A lesbian couple was brutally beaten by group of men in Halifax. Police still haven't filed charges

I know homophobes that are atheists. while religion being gone would decrease it, do not expect it to be gone just because of that. People will always have issues with people different than they are.

yes, but with religion out of the way, we can implement better education to reduce 'otherism' bias. i am convinced that the only obstacles stopping us from being better humans are all rooted in BS fairy tales.
- You can be convinced, you will be wrong though. Religion is a means of justifying otherism, not the origin of it. People will just create another bunch of bullshit to justify why they aren't bad people.
- Secularism has caused two world wars and we're heading for a third.
  
  how many wars has religion caused?
  
  So maybe the issue isn't religion or the absence there of, but that shitty people will find excuses to justify their shittyness. That would make focusing on religion a waste of time.
  
  so then what do you focus on as a cure for humanity?
  
  Laws, enforcement (what's being asked for here), and education.
  
  laws based on what? what kind of education? how do we achieve reasonable laws and enforcement?
  
  my point is that we both advocate for humanity. the path is see towards that is a secular one. most of the obstacles to what we want are based in religion.
  
  The obstacle I'm seeing is the police not doing their job. They've already talked to one of the assailants, they know who they are, and have done nothing. Let's start there.
  
  yeah, fuck the police.
  
  but i'm telling you, we are looking at the symptoms instead of the disease.
  
  How many wars has secularism caused?
  
  not nearly as fucking many as religion has caused. are you seriously advocating for a more religious world?
  
  Lol what? You are delusional. I'm not sure Orthodox Slavs would agree that WW1 and the subsequent Russian Civil War were "secular" wars considering most propoganda from that time was highly religious and they were seen as "holy wars" by both Slavs and Germans. The Ottomans literally were a Sharia state and the Sultan framed the war as a Jihad against the enemies of Islam. There was deep religious subtext in WW1 from nearly all the major European powers.
  
  Both world wars were caused mostly by nationalism/ethnic conflict and recent history/economic problems. Secularism had literally not a single thing to do with it. Where exactly do you get this "WW1 and WW2 were caused by secularism" delusion from?
While true they won't have a belief system that backs it up, it won't have the power behind it.
- There are smart homophobes. They use science, however flawed it is, to promote their arguments. Cutting out religion would take care of the few vocal people who genuinely believe being gay is against their religion but it definitely wouldn't take care of the larger problem which has always been xenophobia.
  
  No one is going to vote for science, give me a break. You don't drive people to the polls based on a study or a syllogism, you get people to vote for you based on FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
  
  Religion is freaken awesome at this.
  
  What are you talking about? Nobody mentioned politics in this thread.
- They will just create a different one, like the atheists that are homophobic have.
  
  Yes nothing ever happens

Doesn't work. USSR murdered and prisoned both religious people and gay people alike. The answer is not being a fucking cockwomble, which is admittedly more easily done if you're an atheist, but by no means is a guarantee.

agreed! but the path to not being a cockwomble aligns pretty well with the goals of a reason based, humanitarian, secular society.

if you don't agree, what's your path towards our common goal?
- Don't think you solve the problem of intolerance with bigotry towards religious people.
  
  The article doesn't mention anything about the group of men being religious, you're just using this as an opportunity to attack religion because that's something you hate.
  
  Hatred doesn't solve anything.

Not necessarily. Plenty of chill religious people and unchill atheists. Russian homophobia, for instance, is generally secular.

as it was under Stalin.
- Correct
  
  Well those Jehovah witnesses weren't going to ship themselves to Siberia.
  
  Some call it divine intervention by the state.
  
  We were talking about homophobia. The concentrated effort to suppress religiosity is a whole other can of worms.
  
  i'd ship every person that insists on their religion over science to some hellhole to rot away. building a better world now saves future generations form suffering. the payoff is immeasurable.
  
  What if they're Indigenous pagans?
  
  even them. we're a global society now. unless a group of people wants to live completely disconnected from the rest of the world, we cannot proceed as a global society if we're not all on the same page.
  
  EDIT: keeping traditions and preserving a cultural heritage is not the same as believing and abiding by a non-scientific set of beliefs. there are nuances to your question, but i provided a non-nuanced answer.
- 7 decades ago.....
Really? So why is that Krill East Orthodox Shaman announcing he hates gays every single week?

Also show me the religious Muslim who isn't a homophobe
- Up until fairly recently, Orthodoxy was not a strong influence on Russian life.
  
  According to this Guardian article, British Muslims have no chill, but more than a few Muslims on the mainland are chill with gays, particularly in France.
  
  You seem very centered on Abrahamic religions. Pretty much all Western neopagans are tolerant of homosexuals. Francis Cabral, a Jesuit missionary, recounts with disgust about how homosexual relations were tolerated by Japanese Buddhists. Hsing Yun, a Taiwanese Buddhist who died last year, specifically said that homosexuals must be tolerated. Haitian Voodoo has two deities associated with homosexuality. Various indigenous religions in America have similarly tolerant views, and the term "two-spirit" comes from them.
  
