[Fifth_Column_Media]

First, I believe this is my first real thread here, but this seemed like a good community to pose these questions to as you all seem quite open minded. I'm not sure if I'm under the right heading though...

Recently I ran across an interesting article that I was going to syndicate on my online magazine. What the article itself is about is not so important, although I still may syndicate it, but it proposed some interesting thoughts on opinions and how not all opinions are equal briefly, but that was not the focus of the article.

This got me thinking because I have said for quite some time both in the articles I write and in person, that we, as a people, should consider all opinions "valid", and now I wasn't entirely sure what I meant by that anymore. The difficulty comes in with issues of racism, and sexism and prejudice and other "opinions" that actually harm other people. Are these still equal? I mean if I believe its my god given right to kill every other race on the planet, is that opinion any less valid? or not equal to ones of peace?

Here's one conclusion I came to (I'm planning an article for my magazine about this too but I'd like other people's opinions on it first):

Every opinion is valid in that anyone has the right to believe anything they want to believe.

That part I think is really what I mean when I say that every opinion is valid, but then are opinions not equal? Or are they only not equal because of my perspective? By thinking that they are not equal am I judging those individuals and therefore I may be inadvertently disrespecting them?

I think that last question is where I have trouble, mainly because I believe that all human beings deserve the same respect no matter what they're beliefs are.

I'm opening this discussion up to anyone because I'm interested it working this out both for my article and for myself.

Thanks everyone, I hope I shouldn't have posted this under philosophy.