[cannon7]

Originally Posted by Bandwagon Surfer

Wait, so now the dictionary is part of the conspiracy out to get you?

Those are not name calling, they are words that in the English language have meaning.


homophobe - noun
a person characterized by homophobia
irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or gay people


To tie it back to this thread topic: Reimer though his actions demonstrated such an extreme aversion to gay people that he refused to participate is saying that everyone is welcome in hockey. So to call him a homophobe is in no way name calling, it is using the proper word in the English language to describe his actions.

This is no different than calling someone who jogs a jogger. If I did not want to be called a jogger, I would stop jogging. If I instead went on tirades about how it is name calling to say that I am a jogger and demand that people and the English language change, then I would also fit the definition of ignorant (lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified).

In this context, how these words are being used are a form of Godwin's law.

Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies, is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.

Promulgated by the American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. He stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics. Later it was applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric where reductio ad Hitlerum occurs.

there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.