A big part of the pull of HN is the opportunity to participate in live discussions happening around things that are on the front pages. The problem with 'how it's dealt with is that matters' is that it's essentially telling the LGBTQ person to come participate only after things have settled down or dealt with. By then the heat of the discussion is over, or the post has been shot down to the 3rd or 4th page. In some places, there is a practice of women cooking food and first all the males eat it while the women wait. Then after they finished, the women start eating. They are treated like second class citizens. Sensible places ban people who say being gay or LGBTQ is mental health issue. It's 2022.
=> Sensible places ban people who say being gay or LGBTQ is mental health issue.
I don't agree. Perhaps the person who says being gay is a mental health issue has a deep knowledge of a technical subject that is of interest to the community, and 80% of their posts are about that subject, and very informative, while only 5% of their comments are about being gay as a mental health issue. Banning such an account outright would deprive the community of the 80% of comments from that account that are informative and useful. If they're not banned, the 5% of the comments that the community finds problematic will be downvoted most of the time. This is a more measured and better targeted reaction than an outright ban.
If someone is on a crusade to convince everyone that gay people are sick, on the other hand, and all their posts are about that, then that's a different matter. Such an account is not really contributing anything useful to a community like HN. So ban away, I guess.
There's another reason. As an LGBT person myself, I want to hear opinions that are hostile towards me, even against my very existence. I want to hear them because if I don't, I won't be aware of all the awful things that people make up in their minds about people like me and I won't know how to protect myself against them. Of course I already know many of the awful things that people think and say and do, but having those opinions out in the open where everybody can see them also acts as a barometer for popular opinion. If everybody starts agreeing with the person who says gay people are mentally ill, then I know things are turning bad. If everyone challenges such opinions, and I can see that they are downvoted to [dead], then I know that at least this community is not uniformly hostile.
Last, if someone really thinks that people like me are sick or shouldn't exist, what's the point of banning them? That won't change their opinion. We can't change peoples' minds forcefully, and even if we could, we shouldn't. Freedom of thought means that some people will think thoughts everyone else finds despiceable. So be it. If we only accept some views in public discussions and ban all the rest what happens when the political winds change and it's my thoughts and opinions that are not kosher anymore?
I think you have a point. I do think that people get (shadow) banned for writing stuff like this, but we need more mods. Ideally, they should live in different time zones.
One the other hand, I personally don't remember seeing such comments before. Does this really happen regularly?
Maybe if people did not open the discussion with virtue signaling their sexuality, things wouldn't be so bad. I'm not straight, yet I hate on the rainbow crowd, and I never mention it because it's fucking cringe to bring these things up outside of personal discussions in person. You give everyone a bad name because of this. Just like how most women I know shun and find feminists cringe.