  Up until fairly recently, Orthodoxy was not a strong influence on Russian life.
  
  Someone should have informed my grandmother and all her old friends of this fact, since they were evidently confused.
  
  You seem very centered on Abrahamic religions
  
  And?
  
  This is a few individuals. These individuals are old and thus in the group that is most religious. In another response in this thread I linked a study by Levada showing that for most Russians, religion is either minimally important or not a part of their life at all.
  
  Fukur said we will never be free from homophobia until everyone rejects religion.
  
  I am tried of pulling teeth with you. Make your case
  
  I did. In another comment in this thread, I put in the effort of writing a multi-paragraph comment with citations.
  
  How nice for you. Here is a golf clap
is it really, though? provide some evidence. and if it is, do you have a better solution to reduce bias?
- "cutting off people's pinkies will reduce global warming"
  
  "People with missing pinkies contribute just as much to global warming"
  
  "Do they really though? Provide some evidence. And if true do you have a better solution to reduce global warming?"
  
  People don't need to have an alternative plan ready to go in order to point out that yours is ineffective.
  
  so you don't think that a secular society is better for people, animals, and the planet than a religious one?
  
  I don't think whether people are religious or secular is a relevant metric for people, animals, or the planet. Shitty people exist in both groups and will be shitty regardless.
  
  well, one path is based on reason and logic. the other is based on fairy tales. which path is more likely to produce the best result?
  
  Anti - vaxxers are based on fairy tales but claim to be based on reason and logic. Religion is not the problem, education is.
  
  well good luck legislating effective education within the context of a christian nation.
  
  Man you give up quick when the effective solution isn't attacking religion. Makes me suspect that your actual motivation may not be ending bigotry, but rather furthering your own bigotry. (Shocking, I know)
  
  didn't give up. i just don't think you were arguing in good faith. what reason do you have to defend religion?
- Okay :)
  
  The old homophobic laws of Russia, rooted in religion, were repealed under Lenin (Khoroshilova 2017). The reintroduction of crackdowns of homosexuals began during Stalin (ibid.). The Comintern began linking homosexuality to fascism and moral degeneracy under Stalinist leadership (Healey 2001, p. 183). Eventually, the USSR banned sodomy due to a conversation between Iagoda and Stalin, with Iagoda linking homosexuality to counterrevolution, degeneracy, corruption of the youth, and pedophilia (ibid., p. 184-187). This was then reinforced in propaganda by Gorky, who famously said "Destroy the homosexuals - Fascism will disappear" (ibid., p. 189-190).
  
  I will skip over legal changes of most of the post-Stalinist era of the USSR, as they matter little in this context. What does matter is that the USSR continued to be strongly antitheistic and anticlerical. As a consequence, religiosity isn't intense in Russia, and many aren't religious at all (Agapeeva 2021).
  
  Now let us look at modernity. Putin is allegedly religious, but his dislike of homosexuals is definitely secular in nature.
  
  Analysis of his homophobic comments and the justifications of anti-gay laws reveal the same preoccupations of Stalin and Gorky. The law against being gay in public was described as preventing the propaganda of homosexuality towards children (Roberts 2013). In an interplay with nationalism, the LGBT movement is seen as an influence from the degenerate West, bent on corrupting the Russian youth. This is best seen in the designation of prominent Russian gay activists and organizations as foreign agents (Human Rights Watch 2021) or the use of the English word "gender" to describe things they despise.
  
  Note how at no point have the protagonists of this story described homosexuality as a sin or invoked God. Indeed, the first half of this text is dedicated to Leninists.
  
  Anecdotally, I see this in my personal life as a Russian emigre. Many people in my family hold minor homophobic views, framed typically as disgust, seen universally as Western and liberal in character. All of the Russians I have personally heard expressing a disgust or dislike of homophobia are atheists.
  
  Now for the alternative solution:
  
  According to Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), the three main ways of reducing prejudice against a group is through increasing understanding of that group, lessening anxiety about the group, and improving empathy towards that group, with the second two being stronger factors. Contact with the group accomplishes all three. This is supported anecdotally by tales of bigots changing their positions when they found out their own loved ones were gay.
  
  One should note that a lack of empathy and high levels of anxiety about boogeymen are the hallmarks of a conservative worldview.
  
  Therefore, combatting homophobia is best done through increasing visibility, which is the function of "outness" and pride parades, and through combatting conservativism and the reactionary gender roles that led to the birth of homophobic attitudes in the first place. This would in turn entail a battle against class society in general, but that is a discussion for another time.
  
  Works Cited:
  
  Khoroshilova, Olga. 2017. "1917 Russian Revolution: The gay community's brief window of freedom". BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330
  
  Healey, Dan. 2001. "Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent". University of Chicago Press.
  
