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A Vancouver man was denied entry into the United States after a US Customs and Border Patrol officer read his profiles on the gay hookup app Scruff and the website BBRT.
[...] André, a 30-year-old Vancouver set decorator who declined to give his full name for fear of retaliation from US Customs, describes the experience as "humiliating."[He] says he was planning to visit his boyfriend, who was working in New Orleans. But when he was going through Customs preclearance at Vancouver airport last October, he was selected for secondary inspection, where an officer took his phone, computer and other possessions, and demanded the passwords for his devices.
"I didn't know what to do. I was scared, so I gave them the password and then I sat there for at least an hour or two. I missed my flight," André says. "He came back and just started grilling me. 'Is this your email?' and it was an email attached to a Craigslist account for sex ads. He asked me, 'Is this your account on Scruff? Is this you on BBRT?' I was like, 'Yes, this is me.'"
[...] "I could tell just by his nature that he had no intentions of letting me through. They were just going to keep asking me questions looking for something," he says. "So I asked for the interrogation to stop. I asked if I go back to Canada am I barred for life? He said no, so I accepted that offer."
A month later, André attempted to fly to New Orleans again. This time, he brought what he thought was ample proof that he was not a sex worker: letters from his employer, pay stubs, bank statements, a lease agreement and phone contracts to prove he intended to return to Canada.
When he went through secondary inspection at Vancouver airport, US Customs officers didn't even need to ask for his passwords — they were saved in their own system. But André had wiped his phone of sex apps, browser history and messages, thinking that would dispel any suggestion he was looking for sex work. Instead, the border officers took that as suspicious.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 27 2017, @04:13PM (8 children)
you'd probably be shocked how many conservatives would be shocked and ashamed if they were faced with the bald truths.
I completely disagree. Any "conservative" who is shocked and ashamed isn't a true conservative. Real conservatives (which is most people who describe themselves as "conservative") will happily back up and make excuses for all these "bald truths", because that's how people are: they will defend, to the death, their "team", no matter how horrible their team becomes. We're seeing it right now; just look at internet comments by conservatives in any current story about some outrage, like some gay Canadian guy being horribly mistreated. I even see it among my own family: people who 5-10 years ago I never would have imagined being xenophobic, hateful Trumpists are now posting all kinds of far-right-wing insanity on their Facebook pages. The fundamental truth is that most people are "followers", and once they're following a "team" will adopt that team's opinions and mentality as their own, and it's very rare for people to change teams, especially as they get older.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @04:42PM
Yep. Same thing happened in reverse with Obama.
The black community was the most homophobic group of any significant size in the country, including evangelicals, with something like an 80/20 split against/for marriage equality. But within weeks of Obama officially endorsing marriage equality, it went to about 40/60.
Same thing with trump's putinism. Republican support for putin more than tripled since 2014 [politico.com] - 10% favorable to 37% this past december.
I think the republican meltdown is due to two reasons - (1) the authoritarians have colonized the party, it started with LBJ's support for civil rights - the republican party made a deliberate play to attract disaffected racist democrats (e.g. the southern strategy) so now there are a disproportionate number of naturally hateful people in the party. The rest are faced with the hard decision to abandon their tribe over principles that don't really affect them on a daily basis. Its easier to give up those principles than it is to make that leap into the unknown. It is nowhere near as risky as literally abandoning your tribe on the savanna to live on your own, but people still feel like it is a big deal.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday February 27 2017, @06:15PM (6 children)
Sure, there is plenty of tribal behavior, but there is a cause for this problem. Propaganda and lies. When I said "bald truths" I had in mind all necessary evidence to show actual reality to such people, incontrovertible facts. I've met many conservatives that do backpedal and even self-reflect when faced with proof they can't deny. This involves a lot of bullshit fact checking and is generally more trouble than its worth, but I think we should focus a bit more on the purveyors of hatred and misinformation. Hell, Glenn Beck apparently feels guilty for his role in whipping up the frothing madness.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 27 2017, @07:40PM (5 children)
When I said "bald truths" I had in mind all necessary evidence to show actual reality to such people, incontrovertible facts.
How is this even possible? Unless you're going to grab someone and physically drive them to show them something in-person, they're just going to dismiss your "facts" as lies because they don't believe your preferred media source. It doesn't help that many of our mainstream sources really are full of lies and half-truths, as seen during this election cycle where prominent news sources like Washington Post were clearly doing their best to trash Bernie and push Hillary.
I've met many conservatives that do backpedal and even self-reflect when faced with proof they can't deny.
