That’s basically what it boils down to, IMO.
Those were my words, as an illustration. Whether he actually said “my” words or not has no bearing (nice try at a hijack). As to taking it personally, it is my personal private business that is being judged and legislated against by scum like him. Don’t give me any crap about bias. It is not bias, it is anger and disgust.
I see no reason to have to convince anyone, or prove my “worthiness” to anyone. Why should I? Saying I have to prove myself is the same as saying “Yes you are less than we are, and so must defend yourself so we may judge you a little less harshly”. The Log Cabin Repubs have tried “convincing” and being “nice” for years and look where it got them (no where). Being “nice” hasn’t gotten shit for us. I know plenty of people who “Disagree”, but most of them are not in any postion to make laws or influence the making of laws. People like Keyes either are, or may be. I am not being condescending, that would infer that I might not hate the sonofabitch. Condescending is “Be a good little weirdo and behave”. My feeling toward Keyes is more like “Do us all a favor and drop dead”.
Then he should shut the hell up. He can think whatever he wants, but he goes beyond that. Besides, a parent who only thinks his child is sinful and wrong will try to correct and/or forgive the child. It takes a special kind of bigotry and hate to toss out and disown your own blood.
His daughter wasn’t planning to get “married”. Even if she were, his “opinions” are pushed on a LOT of total strangers that he doesn’t even know. So, now it would have been OK, for her to stay in daddy’s closet and never live her own life, ever (that might embarrass him). It was not OK for her to speak against his bigoted and ignorant views and political “agenda” (to have a mind of her own). He was campaigning for bigotry and intolerance. She spoke against it. She has guts, a backbone. He is pond scum.
Anyway, I still don’t need to explain or justify myself to you either. I don’t need to convince you of why I am “worthy” of the same basic freedoms (in the Leave Me The Fuck ALone way, or the Mind Your Own Damn Business way) as everyone else. I don’t have to “play nice” or worry about stepping on your feelings. “We” are not demanding special treatment or special entitlements, we just want to be left alone. We just want the “holy rolling bible thumpers” and their hypocrititical leeching politicians to stop fucking with us and stay out of our private lives.
Fuck Keys with a claw hammer. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. Fuck anyone who thinks like him. Fuck anyone who looks like him.
Fuck anyone who says we should not be angry or condescending.
Can I ask you a question? If you were pitting your boss, and someone came in and said, “I’m surprised you haven’t been fired for talking to your boss like that,” how would you respond? I thinking you would probably treat that person as a bit of an idiot, because anyone with any sense at all would understand that you’re saying those things in the Pit because you can’t say them to his face. You’re venting.
So, why is it that when a gay poster tries to do the same thing about a homophobic public figure, their putative allies line up three deep to lecture them about how they should behave if they want to be treated like equal citizens?
I’m starting to think Keyes is just a classic latent. I bet he loves him some bear.
It wasn’t a hijack. If you put something in quotes when we are discussed comments a specific person made, don’t be surprised if someone asks you where the words came from. Creating a strawman based on your twisted distortion of Alan Keyes’ actions doesn’t prove anything.
The reason is because gay rights are being stripped away. If you care about gays being able to marry, then you should want to convince people that you aren’t a deviant, etc. It has nothing to do with being nice, it has to do with not projecting hatred and intolerance.
He has the right to say whatever he wants. Plenty of people disown their kids for tons of things they find objectionable. This alone doesn’t make him especially hateful.
With that attitude, gay people will never be able to get married.
It really does. I can’t really think of a better way to say “I hate this and that about you” than to cut the person out of your life for that, especially when it’s the flesh of your flesh. I can’t think of a reason other than hatred to turn your child, who came from your body, whom you held in your arms, cleaned, fed, and protected out of house and home, onto the street, to their fate.
Recall that I and most gay people spent a significant portion of our youth in fear of this. Mercifully the fear in my case turned out to be unjustified. It often isn’t.
Please don’t condescend to us. Why are we the only ones who are told we shouldn’t vent in the BBQ Pit at someone who’s being an asshole to us or to one of our brothers and sisters?
Not that you need my permission, but feel free to vent. Feel free to use the word hate. As I hinted at before, I certainly don’t wish to lecture anyone. I’m not an ally of Keyes, putative or otherwise.
I plainly stated that those were my words, and were an illustration fo make a point.
Will being good little children keep any rights from being taken away? Don’t think so. Remember in the first Bush election he courted the gay vote and gays voted for him. That’s being nice isn’t it? Look what happened afterwards. All the little cockroaches crawled out from under the rocks. How about all those years (centuries?) when “we” tried to fit in and be “invisible”. Didn’t get us anything. Why would I AGAIN want to convince anyone I am not this or that or the other thing? “They” will just cherry pick some bible quote and throw it at us anyway. They do not need or deserve any explanation or justification. I do not need to sit at the foot of the table, waiting ther “the master” to throw me any bones. I feel perfectly entitled to respond to hate in kind. I’m the dog that will bite any “master” who kicks me.
Here is an extreme rhetorical exercise. You do know some gay bashers like to kill gays right (or at least beat them bloody)? Will being nice and convincing them save your life? No. Will immediate and equivalent response send them running? Yes.
Well, duh. My attitude, to refresh your memory can be summed up as :
"Mind your own business and leave me alone".
It’s a good attitude. It bears no ill will to anyone who simply complies. It does not say you must like me or even respect me. It says what it says. The hidden meaning is, I will treat you the same as you treat me.
