Why are people okay with blue eyed people but not gay people

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Because eye color is cosmetic, while gayness is behavioral - behavior is not identity, while eye color is used as an identifier.

Obviously, being a member of a minority does not automatically incur the contempt of the majority.

You have stated a False Analogy here - a fallacy in which an argument is based on misleading, superficial, or implausible comparisons - and thus your premise has failed at the outset.

Not in my experience - I'm blue-eyed and gay and I've never had hate for either. Then again, I live in the UK where few people are religious. AIUI, the most homophobic regions of the world are also the most religious.

Religion and politics.

Spare a thought for us poor green-eyed freaks. We're a dying breed! Where's my hashtag?

Blame it on religion, or at least the dominant religions of the world. They have no religious prohibitions against blue eyed people, but there are mentions against homosexuality in the 3 main branches of the Abrahamic faiths, that are probably carried over from Zoroastrianism.

That really is pretty much all there is to it. Across time and across the world, cultures that aren't so invested in a male-superior hierarchy have no reason to have to assume a pure biological sex & gender binary. After say, 1100 or so CE and especially after the Church helped establish Kingdoms throughout what is now Europe, it became so important to draw a hard line. Men were one thing, women were another and there could be no crossover of any attributes. Or if there were, they would simply be conveniently ignored. In a man, anyway. The Victorian era in England took this to another extreme. There was a bit of a backslide toward acceptance in the first few decades of the 1900's, but then with the burning of Berlin and especially the uber-binary Cold War, the assumption of a binary was firmly embedded in peoples childhoods as late as Gen X. As that began to fall apart with the advance of science & medical knowledge, conservative Abrahamic religions dug in their heels out of applied fear & repeatedly doubled down on their extremism. Millennial culture for the most part is a Southern Baptist, Catholic & Muslim nightmare.

Because a persons eye colour doesn't determine the way they act.

Any human trait might become stigmatized.

Blue eyed folks might well become the victims of descrimination in some future time, and place.

The prejudice against gays is a longstanding tradition with more than one origin.

But in present day America the resistence to SSM and the persistence of other forms of homophobia is rationalized by the belief that homosexuality is different from eye color in one respect. Like race, eye color is not a choice, but SUPPOSEDLY homosexuality IS a "choice". And its a choice that you can be talked out of (via therapy, or being preached at, or by being possessed by the Holy Spirit, or like that). So hating someone for their eye color would be as bad as racism. But hating them for being gay is okay because you supposedly can stop being gay.

Among the many problems with that is that the notion that homosexuality is a choice is nonsense. Gay folks are born that way, and cant stop being gay anymore than someone can stop being a member of a particular race, or having a particular eye color.

Actually, blue eyed people are statistically more sensitive to bright light and tend to react more to sudden changes in light levels.

The dark pigment in other colors helps protect the retina by absorbing light that would otherwise flood the interior of the eye. Makes sense when you consider the correlation between blue eyes and higher latitudes (compared to the equator, most light at higher latitudes comes in at an angle and is filtered by passing through more of the atmosphere).

Having to blink sooner in sunlight is a rather minor aspect of "behavior". Certainly minor in social importance compared to sexual orientation.

Can I just take a moment to applaud/criticize every single person commenting on this thread? I applaud you all for your surprisingly well thought out responses to an obviously stupid question. I criticize you for replying at all. Fun to read though.

Edit: Is this thread older than I thought? I really need to double check the age of the threads that this site displays to me.

Blue eyed people are not that rare. Compare gays to red haired people, not blue eyed.
And red heads get bullied just like gays are.

https://youtu.be/KVN_0qvuhhw

Redheads get bullied!? Why!? Red hair is so beautiful!! ! O.O

I have to agree. I've seen hatred for blue eyed people as well, just in specific places, just like I've seen hatred for Gay people in specific places. It really depends on where you are, what kind of people, and what backgrounds and experiences they have had.

Cue claims that "Brown-eyed girl" is an anti-blue hate anthem - though that could lead to an inception-like exploration of -isms.