal pay law were passed how would one even know that they should make a pay inequity complaint without somehow allowing them to know what other employees are earning, and thus violating their privacy? When negotiating any sort of trade at all the bottom line is what is the seller willing to sell for, and how much is the buyer willing to pay. That how the value of all things are determined. If you are applying for a job you are selling yourself. Your value is determined by a combination of how much you are willing to sell yourself for and how much the employer is willing to pay for you.