To be utterly shocked that someone in their mid 30's can hold such sexist and homophobic views.

[Needsmorecake]

Just got back from a date which my instincts told me not to go on....

Wish i had listened to myself as ive just had a coffee with the most sexist and homophobic arse i have ever met.

He started a rant about ' poofs' which he didnt stop when i said i had lots of gay friends, nor when i tried to change the subject.

His sexism left me open mouthed.

Im dumbfounded that someone who is 34 can hold such views.

Of course it's just a different view of the world.

I didn't see anything in the OP that suggests that the date she went on was anything other than an idiot with little manners.

I think people just don't like people sometimes and can give any vague reason for their dislike so in that context I see someone with homophobic views as entitled to have them because we haven't as yet managed to control peoples thoughts in society.

He sounds ridiculous but hey ho there are many many other forms of ridiculousness out there which i find totally bizarre....like religion and radical groups.

Smile and move on is the order of the day...unless of course they are breaking the law and not someone elses moral compass.

Everyone will know someone gay. They may just not know they are gay. Particularly outside of places with large lesbian and gay populations, many people are in the closet.

YABU to be surprised, far too much of it about. YANBU to be horrified though.

My neighbour is in his mid thirties. A particularly unpleasant person, who is homophobic, racist and sexist. We don't get on, mostly because I don't know my place (his words).

Sadly age has nothing to do with ignorance.

Hmm. caruthers you know one person who has told you s/he is gay. To be precise. A lot of people, even in the 18-24 age group, are very private about it.

I have been in classes where people have said "I don't know anyone gay" or "I only know one gay person" totally unaware that two seats away, there was someone sitting there who was gay!

Surely that's the point - although a better way to express the statement might be: "I don't believe I know anyone who is gay"

Which would be my position.

do you really think everybody is so tolerant regardless of age tis a but U to think that sorry your date went badly though he is indeen an arse

spindoctorofaethelred

I have a very small circle of friends and family and I am as sure as sure can be that there is only one gay person amongst them.

I could always guess that the others are living a lie with their prospective partners though can't I?

Age does make a difference. I grew up in the 50s/60s and back then 'poofs' were treated with contempt at best and frequently with hatred. As I got older I learned better. Many others in my age group learned too, but some seemed to be stuck in the past and still are.

Along the way I saw the younger generations learning to accept gay people from the start the same way they accept computers and smartphones. I found this reassuring.

So generally speaking I expect a younger person to know better than to be homophobic. Unless they are very actively religious perhaps and even that tends to be the province of older people.

Forgive me for heaving myself up into a rather large flomp for a second, but quick note, "tolerant" implies that you put up with or otherwise fail to impinge upon that which you might disapprove of.

A homophobic person may be tolerant of homosexuality if for instance they believe it is fundamentally wrong to pick on/judge/hurt other people (for being gay or anything else), or if they just don't hassle other people preferring to "live and let live".

A person who approves of homosexuality is not really being "tolerant" in the real sense of the word, and in fact if they cannot abide people having other views on it and consider them to be objectively unacceptable, they actually veer towards being "intolerant".

Tolerant does not mean "I have my views on this and people who disagree are without exception wrong, or evil, or didn't ought to be tolerated or reasoned with, and should to be expelled from society as universally unacceptable".

Just a minor bugbear of the language that bothers me.

(If it is a conviction without the possibility of discussion, it is also bigoted, incidentally).

I'm 34 now and am a hand wringing bleeding heart lefty.
I was wondering if the op could advise me what I age I need to wait til tp become sexist/racist/homophobic?

I was thinking about 46-47 to get in a good twenty years of unthinking bigotry befire I retire.

ComposHat - While I cannot find a link to the study at present, there is evidence that after thirty, as the synapses calcify and decay, it becomes increasingly difficult to absorb new mental data or alter old mental behaviour. It's therefore almost inevitable that, after 30, we gradually become more (c)onservative in our views.

