Reply #22: That's what I figured, since your generous tip--and your rational discussion--

[tblue37]

showed that your purpose was to win him over, not beat him down for disagreeing with you.

You might like to read one of the articles on my Teacher, Teacher website:

"Don't Get Emotionally Attached to Your Own Opinion"
http://teacherblue.homestead.com/opinion1.html

The follow-up article might be even more germane to your rational actions:

"Don't Get Emotionally Attached to Your Own Opinion: Part II":
http://teacherblue.homestead.com/opinion2.html

In the first article I explain the importance of being rational and objective when discussing complex issues. A reader wrote to say that while all that reasonableness sounded nice, it simply would never work on hot-button issues like gun control or abortion. I told him that those were precisely the issues where rationality was most important, and I wrote the second article to show him what I meant.

Several years earlier, a group of extreme anti-abortion activist came to our university with some very hideous displays likening abortion to lynching and to the Holocaust. While I disagreed with their position, I found the relentlessly reasonable and polite when I discussed the issue with them.

These young (college-aged) people were on the far right end of the abortion debate--rejecting the idea of abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother's health/life, and even in cases in which the mother was a prepubescent girl who had been raped or who was the victim of incest.

They were all very religious, and according to their religious premises, which they believed in wholeheartedly, abortion is murder--literally.

I strongly disagree with them, of course, but they really, really did handle themselves well in the discussions, and if one accepts their premise (which I didn't, but their premise was a religious belief, and those are points that are not normally subject to modification in a true believer), then their stance on abortion was the only possible one.

While these young people presented their case quietly and reasonably, people on the pro-choice side behaved like deranged Yahoos, so much so that I was embarrassed that they agreed with me! One even tried to knock down one of their displays with a truck--and ended up knocking down one of the anti-abortion activists instead! It was just luck that the young man was not seriously injured.

You should read my articles--in fact, "Part II" might be even more interesting to you.