this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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No one said anything in this context about securing legal rights through violence, we're talking about protecting yourself from individual or community-level acts of aggression. That's literally what the ranch was created for, and what most LGBT+ mutual-defense groups form around.
But since you brought it up...
Violence is always the ultimate (i.e. final or most fundamental) means to protect your life and rights, whether it's a society promising that violence in the form of laws and the police that enforce them, or via your own personal defense against an attacker.
Laws always only exists through the promise of violence (against body, possessions, liberty, etc) against people violating them.
All modern nation-states operate this way. Democracy doesn't change that, unless it's a fully consensus-based or consent-based-participation system.
And what means do you think society uses to protect the rights it decides to grant or deny?
I have a lot of thoughts on the strategy of rhetorically censoring yourself in order to attempt to avoid right-wing accusations of left-wing revolutionism, but I will leave that for another time and place (like c/socialism).
"Being able to live a peaceful life without fear of being murdered or lynched is a fundemental right."
Yes, but it isn't a right we universally enjoy.
Tbh, you do have that right (in the US), that is why it is illegal to murder or lynch people. The problem is that simply because rights exist, it doesn't mean they're magically provided at all times, there are simply people in the world who would transgress upon your rights (in this case, the right to not be murdered, by trying to murder you.) But since not everyone can carry a policeman on piggyback everywhere they go, sometimes it may fall upon you to defend your own right to not be murdered, if you want it defended in real time someone who is there at the time has to unfortunately do it.
Like sure, I have homeowners insurance and I can call the fire dept, but I also have a fire extinguisher because it'd be a lot cooler if I could just PSSSHT that fire out real fast instead of having to lose everything and file reports about it, or just hope the FD makes it in time when I totally could've just sprayed it myself had I the appropriate tools on site when it started.
You just jumped from me talking about society using violence to talking about an individual using violence. In this current form of society in the US, individuals are not endowed with the authority to use violence to demand goods and services, only society at large is, via legislative means. So if society says (via a law), "your office must provide this person healthcare without discriminating against them" and the doctor ignores it, and they are criminally charged, a warrant will be issued and a policeman with a gun will be sent to arrest them, etc etc.
Yes, because if someone harasses them, they are protected by the society assuring those rights (with violence, or the threat thereof).
Not at all. You just think I am because you are conflating me stating that violence underpins systems of authority with me being pro-violence. I'm in fact very much against violence, and against systems that do rely on it, like non-consensus based democracies and other systems which assert authority over people unwillingly based on their geographic location.
If you are literally talking about violence as part of the process itself, that is obviously not part of our system (unless you break one of our laws about voting, in which case violence enters the room to arrest/ punish you).
I agree with you up to "society", because yes, violence is obviously exclusive by definition of peace. But the second half, about the "rule of law", just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of those words, and their relation to violence. "Rule" in that phrase literally means "the exercise of authority or control over". So the Law's exercise of authority or control over (members of a society). That is, in a non-consensus-based system, enforced with the threat or actualization of violence against the members of that society. ALL authority is backed by violence. That's the problem with authority.
It obviously should be, I agree. Often that's not the case, due to either violent individuals, or society's authoritative laws being used against people to hurt them (like Florida, Texas, and many others are doing to trans people and many other minority groups right now).
Once again, you are conflating the people in the article talking about protecting themselves from individuals and non-authority entities, not about ensuring their rights within the framework of society at large. No one is setting up an LGBT+ defense ranch in e.g. Florida to provide protection against a state government.
And I agree that people should not HAVE to carry around a gun to be safe; that's the whole ostensible (but false) promise that our society extends to its citizens. But our society doesn't actually operate like that, because it, like all other modern nation-states, was founded through violence (revolutionary and settler-colonial), is enforced and maintained through violence (police and military), and in our case exports violence around the globe.
If you are hoping for the US to ever be a country that does not exist in a perpetual state of violence at all levels, I think you are naive.