A friendly conversation or is it?

See, a couple of weeks ago, we were having dinner with friends. A nice little BBQ style dinner outside in the nice weather with two other couples. Sounds nice right?

Well at one point in the conversation Home Owners Associations popped up and the two other couples were vehemently against them. The four of them are VERY liberal and seem to be vehemently against almost anything and fairly negative about almost everything. Anyway, usually I just keep quiet and listen. I'm good at listening. In a conversation, I can defend either side, adequately.

Well on that night I decided to state that Home Owners Associations aren't that bad, and listed off a lot of reasons why. Home Value stays higher, less crime, more safe, cleaner. Sure sometimes it can be surreal, but I think that's more of a case of a HOA taken to extreme. Now, of course for defending the evil of HOA's I get blasted on all sides, rudely in some cases.

A couple of the arguments against were:

Q: What if your budget is tight, and your car springs a leak, and you can't afford to fix it?
A: You know ahead of time that your moving into a HOA, it's not like it sneaks up on you. If you can't afford maintenence on your car, perhaps your living above your means, how is that the fault of the HOA?

Q: (One of the people heard of this) A family in a gated community, suffered from molestation/violence and nobody said anything because it was none of their business.
A: Umm so this doesn't happen outside of a gated community?

Q: Well I lived in one and my car was vandalized.
A: Well I didn't live in one and my car was vandalized, statistics are just that. Just because it's statistically unlikely to happen, doesn't mean it won't. But odds are probably in your favor.

So, because I was PRO HOA, several of them became very upset with me. My problem with this is that we're all mature adults or at least I thought we were. We should be able to have a conversation without the rudeness. I honestly don't care if you like them or not, at no point did I make any rude comments about them or there position. I just pointed out some of the facts about HOA's.

At one point I got up to get my wife a drink, at which point, one of the wife's made a snide comment about if he loves them so much why doesn't he just move back. WITH my wife sitting right there? I mean come on? Am I supposed to just nod and agree with everything they say, it seems that they can't have an adult discussion about anything.

There was even another time at dinner where we were discussing authors and all four of them started ranting about how Steven King is a hack and he needs to be edited, yadda, yadda, yadda. This was when I first realized that they just like to complain about anything that is popular without actually thinking about it.

This of course was one other time where I piped up and said, say what you want about him but he found a niche market, and made millions. At which point they all became very angry and insulting. Bleech, so much for nice conversation.

I mean one of them even told my wife that I was scrawny. I mean is that acceptable? Would it be acceptable to tell her husband that she's fat? (which is something I would never do in a million years no matter how true it is, it's just rude)

Ack, I'm just ranting now.

Anyway, last week. Were were having dinner with just one of the couples. Which to be honest is usually a good time. It's when you add the other couple that problems seem to seep out. But on this night, we were discussing movies and we started discussing a movie "Storm of the Century". My wife is a big fan of long Steven King movies, as well as cheesy horror movies. The husband was arguing that the movie was all about god, and that the people were stupid for not realizing that and making the wrong decision. At which point the three of us all disagreed with. He explained, we still disagreed. He ranted, basically called my wife and the rest of us stupid, and then threw a hissy fit and left.

Is this adult behavior? Is it acceptable? At what age should one learn proper social skills?

To be honest, I understand that people have bad days, and I know that sometimes something just rubs you the wrong way on the wrong day. I've been there, it's not a big deal, it happens.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so I'll just end it here.