Like what? Do you have any real examples? I'd love to find something to make my conservative family members back-pedal, but I'm highly skeptical; they'll just claim my information sources are wrong. Our own President now is even saying such things publicly.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday February 27 2017, @07:59PM (4 children)
Yes the blind trust is a problem. It takes time and research, and if someone adamantly opposed to factual evidence in favor of tribal loyalty then you have to call that out. My point was that this partisan divide is not actually as bad as people are thinking. Sure its bad, but I honestly think some of Trump's supporters will fall off as reality becomes harder and harder to ignore.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 27 2017, @08:18PM (3 children)
It takes time and research, and if someone adamantly opposed to factual evidence in favor of tribal loyalty then you have to call that out.
How do you know that your evidence is factual? If you didn't research it yourself firsthand, you're just trusting someone else who likely has an agenda, which we saw clearly with how Bernie was knifed in the back by the establishment and the press. Obviously, I can't trust news sources like Breitbart and WND, but I also cannot trust mainstream sources like Washington Post or NYT (which was beating the war drums in favor of Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003). So where do I find "factual evidence"? I guess you can say that the mainstream media doesn't usually resort to outright falsehoods though, but they definitely do color their reporting a certain way to fit their agenda, so when Trump signs an executive order for something that's pretty unarguable as a fact, but that's not usually what these arguments are about.
Finally, you haven't provided me with any examples of forcing conservatives to back-pedal and self-reflect as you claim.
From my observations, you're never going to change their minds, because even if you convince them of something wrong on their "side", they'll just shift to some other issue they're invested in, usually abortion or guns or illegal immigration. Basically, it doesn't matter what GOP politicians do, even if it means locking these conservative cheerleaders up in private prisons for smoking a little pot, they'll still defend their side because "the Democrats want to take our guns", "abortion is murder", or "I hate Mexicans" (they won't say that exactly, but that's what it amounts to).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Monday February 27 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)
Found your problem: "How do you know that your evidence is factual?"
Cross referencing, research, critical thinking. You have to apply these, develop an arsenal of well documented facts. Reports from actual organizations that deal with whatever topic, quotes from politicians / legislation proposals (for the "taking our guns" stuff). But most importantly, you have to remove your own emotions. As soon as you get the tiniest bit upset you start the emotional cascade which shuts down all reasonable discussion. SO, they'll spout nonsense and you have to respond with facts. You also must understand that the shit you hate is done by the democrats as well, so conservatives have legitimate complaints too. You must acknowledge and not dismiss those complaints.
If you really care, then document the process, write down all the lies you got them to see, etc. etc. I don't have any go-to documents prepared so I can't provide you with some fact packet, but since you're worried about whethe
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @05:41PM
I disagree. Facts really don't matter. There are so many cognitive failures in the human mind - like filtering where contradictory facts are simply demphasized, and there is also this funny effect where people acknowledge that the foundation of a chain of logic is in error but still retain their belief in the conclusion. Its like once the conclusion is made it stands on its own. Maybe because reasoning it all through again is a lot of mental effort, so people in general just keep track of the conclusions but not how they got there as a sort of mental shortcut.
If you want to change minds there are two ways - get the hater to see themselves in the position of the hated. [npr.org] The old "walk a mile in another man's shoes" thing. The other method is for someone they look up to tell them changing their mind is a good idea. That one is harder, but its rare for everyone that someone admires to be in exact lockstep so sometimes you can find records of one expressing an opinion that contradicts all the others.
To paraphrase, Jonathan Swift, "You can't reason a man out of a position he never reasoned himself into."
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday February 27 2017, @09:46PM
Found your problem: "How do you know that your evidence is factual?"
Cross referencing, research, critical thinking. You have to apply these, develop an arsenal of well documented facts. Reports from actual organizations that deal with whatever topic, quotes from politicians / legislation proposals (for the "taking our guns" stuff). But most importantly, you have to remove your own emotions. As soon as you get the tiniest bit upset you start the emotional cascade which shuts down all reasonable discussion. So, they'll spout nonsense and you have to respond with facts. You also must understand that the shit you hate is done by the democrats as well, so conservatives have legitimate complaints too. You must acknowledge and not dismiss those complaints.
If you really care, then document the process, write down all the lies you got them to see, etc. etc. I don't have any go-to documents prepared so I can't provide you with some fact packet, but since you're worried about whether you can even trust anything then I recommend you start with fixing that to your own satisfaction. It should be the people vs. the gov, not people vs. people.
~Tilting at windmills~