et: I appreciate the sentiment of wanting a higher level of discourse, I really do, but... come on, dude.
Some opinions can and should be dismissed out of hand. Ridicule and dismissal, as mean and shallow as they are, are effective tools to enforce social norms. "Don't treat people like shit for being gay" seems obvious enough to me that I'm willing to deploy sarcasm and snark to enforce it.
Yeah, there's discussion to be had on the margins, working out the details, which can still be very important to people's everyday lives, and if you want to find it, there's all sorts pomo, third-wave feminist discourse get involved with.
But at some point, you've gotta set up the little wooden figure saying "YOUR ARGUMENT MUST BE THIS SANE TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY." I'm not interested in having to feign consideration for the idea that Southern slavery was an altruistic institution, that the gulags and the Stasi and the Great Cultural Revolution were legit responses to American subterfuge, that Jews secretly run the world's finances, or that we should hate fegs cause God does.
I'm kind of interested in whatever psychosocial forces make people think crazy, horrible things, but I'm not about to dignify those thoughts as being in the same area code as rational.
