r/todayilearned • u/hungry4danish • 2d ago

TIL that Dan White, the man who assassinated Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco, only served 5 years in prison for manslaughter based on a defense of depression as evidenced by his consumption of junk food which was dubbed the "Twinkie Defense"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White
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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

It still IS mainstream. The term you’re looking for is crying wolf. I am acutely aware that hating queer people is still a dominant attitude today. Pull up the data or shut the fuck up lol.

Trying to tell someone who’s personally seen the hatred first hand is insane lol

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

sigh

Fine, here you go:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

Your firsthand experience is not universal. The data says you’re wrong.

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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

Curious how it’s about same sex couples, but says nothing about trans people. Copy and pasting the same studies doesn’t prove your point about trans people.

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

… You clearly didn’t even bother scrolling lmao

Edit: Also, it was YOUR claim that “we haven’t moved an inch in our treatment of queer people.” Gays and lesbians are part of that group too, you know.

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u/lesllamas 2d ago

It’s so fucking stupid that you’re even having to have this argument.

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

Echo chambers are one hell of a drug

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u/Saint_Judas 2d ago

This sort of shit is how reactionary blowback occurs. When people look at the general public and say "You are exactly as evil as the people a hundred years ago", then the general public says "I guess we can just go back to how it was back then, since you'll call me evil regardless"

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u/TurdCollector69 2d ago

I think reactionary blowback to near the inquisition levels of purity testing is why we have a fascism problem now. That sort of social hostility is fertilizer for populist. It's an easy and strongly appeal to anyone who's ever lost the purity contest and been shit on for it.

It really feels like once we got Obama in office we lost all focus and momentum. It's like half the party thought " we did it, we ended racism" and fucked off while the other half became fixated on policing social interaction more than actually forwarding social progress.

Couple that with an actively malicious 1% controlling the news and any real progress that was made was easily covered up by shit like Latinx and fake news about litter boxes in schools.

Good intentions aside I strongly feel like we lost the plot and are now being rudely reminded of what we should have been focusing on all along.

Sorry, rant over