"The majority of Deaf people are in favor of cochlear implants, though I gather many think those children should still be schooled in ASL"

Wow, just wow.

Get out of the house.

Spend time around others.

I don't know where you get these "majority" assumptions about cultures and communities you have never spent time with. But if you cared about how the deaf perspective, you might find that its not so simple as you pretend.

Cochlear Implants aren't magic. Part of the process of implantation is assessing the effectiveness of the implant. And for many, the results will not be a magic restoration of the full ability to hear. This option is often preferred by the hearing parents of deaf children intent on "fixing" their "broken" child. The analogy may be made to the way that the now discredited notion of "reparative therapy" appealed to the str8 parents of queer children who believed they were "broken." ( The analogy breaks down insofar as some can have full hearing with a cochlear implant. )

"The controversy over cochlear implants often pits hearing parents against deaf parents when it comes to raising their deaf children in a hearing world. Many deaf parents would prefer to raise their deaf child in a deaf culture, including the use of sign language and lip reading. Hearing parents who are not familiar with the deaf community may opt for the implant surgery to correct their deaf child's perceived handicap.

The result may be a deaf child who can partially hear, or a hearing child with a deaf cultural heritage. Either way, the child may face social ostracism from both communities if the parents do not consider the long-term effects of cochlear implant surgery. Not all members of the deaf community view implants as an unnecessary procedure, but hearing parents facing a difficult decision concerning a deaf child may want to research both sides of the controversy before committing to cochlear implant surgery." ( underlining mine )

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-controversy-around-cochlear-implants.htm

Which would you wish for your child, partial fluency in an alien language or full fluency in another language even if it wasn't yours?

Generations of immigrant parents with broken English used to make the obvious choice, to speak ONLY their adopted language at home ( eschewing their native tongue ) to assist the child in full fluency in the community they had adopted; even if they could never fully join.

Why leave your homeland for the child's sake? Perhaps you sought a community in which the child could fully participate if their options were limited at home by being born into a community that was shunned.

Centuries of Russian Jewish emigres made that choice. And when I was in college I had the pleasure of interviewing a Filipino-American Philosophy professor who explained his mother's choice to leave her language behind for her child's sake. ( This was the guy who conspired with the Dept Chair to try to get me to declare a Philosophy major. )

Most heary parents can't sign and none past the age of language acquisition can gain full fluency.

But with partial hearing as a frequent outcome of cochlear implants and another option for full fluency available would you choose to spend your child's acquisitional years for partial competence in any language?

There are pros and cons, but your "majority" statement is an outsider's projection.

"Compare how the "but" clause negates all that precedes it"

"We're in a contrastive context here. If I left off the "but" in that context it would make no sense."

Indeed. The contrast is between "I accept that I'm OK as I am," and "I don't accept that I'm OK as I am." The grammatical link is what makes the subclause necessary to interpret the first one.

For most perfect grammatical sense can be made of individual unrelated sentences;

"I'm OK with my sexuality."

and,

"Bis have more dating options."

If I had to say that they cannot stand on their own and both be true, but had to make the acceptance of Heterosexuality dependent upon a claim that Bisexuals have a fuller attraction; then I would be rejecting my initial assertion.

The only need to link the clauses is to make the oxymoronic assertion, "I accept myself as I am, and I would reject much of that if I could."

"One angle to consider is that if you have a fairly superficial acquaintance, minorities will stick to the public radical line, especially if they are speaking to a Dante and know Dante's views. For some of them, if you get to know them better, they will freely admit to the limitations of their condition."

LOL.

You really need to get out more and meet people.

Superficial? 30 years of friendship is superficial? Do you think I'm promoting Pedo Pride among my gay and disabled friends? RLY?

No, I happen to be around when they let their hair down because they know that I will listen, accept them on whatever terms they wish and won't judge.

Remember, Brad, my friend who is paralyzed broke from the PC party-line and told me that he rejected the "differently-abled" description because it doesn't acknowledge the limits.

This, and the fact that what they tell me matches what they are recorded saying when no outsider is intruding tell me that you just don't care to be invited.

Casting aspersions on a culture's claims for itself is a pretty low blow when dealing with other minorities. They can attest time and again to Black Pride, Queer Pride, Deaf Pride and there will always be bigots around to indicate that they are secretly shamed by their culture and would wish it away.

"As things become divergent, it's time to bow out. You can remember it as you all having effectively rebutted my views. Nope. Just outvoted."

Neither the bandwagon fallacy nor the Galileo fallacy are true. Neither popularity nor the lack of it establish the claim to be true.

However, if you're going to try to speak for the deaf, differently-abled, queers and ethnic minorities it might help to be friendly enough and open enough to be around when they start to "talk shop."

My RL credentials are also irrelevant to the truth of my assertions. ( That's it own fallacy. ) But they do help my BS-ometer detect a lack of connection between a statement about a people and those people.

If I told you that, as a gentile, I'd attended a Passover Seder where the host said that the Israeli occupation was the shame of the Jewish people would you believe that he was also just quoting from a "position paper" he wanted me to hear. If I told you that he introduced me to Heavy Metal music at 13 and I was best-man under the Chuppah at his wedding and ( unfortunately ) spoke at his funeral; would you dismiss the relationship between our families as "superficial" if he didn't speak as you believed a Jew ought to?

I suspect no amount of reality will convince you.

But, for the possible Pedo, Non and even Anti readers, the ability to walk out their front doors to fact-check your opinions about their communities goes a long way towards their evaluation of whether you speak realistically for your own.

Dante