No. Read again. He quoted me saying "you might simply value other things more", and responded with "Correct. My priorities are: 1, 2, 3. If a policy helps that cause, I’m in favor of it. If it doesn’t, I’m probably opposed to it."
He values his personal wealth and comfort over the struggles of minorities. At best, he does not care about the plight of minoritised people. If a politician or policy offers him a benefit, but will increase the suffering of people who are not in his in-group, he still supports that policy. If a policy or politician focuses on alleviating suffering, but may come at some perceived expense to him, he opposes it.
Literally how?
You enumerated your priorities, and to quote you: "If a policy helps that cause, I’m in favor of it. If it doesn’t, I’m probably opposed to it."
Eliminating discrimination is not among the priorities you listed.
My entire life, for pretty much every progressive issue, has been filled with people saying "We agree with your cause but not the way you are going about it." literally no matter what "going about it" looks like.
Every effective proposition is shot down. There is no "solution" that is ever acceptable. Because changing the status quo is always interpreted as too radical.
So... I'm not keen on playing these kinds of stupid games?
And that’s precisely the attitude that prevents people from having a civil debate. By manipulating definitions and using them to represent your opponent as an inhuman villain (or, in your own words, monsters), you’re the one trying to remove someone’s humanity.
Ironic. By representing a differing view as "manipulating definitions" like this, you pretend I'm engaging in the conversation maliciously, and completely ignore what I'm saying. You aren't going to get closer to understanding other people unless you engage in good faith.
In the eyes of progressives, conservative politicians undermine the dignity of minorities. You might not agree with that, you might not care about that, you might simply value other things more.
And cut the hyperbole. I haven't tried to remove your humanity. Do you really not know what that is like?
The real issue is an inability to agree to disagree.
That's not a fair representation of the people you are talking about. We can agree to disagree about a lot of things. But not about the humanity, dignity, and freedom of people.
We will never agree to disagree about other people's humanity. Being willing to do so would make us monsters.
Every political opinion has a reasoning and differences in political opinions are usually based on differences in the morals or ideals of people.
That is very vague. Because sometimes those "differences in the morals or ideals of people" are that certain demographics of people are inferior, dangerous, or otherwise shouldn't exist in society. That isn't something we should pretend is reasonable.
It's also not true that every political opinion has strong reasoning behind it. Some people just do not live in the same reality that we do.
Refusing to debate a topic (aka refusing to hear the other side’s arguments) just leads no narrower-minded people. You cant have a reasonable opinion if you have only heard one side’s (your own) arguments.
But we HAVE heard them. We have heard them for decades. We have heard them over and over and over again until our ancestors had to fight multiple wars against them.
We have heard the racism and the sexism and the homophobia and the transphobia and every other little bigotry. Stop pretending we haven't heard them out. We have.
And after decades of listening and trying to have these conversations people eventually say "enough". That's not being narrow-minded. It's the opposite.
The more room you make for bigotry, the less room you make for people affected by that bigotry. And if one wants to hear diverse views, then one should listen to diverse people. Bigotry leads to echo chambers.
Some "challenges" are completely without merit though. Conservatives like to "challenge" the human rights of women and minoritised groups. The rights of people to exist within society and pursue happiness are, to progressives, axiomatically true. These challenges aren't something to be argued, they are something to be rejected as abominable.
If conservatives want to challenge tax policies or foreign relations or other such issues, sure! That's a discussion we can and should have. But that's not the same as challenging the ability for certain demographics to exist within society.
This is a bit of an unrealistic position, especially if trying to generalise past the boundaries of your friend group. Your friends trust you, so by all means, talk to them and try to educate them. But trying to change a complete stranger's mind is almost impossible.
And many of the positions the left refuses to "debate" are that certain groups of people should not be able to exist within society. Like, the left isn't refusing to debate tax policy, it's always about bigotry.
And let's just be perfectly blunt. The vast majority of conservatives screaming "groomer" at visibly LGBT+ people aren't going to have their minds changed. You can't educate someone who does not want to be educated. And demanding minorities stand in the firing-line and fruitlessly try to educate the people who hate them, sometimes to the point of hate-crimes, forever... You have to question the priorities of such a demand.
Sometimes caring for minorities means giving up on convincing hateful people.