We don’t have the attitude, the “other side” does.
Don’t preach attitude to me, you look like you have a pretty big attitude yourself. Finally, don’t talk down to me. “With that attitude…”
Here’s the thing.
There is some percentage, X, of people who agree with gay rights, modestly defined.
There is also some percentage, Y, of people who don’t agree with gay rights, but could be persuaded to agree with gay rights.
There is also some percentage, Z, of people who are unreasonbly against gay rights and there’s no way to persuade them.
And for completeness sake, let’s throw in W, those who agree with gay rights, but could be convinced otherwise, although it seems to me that W is a pretty small number.
X+W today is less than 50%. So in order to prevail, we need to change (one might even say “recruit”) Y’s into W’s and W’s into X’s. Ignore the Z’s. So Alan Keyes is a Z, forget him. How do you grow the percentage of X+W? I know, Alan Keyes arguably hates you, so it is understandable why you might hate him back. According to my personal morality there’s nothing intrinsicly wrong with that. But is it the best tactic in recruiting Y’s?
Even if Y’s are objectively just as hateful as Z’s, most people don’t like to think of themselves as hateful. If you claim to a Y that Y’s are hateful, they aren’t going to believe you, even (or maybe especially) if they really are hateful. What kinds of disucssions are more likely to turn Y’s into W’s?
I know, people’s rights exist regardless of whether a majority approve of those rights or not. But it isn’t that simple. We only have human rights because our neighbors agree we have human rights. The constitution only exists becuase we all agree that it exists. The courts are only going to go so far in protecting rights that a supermajority disagrees with. And of course that is why there is the current anti-gay marriage push…there currently exists a supermajority against gay marriage, but the Zs can see the number of Y’s decreasing steadily, and very soon Z+Y won’t be a supermajority, and soon after that not even a majority. I think Y’s outnumber Z’s by a large margin. And even if Z’s can’t be convinced, they are dying off at greater than replacement levels.
The current anti-gay agenda is to freeze the status quo in place. It is purely reactionary. Bottom line, we’re winning.
You condescending piece of shit. Of COURSE we take attacks on our dignity, humanity and rights as Americans personally. Jesus fucking Christ, how could we not?!
There’s nothing wrong with being biased in favor of equality, honesty, acceptance and goodness.
He called me a “selfish hedonist.” That’s hate. You don’t give a shit, but it’s hate.
Then you’re a fucking imbecile whose intellect is beneath contempt.
Anyone who would disown their child for being gay and being publicly gay is trash. Is less than trash. He’s the sort of filth that history will look back and rebuke, even a thousand years from now.
Oh, most apologies, massah. Can wese step 'n fetch you some dinner, oh great straight man?
The above posted with spectrum’s characteristic understated calmness. 
Brickbacon, first of all, I think it would be helpful for you to re-read Miller’s post #83. The point that he makes is that there are valid fora in which to pursue policy change, and there is an appropriate set of behaviors to be observed in that pursuit within those fora. This is not such a forum.
There are also valid fora for venting about the frustrations people feel regarding the progress being made and for venting anger towards the individuals whose actions and statements are impeding the progress. This is that type of forum.
It is polite to treat people as though one understands that they are aware of the differences between the two types of fora. When someone enters a venting forum and starts admonishing people to behave as though they were in the actual policy-change forum, that person will often come off as condescending and patronizing. 'Nuff said.
On a tangential note, I’d like to say something about injecting surrealism into your arguments, and then expecting people to treat the arguments as somehow not surrealistic: Please don’t.
It is not logically possible to “disagree” with a state of being. One may disagree with an opinion, one may disagree with a philosophy, one may disagree with a choice.
If you want to make the argument that under the third of my conditions the phrase “disagree with homosexuality” is a non-surreal phrase, you are simply begging the question of homosexuality as a choice. So are you being surreal, or are you being fallacious? It’s not for me to say, but you’re going to have to cop to one or the other. And then, again: please don’t.
Jesus Christ. Opposing gay marriage does not necessarily equal hatred of gays. This is beyond venting.
Opposing equality for a group of people – ie, supporting discrimination against them – is hatred. No amount of slimy weasling by you defenders of bigotry is going to change that.
Man, I hate algebra.
You keep asserting that. Doesn’t make it true. Could you explain a single rational basis for denying equal marriage rights to gay couples. What motivation besides hate, or dislike if you will, is there? From this side of the fence, though, there’s not much difference between an active dislike and hate.
Easy. To over-simplify it, many Christians, Jews and Muslims think practicing homosexual sex is a sin because a book, in which they base their faith, tells them so. Because they think it is a sin, obviously legalizing an unholy union, as it were, is wrong to them.
I think they’re wrong, in many cases, ignorant and woefully mistaken. Just because they’re the opposition doesn’t necessarily mean they’re evil.
I specifically asked for a rational reason. Adherence to an old rule book doesn’t cut it. There’s a whole lot of other shit in that book that doesn’t get enforced, so you can’t use it as a crutch in this one case to prop up bigotry. Their bigotry comes first and the book is justification. The accusation wasn’t that they were evil; but they are hateful. How is bigotry not hateful?
To many people, their religion is rational.
You know, there’s just no sense in arguing this any further. I am the South-Going Zax, you are the North-Going Zax and we’re on the prarie of Prax.
I’m on your side, guys, so keep fighting the good fight. I’m sure I’ll see same sex marriage legalized nationally in my lifetime. On that day, I’ll be so happy, I’ll probably get a little misty.