  Agapeeva, Kseniya. 2021. "Religiosity During the Pandemic". Levada.ru. https://www.levada.ru/2021/04/14/religioznost-v-period-pandemii/
  
  Roberts, Scott. 2013. "Vladimir Putin says anti-gay Russian laws are about ‘protecting children’". Pink News. https://www.thepinknews.com/2013/06/26/vladimir-putin-says-anti-gay-russian-laws-are-about-protecting-children/
  
  Human Rights Watch. 2021. "Statement by Russian and International Human Rights Organizations in Support of Russian LGBT Rights Activists under Attack". Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/19/statement-russian-and-international-human-rights-organizations-support-russian-lgbt
  
  Pettigrew, Thomas F., and Linda R. Tropp. 2008. "How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators". European Journal of Social Psychology 38 (6): 922-934. doi:10.1002/ejsp.504.
  
  Now for the alternative solution:
  
  According to Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), the three main ways of reducing prejudice against a group is through increasing understanding of that group, lessening anxiety about the group, and improving empathy towards that group, with the second two being stronger factors. Contact with the group accomplishes all three. This is supported anecdotally by tales of bigots changing their positions when they found out their own loved ones were gay.
  
  One should note that a lack of empathy and high levels of anxiety about boogeymen are the hallmarks of a conservative worldview.
  
  Therefore, combatting homophobia is best done through increasing visibility, which is the function of “outness” and pride parades, and through combatting conservativism and the reactionary gender roles that led to the birth of homophobic attitudes in the first place. This would in turn entail a battle against class society in general, but that is a discussion for another time.
  
  do you think this approach is easier within the context of a religious society or a secular one? the beginning of your statement opens with "while rooted in religious doctrine".
  
  i'm sorry, but you have an inherent bias towards secular society as a russian emmigrant. you grew up in an authoritarian society masked as a secular one. you should at least acknowledge this. it might not discredit you to say so.
  
  I have not used the word "doctrine" at any point in my comment. If I had to guess, you're referring to the "old laws" from the opening paragraph. These old laws are from Tsarist times.
  
  You contrast secular and authoritarian societies as opposites. They are not necessarily so. A society can be both.
  
  When you ask if my approach would be easier in a secular or religious society, you are mistaken in how you construct the question. First, a secular society does not preclude religiosity among its members. Second, the optimal approach would be a pluralist one.

Homophobia and Atheism aren't mutually exclusive to one another, hell I know plenty of Atheist Transphobes.. some of whom used to be gay allies until they were radicalized by the Alt Right.

anecdotal.
- What makes you think this group of men were religious in the first place?
  
  just a hunch kid
  
  So you're being anecdotal?
  
  really just providing a bad faith answer in a bad faith argument.
  
  let's start over. do you think a secular society is better for the modern world than a religious one?
  
  Replying with just the word "anecdotal" is bad faith.
  
  So is assuming this attack was motivated by religion instead of by a group of assholes.
  
  Let's start over: what happened here was terrible, shouldn't be allowed, and it's absurd that no one has been charged when police already interviewed one of the assailants and so should know who they are.
  
  Instead of getting distracted by some secular vs religious debate that might not even be relevant, let's focus on pressuring the police to do their damn job.
  
  the police (which we don't like and wish didn;t exist) will continue to have to do their job over and over until humans stop being shitty. what is your pat towards humans not being shitty?
  
  Again, I don't need a fully documented 10 point plan to point out that your idea doesn't work. Dealing with the religious bigots doesn't deal with the secular bigots. Dealing with the secular bigots deals with both, so why waste time on religion?

There is a really funny South Park episode about this.... Bottom line is assholes will be assholes with or without religion, which is just a convenient excuse for assholery.

We don't actually know this, just because one southpark episode depicts it happening like that doesn't mean it would. Religion has a lot of archaic beliefs that actively harm people. It would be a lot harder for someone to be motivated to hurt someone if they didn't believe they had a reason to justify it.
- We kinda do though. There have been countries like USSR, North Korea, China, Cambodia, etc, that have been run by atheists. Being atheist most definitely doesn't prevent people from being assholes.
- There were assholes before religion. Putting an emphasis on it being the problem is naive, imo. History is full of secular assholes. I.e. nazis.
  
  What are you talking about? Nazis were very religious...
  
  This is from their wiki article: "Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era[1] after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia[2] into Germany, indicates[3] that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig[4] (lit. "believing in God"),[5] and 1.5% as "atheist"."
  
  Just because it was the dominant religion in Germany at the time doesn't mean that Nazism equated with religiosity. In fact, Hitler did not like religion being a potential rival to his power. The Nazi doctrine was very humanist, and drew,a lot of influence from science at the time. For example, the survival of the fittest mantra that had been popularized from Darwin's studies was misappropriated by Nazi as part of their eugenics philosophy..
This sounds like something a member of the United Atheist Alliance would say.
- Fk'n splitters.
but assholes are far and few when people aren't deluded by religion. are you people actually arguing in favor of a religious society?