Soccer, sports and politics (R)

I will not argue with you about whether homosexuality is completely genetic or not.

Qatar doesn’t imprison people for being gay. It imprisons people for having homosexual sex (and for having heterosexual sex outside of marriage).

Homosexual acts are a sin in Islam. Having homosexual inclinations are not a sin in Islam, and the person who resists those inclinations is in fact rewarded under Islamic law.

You are welcome to disagree with that distinction as splitting hairs, but my religion is fairly clear on this topic.

 

Australia with or without NZ. Canada with or without the US. A joint Tunisia/Morocco bid in the MENA region. Any of those three would have been in regions outside of UEFA/CONMEBOL who have not hosted. All of them either have significant soccer infrastructure or they could make suitable use of it post-WC.

 

Would Algeria be a part of that?

 

I have gotten to the point where I let most grammar slide. Not that big of a deal. But the use of "descent" threw me off so much, that I even had to double check that "dissent" was the correct word.

 

The United States has somewhat free and fair elections, and somewhat free press.

If we were still fighting the illegal Iraq war, this would be a little closer, but right now the US is morally better. With the understanding that better != great.

This is a bit of a red herring because a good deal of what is wrong with Qatar, along with a lot of countries in that region, is directly due to US support.

This is also a bit of a red herring because the Qatar government is in no way the worst to ever host a World Cup, let alone a major sporting event.

I believe that boycotting anti-LGBTQ countries would be valid. There is plenty of precedent for shunning nations because of human rights issues. Of course, we would then probably have to boycott Florida and Texas.

In retrospect, Russia was a much more offensive choice to host than Qatar.

 

Is Guantanamo still open?

Can US forces still assassinate people off the battlefield?

Is the double tap policy still in effect (I don’t know the answer to this, I suspect yes).

Are CIA black sites still allowed to exist (I don’t know the answer to this, I suspect yes).

Does the US still arm and give carte blanche to oppressive regimes that torture, kill and suppress political dissent?

I know that many US posters feel strongly (and often sincerely) about Qatar. But you are blind to how Qataris and others see the US.

 

I would suggest when you decorate your Festivus Pole that you avoid tinsel. It's very distracting!

Ps...De scent of pine cones is refreshing.

 

Absolutely. And they annexed Crimea at the end of hosting of the Winter Olympics in 2014.

 

I would have liked to see the VAR check of Ecuador’s goal. Looked suspiciously offside to me.
Doesn’t much matter now, it did then though.

 

Is there any country out there that can claim a moral high ground?

Asking for a friend.

 

Right now, my scent is of partially combusted snowblower fuel. Got about 8" of snow. Slim chance of reaching 32F today. It's lovely.

 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and I probably am, although I suspect the worst. If the region's nations, or anyone else, would care to boycott 2026 for these reasons, I would understand entirely. I would be surprised if the region's nations would boycott their patron, though.

I also don't know whether Qatar will liberalize, or whether the United States will descend into a right-wing dictatorship.

I would have been reassured, though, if instead of a series of whatabouts, you had pointed out five ways that Qatar is more free and fair than the United States. I'm certainly willing to be educated.

 

Obviously the United States has more than its share of problems. Creeping theo-fascism in 49.999% of the country, rampant income inequality, and Carly Rae Jepsen come to mind. But the USA is far more incompetent, lazy, and distracted than diabolically evil.

 

Really?
Ask women about that.

In Qatar, half the population must ask their "male guardian" for permission to marry, study abroad, work in many jobs etc. Women are largely excluded for social gatherings.

Reporting domestic abuse is considered culturally unacceptable as it may "damage" the family.

Women are "allowed" to vote and work and drive, so that's something, right? No, it is not, really.

Qatar is a religious-dominated petrostate entirely dependent on 1) dead dinosaurs and 2) their incredibly abused and exploited foreign workers for its survival as a nation.

 

No, but there is a hierarchy (the order differs according to UK-EU values) and for most reasonable people Qatar is nowhere near the bottom of the list.

I am irked by this line of attack on Qatar partly because I have seen articles in the US and U.K. press saying that this is the most controversial work cup in history, and I wonder what they thought of giving it to fascist Italy in 1934, or allowing the Italian winning team of 1938 to give fascist salutes during the tournament.

 

I just learned that Carly Rae Jepsen is Canadian so we can remove that strike mark.

 

Decent response.

 

Whattaboutisms, conflations, and replies to these are the oxygen, food, and water needed to make a troll grow.

 

I thought the same initially, but Senegal had a man on the post.

 

We get that you're educated, and that this is a topic for which you have passion.

But you do realize that you're trying to reason with a person who's not here to be reasonable, right?

 

Free and fair has nothing to do with it - better was the criterion I used.

