A 13-year-old used a ‘Help Me!’ sign to escape after being abducted. A Texas man has now pleaded guilty to kidnapping

Oh! This is the thing I've been reading about, with how people change their minds.

It turns out that for everyone, belief is partly to largely social. The brain values in-group membership and security much like how it values physical security. When you say something to someone that threatens their group security, the brain reacts similarly to if a bear had just walked into the room. There's no cool analyzing of facts.

So you have someone who's anti-trans and hangs out with their anti-trans church, and that's a big part of their community. That's their friends, family, and support. They get together, sing songs, and trash talk trans folks. Now, you come up to them and say "Hey, trans folks are people like anyone else and don't deserve to be treated badly." You're an outsider. The brain looks at this like siding with you risks being ejected from the safety of the group to be eaten by wolves. That's uncomfortable. So they make up excuses to resolve this. You're a liar. You're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't understand it's about protecting children. This is an exception that doesn't prove anything. It was a false flag operation. Excuses. Excuses to protect group membership and resolve cognitive dissonance.

People are complex and hold many memberships simultaneously. This person belongs to a church, but they also have a family, and they may be in a political party, and a sports team. And the church may belong to a larger group like Christianity more generally.

One of the ways to get people to change their mind is to appeal to another group they're a member of. Like, you probably can't get a republican to recycle by appealing to environmentalism. Republicans have gone hard on the environment doesn't matter. But you could probably make progress if you appealed to american exceptionalism. Only America can turn trash into treasure! That might appeal. That doesn't make them feel like they're clashing with a group.

This is also how stuff like qanon hook into people. Being part of the group feels good, and getting people to look at facts is going to be an uphill battle when it means risking that membership. And that's on top of the whole "most people don't want to admit fault"

Anyway. I digress. The specifics of christianity are a problem, but none of this is really unique to it. We should probably be spending more effort dismantling hate groups and such, though. And maybe building groups that aren't centered on hate and xenophobia.

Well said. We're centuries past the time it was needed to call this out in a very frank manner and "respecting" their beliefs when their behavior is abhorrent.

Repeating “but were they a drag queen” in our little echo chambers is surely cathartic

Full stop. It's cathartic, does no harm, adds a momentary smile to my otherwise dreary, humdrum, frustrating life. Bring on the drag queens, please!

It's not about being funny in that way. It's about countering bullshit and unfortunately it can only be in small bite sized bits and to make those that spew that garbage be aware constantly it's not accepted by others by asking the question.

Odds are it's those on the fence that can be swayed.

For the rest it's a form of Chinese water torture that will eventually get through but like you say most that need to hear it won't and they'll move on to things like adernochrome and liberal baby eating.

Speaking of that, it's odd those for having a choice to have a child or not would also eat those babies? Why would they want to not have them? It's a steady diet of them if they are forced to have kids they don't want?

It's unfortunate stupid logic questions like this are the only things that jar them enough to either act in rage or dismiss it all together in a flight response but it did chip something in the process.

Hell, if she got pregnant they'd make her give birth and probably give him partial custody.

I hate how this isn't even that far-fetched these days. This country is a fucking joke.