It's really quite simple. If someone thinks something through 'with conscience' (whatever the hell that means), and they conclude that it's ok to deny rights to one law-abiding group of people that are not denied to another law-abiding group of people, then that person is a bigot.

As I've said many times before, intolerance of bigotry may not be equated to bigotry except by the very stupid.

You do know that 'theories' is the plural of 'theory', right?

But that is no different to anyone else's value system. All our values begin life in a belief system outside of ourselves whether that is a religion or just the beliefs of our parents imparted to us. We all get 'indoctrinated', from birth. And you are as unlikely to change your view as a religious person is to change theirs, if both you and the religious person believe you have come to the correct/appropriate/call it what you will decision.

People are individuals, whether religious or not. It is a sure sign of prejudice and bigotry when you (as in third person you and not literally you) cannot appreciate that all people are different whether or not they happen to source their value system in a religion or elsewhere. Some will have no problem reviewing their position; others will be utterly convinced they have it right and so will not change; others will simply refuse to countenance change regardless of whether they are correct or not. Those stances apply equally to the religious and non-religious, as can be evidenced on this board alone!

There are probably several million people living in this country who are the same vintage as me and who were born into a totally different society to the one we have today, we had values instilled into us by parents and schoolteachers based on their standards and lifestyle.

Those standards included outright racism on a scale that would shock you today, the two main public broadcasters in the 1960s happily broadcast peak time racist shows, those standards included outright homophobia, again the two main public broadcasters happily broadcasting homophobic peak time programming - in short if you name an "ism" then we were subject to it as children during our formative years from our elders who formed us.

To suggest that the several million of us of my vintage are unable to change their views and to form more inclusive opinions based on a more tolorant society, frankly is bunkum, because thats precisely what we have done.

Spot on.


... and how did those instilled views change?
By rational discussion, I would suggest.
Not by the threat of divine retribution if you don't subscribe to a shakily inferred meaning obtained from a translation of a previous translation of a document (Leviticus) from a time when many, many things that we now find abhorrent or stupid were considered to be perfectly fine and normal.

...and I'd suggest a little legislation here and there to persuade the population that we'd all got it wrong, the Race Relations Act of 1976 for instance would be looked at now as a perfectly normal, sensible piece of legislation, the sort of legislation that every civilised country should embrace.

You, like me, will remember what a furore was made at the time of its implementation, not being able to use derogatory terms against different racial groups being seen as the ultimate in bad government control.

Absolutely.
Thinking back, I am shocked at some of the terminology that I used in my youth.
My only genuine excuse is ignorance.

Whereas some of us didn't use any terminology that would shock today because we simply weren't raised that way.

I'm in my late 40s. I remember when Chinese people were called chinks routinely. I remember when to be black was to be not only in the minority but publically picked on. My sister was the first black kid at her local high school - which had 2000 students attending at the time. The school asked my parents to keep her home one day while the headteacher read the riot act in a whole school assembly making quite clear that racism would not be tolerated. She sailed through school serenely.

I grew up in a mixed heritage family in an almost totally white middle class area (there were just two Chinese families living locally) of Christian parents who voted conservative. But my parents were so far thinking that they didn't bat an eyelid when adopting a black child (who was born of white birth parents, so she would have been raised in the same racial environment had she not been put up for adoption). My parents were publically stared at and mocked for having a black child, even by members of their own family. That was in the 1970s. So I know about past attitudes, and not just towards those with a different racial or cultural backgrounds.

I see the way you were raised didn't exclude smugness.

BTW I wasn't "raised that way" either.
Influences come from outsde the family as well.

And yet still you choose to be prejudiced.