gdp's Comments

The Wild Hunt : A Couple Quick Items

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:33:45 +0000

By this reasoning everyone should just be quiet and suck it up no matter what's said to them. This isn't about the internet, you could as easily say "If anyone offends you that's life and if you can't handle it you should just hide in your house and not talk to other people. Responding is not an option". Its a conversation, man. People disagree with you. I'm not thin skinned and I'm far from being politically correct- it just sounded like you just wrote off my entire state because of a few idiots and I didn't appreciate it. If I'd heard of a few HotTopic teen witches getting busted for sacrificing cats and I made a crappy snide little comment like "what do you expect from a bunch of Pagans, maybe we should ship them all to Ireland and let them have their own Witchistan"... would you have just kept yer mouth shut because you have such thick skin? Probably not. Look, its cool. Come visit Texas, Austin maybe. I think you'd be surprised. We're a pretty open minded tolerant bunch, and who knows? Maybe you'll have a good time.

The Wild Hunt : A Couple Quick Items

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:11:06 +0000

I'm no statistician (or even decent at math), and this is off topic but... the site I linked to listed the number of actual crimes, not per capita. So that's 27 religiously based hate crimes in Texas out of 24 million people and 27 incidents out of about 4 million in Oregon. Wouldn't that mean the opposite of what you've said? That there are less incidents per capita in Texas vs less populated states? Color me confused But this is really not my point. I wasn't suggesting we base our ideas about a place solely on the numbers I linked to. If anything I was basically saying the same thing you did: there are a lot of factors to consider. Making "sweeping conclusions", whether they're about a whole state or a religious group, based on the actions of a few bad apples isn't fair. The only way to know the truth about people or places, or anything else for that matter, is to experience it for yourself. Relying on "common knowledge" excludes a lot of valuable people and experiences and leads to a lot of bigotry.

The Wild Hunt : A Couple Quick Items

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:53:13 +0000

*sigh* How is writing off an entire state or region because of a few extremists any different than people condemning all things pagan because they read about some murderous satanic cult? Its ignorance and a perpetuation of misconceptions on both counts. There are plenty of pagans, and tolerant, good people in Texas. In fact, states you might think would be havens of religious tolerance have much higher religious based hate crimes that Texas (we rank even with Oregon surprisingly). http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_hat_cri_rel_... My reaction, on the other hand, was to be encouraged to see all those little blue "occult" thumbtacks on the map in Amarillo, a fairly conservative place.