I am neither Qatari or American but would respond with the following non foreign policy issues off the top of my head:

1. I expect Qatar will have the Zakat system. This requires each individual to pay 2.5% of their wealth (wealth, not income) for charitable purposes. This redistributes wealth to a greater extent than the US system.
2. I believe Qatar forbids indefinite imprisonment without charge which the US doesn’t do.
3. I believe there are curbs in Qatar on gratuitously offending people in public, which the US doesn’t prohibit.
4. Qatar is far safer than the US particularly in respect of violence against women.
5. I understand Qatar has free healthcare for all residents including foreigners so long as they have a residence permit. I don’t think the US will treat immigrants or citizens who don’t have health insurance.

 

You are not wrong, but it also isn't something the USMNT head coach and team captain have any input on. Most of the questions from the Iranian reporters in that press conference were out of line and are things they should have been asking USSF officials as they are the ones that made the change.

One difference is that the Confederate flag was never an official flag of the US. Don't get me wrong, dumb move by USSF, but your analogy is a bad one.

 

No knowledgeable person says it is 100% genetic. Arguing that premise is based on an ignorance in how biology works.

I explain it to my students this way: genotype + environment = phenotype. Genotype is the genetic code, phenotype is the physical trait, and the environment can be pre-natal or post-natal. Sometimes the genotype = 0, which means the environment creates the phenotype (think birth defects). Sometimes the environment component is 0, which means the genotype directly leads to the trait (think blood types). But quite often both the genotype and the environment play a role.

In other words, something can be entirely biological without being entirely genetic. The pre-natal environment directly affects many of our in-born biological traits. Specifically, prenatal hormones impact many of our biological traits, including sexual orientation and arguably handedness.

Thus, sexual orientation is the result of the combination of genetics and the prenatal environment. An all-or-nothing scenario simply demonstrates an ignorance of how biology works.

I knew you would bring up the distinction between behavior and orientation, because it is superficially an easy stance to take but it is, in reality, a false dichotomy.

First, separating behavior from orientation is indeed "splitting hairs" on a bald person. "Homosexual behavior" is not simply the act of sex; there is also the emotional affection aspect that infuses our behaviors and interactions, even in non-sexual ways. Also, one cannot eliminate the desires and thoughts which lead to things such as masturbation, which is a behavior, or nocturnal emissions (which creates pollution according to the Hebrew texts), which is also effectively a behavior. In Christianity it was declared that thinking of an act is equivalent to doing the act, so the distinction between behavior and orientation is a false dichotomy.

Second, I always use handedness as a good comparison for sexual orientation, given they are correlated and even connected: LGBT+ people are significantly more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous than straight people - if I remember right it is something like 40% more likely (but I don't remember off the top of my head if it is left-handed people are 40% more likely to be gay or gay people are 40% more likely to be left-handed). Nonetheless, both traits are influenced by hormones that are released during the early phases of in utero growth and development, which is why they correlate.

Pre-scientific cultures, including those from the Middle East, often had a negative view of left-handedness. For example, arguably all references to the left-side or left-handedness in the Bible associate it with evil or otherwise negative behavior. The only "exception" is left-handed Ehud in the Book of Judges who is praised for murdering a foreign king. Thus, the only exception for left-handedness being considered as associated with evil or immorality is a cold-blooded murderer. Left-handed behavior was effectively punished even in Western countries into the latter part of the 20th century. And there was no good reason for it. There was simply no legitimate reason for forcing left-handed people to solely engage in right-handed behavior. Forcing left-handed people to behave contrary to their biological orientation can be very detrimental to their health and well-being; it increases the chances of accidents happening and causes unnecessary stress on the individual.

Likewise, forcing people who are LGBT+ to abstain from sex for no good reason is very detrimental to their emotional health and well-being, creates disadvantageous situations in society (such as in the work-place, such as situations where "family men" gain advantages over single men - which is still evident in American society), and creates unnecessary difficulties later in life due to isolation and life-long discrimination. I used to be religious and went through over 10 years of "conversion therapy", back when there wasn't as much scientific evidence for sexual orientation being in-born. Such attempts to change sexuality are now known to be very harmful, which I can attest to on a personal basis. It destroys lives.

There is simply no legitimate reason to criminalize being left-handed or criminalize being gay. None whatsoever. Using religion, based on traditions that were established thousands of years ago because of a pre-scientific understanding of how the world works, to justify abusing people and criminalizing their existence is abhorrent. Arguments based on orientation vs behavior are a false dichotomy that ignore reality.

I don't care if your religion is "fairly clear on this topic", it is immoral and evil. Using religion to justify discrimination, abuse or even murder is immoral and evil. Using a human-created deity to justify abusing other people is immoral and evil.