I think the general rule is that people who treat other people like garbage are considered jerks and other people will usually support you in opposing them... unless you're in a group those people don't care about. My experience of people seeking equality is that they usually have a much better idea of what equality is than the people who don't think it's a big deal.
As sites such as Not Always Right show, being considered a jerk really isn't much of an incentive to stop being one or much of an incentive for large numbers of people not being jerks. And, sadly, laws typically protect jerks as well as those who are not jerks. Plus, there's a surprising number of laws and societal standards that actually punish you for opposing a jerk or treating them in the same way.
My experience of people seeking equality? They want to stop being treated like garbage. And, often, in their attempts to accomplish that they are not unwilling to treat each other like garbage. Take a look at the LGBT community, then ask the B and the T how they're often treated by the L and the G. You'll hear, in some cases, even worse descriptions of mistreatment than they get from the people who openly oppose the entire community. Gender equality is well known for its internal conflicts that verge on minor civil wars over what the standards of equality actually should be and whether or not someone is truly acting the part to help gender equality. And the civil rights movement has an even worse problem on its hands.
What many who are members of those groups don't realize is that these problems are not going to go away once they have equality. They also don't seem to realize that many of the programs they've come to rely on are dependent on inequality in order to even exist. Most scholarships for minorities, for example, only exist because the minorities are inequal; if equality is achieved, those go away. And, yes, that is exactly how it was intended when those scholarships were put in place. Some things that help members of the gender equality movement, such as child support, only exist because they represent inequality enshrined in law.
And, at the end of the day, most of these groups will be no better off than before. The class system that exists in societies is specifically designed to work against those who are not already wealthy... so most of these people are not going to ever gain true wealth without a severe restructuring of how capitalism works. And this isn't a new problem; Karl Marx is just the most famous of people to identify it. And since education is increasingly costly with decreasing return in America these days and that pattern shows no signs of changing any time soon... I think you can see where this is going and why it is many of these groups may end up worse off if they gain equality than they are without it.
Equality just means they are treated the same as those who hold the power as a group. Unfortunately, the people who hold power as a group are not actually equal to each other; they have massive levels of inequality and discrimination against each other as well. And because they have the majority of the power, there's no real reason for any true effort to help those that lose out. That's what the equality movements are asking to participate in.
Edit: This part didn't get copied and pasted to this post somehow. Pasting it below.
Now, how does the above relate to gamers? Simple... people bring this to the table as for why they want to play a character a certain way or disagree with how people play characters. The fights I'm talking about in the movements? I've had those at the table between members of the same group.
I went and did the research. I looked over the groups and such. Then I looked at who they wanted equality with and asked myself why they felt this was such of a problem that they needed to bring it to the table.
That's why my policy is to either suck it up and act like an adult, or GTFO. If the player across from you is playing a gay character, don't bring up your anti-gay propaganda as to why you want their character gone. If the player across from you is playing a character who acts like a bigot, don't bring up your equality movement propaganda as to why you want the player gone. If the player across from you is actually being a bigot, I won't hesitate to toss them.
But if you bring it up to me from either side, don't be surprised if I shoot you down. Because I know exactly where the argument will go if I allow it, and I won't hesitate to remind you that life is unfair and learning to accept that is part of growing up.
