This may sound totally absurd, but I recently encountered one of the nicest people I've met. She was oddly open-minded about many things, such her parenting philosophy -- although she was a conservative "bible thumper" Christian, she would rather have seen her kid act independently than adopt her faith blindly.
However... she was incredibly homophobic. I got hurt because of the homophobia, in fact. And yet, she's so genuinely willing to carry on a conversation and be friends with me. I'm not one to let anybody hassle me, but this lady is nice.
Have any of you ever encountered a bigoted person who is also a nice person? I don't mean a relative or anything -- I mean a stranger who became a friend. If so, what do you do?

Thank you very much, Boiler07.
I'm sort of dealing with it a lot better now after getting over the initial shock. What can you do, right? I'm going to talk to her in person in about a week, so that'll be good.

If it were me, I'd be as understanding as possible, try to find common ground, make every effort to respect her views. I think that's all you can do.
Physically disconnecting from the dissenting view... hm. I guess just try to avoid the subject for a while.
I hope this helps, if you ever wanna talk you can IM me and I'll help however I can.

Boiler07: No, I suppose that "bigot" is too strong a word. Yet she won't change her views, and she was in a position to hurt me. See, I told her what I thought about the bible and homosexuality, and we couldn't change each other's views.
That was fine. Except for the fact that she was on... well, a higher rung in the ladder of power. Sort of like the boss-employee relationship. I don't want to go into *exactly* what happened, but pretend that a boss fires an employee and you get the idea. Now, that is not what happened, but the feel of the situation is close enough.
Anyway, the reason that I'm calling her a "bigot" is because she basically "fired" me -- not job-related, but a situation that is close enough to the truth. Being open-minded and sharing views is fine, but what about disconnecting yourself *physically* from the dissenting view? I'm still in touch with her over letters and such, but...
Anyway, I'm rambling. What's your take?

I know some people like that. They smile and ae nice to you while saying things like colored and negroid. As you know I am a bit arrogant, I know it isn't a good quality but I know I have it. That is usually what I resort to internally. I think about how unintelligent and irrational that person is. It is a defense mechanism but it seems to function quite productivly. If they are nice I think it to myself, if they are Joeys, I am aggressive.

I've a few Bible-thumper friends, but what we do is that we just avoid the subjects of controversy.

She doesn't sound like a bigot. She sounds genuine. Try just sharing your views in the same open-mindedness that she shows to you. I bet you will learn a lot from each other.