I already have an automatic bigoted prejudiced reaction to any music influence by Simon Cowell, but I consider this the equivalent of a protective mental scar tissue.

caruthers Well, one or more of them could be actually bisexual, and obviously not living a lie?

Ahla, we seem to be back in the land of homophobia being some kind of minor preference. Are you suggesting that non-homophobes, and indeed, gay people, should be tolerant of homophobes' views because otherwise they are being 'intolerant', which is a Bad Thing?

spindoctorofaethelred

This could of course be very true

Age is relevant because anyone British in their 50s or older grew up while homosexuality was still a criminal offence, with general social attitudes to match, and it may be hard for them to change attitudes which are very thoroughly engrained. Younger people don't have the same excuse.

I was born around the time it was decriminalised, but even when I was growing up, the revelation that a public figure was gay was still a big scandal (various politicians in the 70s and 80s; even George Michael and Freddie Mercury were firmly in the closet for years). It's really only in the past couple of decades that being gay has been less of an issue, so I would also expect someone in their 30s to be less likely to be prejudiced than someone in, say, their 60s. But sadly that is not always the case.

Neo interesting. Does yhat mean I become stuck in my lefty ways? or begin to look like a person out of time as tge world changes around me?

No, I am saying that the word "tolerant" is used to mean its opposite in this context.

Some people have political views, personal values or religious convictions that lead them to personally engage in/abstain from, or approve/disapprove of things.

The tolerant person rubs along well with others and respects their choice to behave and believe as they will (within reason!).

This is all tolerance means, it is not loaded with a concept of dumping eg: your religious system so your beliefs jive with orthodoxy - that is quite something else.

"tolerant" implies that you put up with or otherwise fail to impinge upon that which you might disapprove of.
you are right tolerant is not the right word to use ,

A gay man was beaten up by 3 men in my hometown this weekend. I'm presuming his vile attackers weren't all sweet old OAPs.

But actually op I do think you are getting it a bit tight. The last time someone showed their homophobic colours to me it took me a couple of days to actually 'get' what he was saying, because apart from my evil SD, I just don't ever hear homophobic or racist views. I don't generally hang out with people who hate people. So i understand it can be something of a shock when you do hear this kind of out and out bigotry.

I don't think age is relevant at all-either you are a tolerant person or you are not. I am over 60 and open minded, it is an unacceptable excuse to say I am 'entrenched' - I should hope that if I get to 90 people don't let me get away with such views because of 'my age'- I will be old enough to know better and be challenged!

When people say homophobic things, I DO find it shocking. I'm always shocked by how thick people are.

I am regularly shocked, more so if I go on facebook.

I had a decorator round the other day and I was making small talk with him while he had a coffee. We were chatting about the choices of university his son is looking at to do a PGCE, hoping to become a primary school teacher and he has applied to one which I know to be very good. I said so, and he replied 'yes I heard that but the only trouble with it is there are a few too many brown faces around there so it's put him off a bit' cue me spluttering into my drink...all I could manage was 'if that's his attitude he might want to rethink his career choice'
He had seemed like a really nice, normal person up till then.

Sadly, I'm not surprised when I encounter homophobes. I do think they're arseholes of the highest order, though. (Interestingly, my mum, who was somewhat right of centre and born in 1928 shared this opinion - to the extent that when the police came knocking on her door back in the 1950s to ask if the guy in the flat upstairs was homosexual, she sent them off with a flea in their ear having basically told them to mind their own business!)

Flomp,

"A homophobic person may be tolerant of homosexuality if for instance they believe it is fundamentally wrong to pick on/judge/hurt other people (for being gay or anything else), or if they just don't hassle other people preferring to "live and let live"."

Not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that there are nice homophobes and not so nice ones? And what is this 'anything else'? Are there nice racists and misogynist too? How very noble of them.

One thing is to disagree with homosexuality, an opinion that anyone is entitled to have and another thing altogether is to hate homosexuals, an attitude I have only found in friends who shortly afterwards came out as gays themselves. So I personally tend to view people who HATE homosexuals as people who are seriously worried about their own sexuality.