Well, I wouldn’t deliberately piss off anybody because of their sexual orientation or faith.
Still, this happened in a place where it probably didn’t piss off anybody, UNLESS they get angry just by the knowledge that it’s happening. Nobody would just pass by and see.
I don’t understand what my having a sense of humor or not has to do with this. I’m not talking about whether the nativity scene thing is funny or not. I’m talking about your statement that “being rude, crude and frankly offensive is part of who we are.” Are you saying that was just a joke?
-FrL-
Not to speak for panache, but when some people think your sexual preference is frankly offensive, it becomes part of who you are whether you like it or not.
This argument is bollocks. By the same logic, me not being a Neo-Nazi means I have no right to criticize them, which I hope is sufficiently stupid enough to make my point. The only thing that gives the “right” to criticize what other people do is the ability to do so. You aren’t obliged to accept that criticism as accurate, but by no means does not being part of a group mean you have no right to give an opinion on it. Besides, by that logic, if you yourself are gay or part of a gay rights organisation, then you are not part of the group of non-gay or non-gay-rights-organisation-members, and therefore have no right to criticize those people. If you aren’t, then again you have no right to your criticism or otherwise. IOW, your argument means you have no right to voice your argument.
It makes total sense to me that Mary and Joseph were gay.
Mary was of course the most famous virgin in history. One possible reason… she had no interest in men.
One would think Joseph would have some MAJOR issues about Mary’s ongoing virginity. But apparently not. I don’t think I missed a chapter in the bible about the two blue balls of Bethlehem. So maybe Joseph had other rows to hoe, as it were.
Joseph: the original “Nice Guy”?
“Joseph, I’ve been chosen to bear a new incarnation of the Lord!”
“But he doesn’t RESPECT you like I do!”
Not really, but these folks were.
And they managed to desegregate the buses just fine. How’s that gay marriage thing working out for y’all so far?
Regards,
Shodan
Gosh good golly there Batman, gay marriage in the Netherlands is doing just fine.
That’s nice. How is it doing in California?
There’s a world of difference between criticizing something and opposing something. I don’t look at neo-Nazis and think “Y’know, if they weren’t so demonstrative about their anti-Semitism they’d be all right by me”. Same thing applies here - nobody in this thread is opposing gay rights, they’re just criticizing: “They shouldn’t stage drag Nativity scenes if they want other people to think they’re OK”. The problem is that this criticism is being raised from completely outside the gay rights movement by people who, I presume, aren’t even gay. Do you like being told how to do your job by someone who clearly hasn’t the first clue about it?
Notice, also, how Dutchman conveniently shields himself from getting personally called out by passing the buck. He himself isn’t anti-gay, oh no, he’s just worried about how other people might react to it. Even though it’s pretty clear he doesn’t approve of it himself.
Lousy, but that’s because the leading gay rights organizations did exactly what some have suggested doing in here - sit down, shut up, and don’t make waves.
Oh, it kinda sucks. But then again, our governor is an Austrian body-builder who can kick your governor’s ass, so you never know how it’s going to go.
You don’t really think gay pride parades led to the passage of prop 8 do you? I could just as easily argue gay pride parades led to its passing by a smaller margin.
Not Dutch people’s responsibility or problem, something which no-one in this thread has really addressed.
Sigh.
I acceded to your wish to refrain from advocating on this issue.
Then you reply with an insincere Christmas greeting, all the more aggregious as a result what was discussed in the Christmas Offended thread that we both participated in.
But that’s not enough for you. Now you have to insinuate I’m a homophobe.
Why did you feel the need to pick on me after I acceded to you.
Its the same question I have to ask Pro Gay in the Netherlands. They have attained every possible right, they’ve won the battle and yet that is not enough. They even secured 15,000 euro from the Amsterdam tax payer to hold this gay event and that is not enough. They just have to insult some of the people who payed for this event.
Guys like you don’t want to win. Guys like you relish being victims with an opposition to fight with. You know, there are some people you just can not please.
And it only took them just under a century to do it, too!
Well, we seem to making progress a lot faster than those nice, clean-cut gentlemen in the black civil rights movement did.
Man, those Dutch gays better get their act together and learn how to behave, or they’ll never achieve the same freedom and recognition that California offers.
“We are deeply offended at the representation of the Virgin Mary as an adult homosexual man, rather than the beloved image of a prepubescent rape victim as depicted in Christmas pageants everywhere.”
Really, when you get right down to it, how is an eight-year-old girl wearing a bathrobe any more intrinsically respectful to Christianity than a gay man in a wig? If someone had tried to put on a traditional Nativity play in 10th century Europe, with little kids representing Joseph and Mary and a toy doll standing in for the Christ Child, they probably would have been burned at the stake so fast that the kindling would have ignited from sheer air friction.
Try about a year.
The campaign was initiated by Rosa Parks refusal to move in Decenber 1955, resulting in a supreme court decision banning segregation on buses one year later. Fast work I’d say.
I’d shudder to think what would have happened to the civil rights movement if it was led by Jeremiah Wright.
You are only looking at one aspect of the civil rights movement. The movement actually starts right after the end of the civil war and continues right up to and far past Rosa Parks. The NAACP, for example, was formed in 1909, and it spent the ensuing years engaging in similar types of activities to the SCLC (which I think formed around the bus boycott you are referring to). Civil rights for African Americans was a long, slow, drawn out process.
Interestingly, though, that raises the question of why, when people had been fighting for so long, did civil rights start moving astonishingly quickly during the 50s and 60s? One theory I favor is that rapid societal change happens when there is a convergence of societal interests. In the 40s and 50s, you have dramatic shifts in labor requirements, which provided economic incentives to integrate. There’s also the effects of WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust, which created a big push internationally for the protection of human rights generally. I’d also say that the Indian independence movement, which was widely publicized in the West, contributed to changing people’s attitudes towards race relations. And finally, you have the Cold War, which provided a big incentive on the Federal level for integration. The US was trying to gain 3rd-world allies, and it had to deal with both the Soviets and the Non-Aligned movement who were pointing at segregation as a reason to not ally with the US. If you look at the Federal court case briefs submitted by the Federal government during this period, you find a lot of arguments centering around these lines. You should check out the book Cold War Civil Rights for a further discussion of this aspect.
Boiling civil rights movements down to simplistic narratives is pretty futile.
But they do have the first clue about it, because any kind of political movement has two interactive parts; the organisation itself, and everyone else. The people who are the *target *of attempts to convince. And it just makes sense to take the advice of the people who you’re trying to convince if you’re trying to convince them. Saying that they have no right to criticize because they’re not involved is like saying an audience has no right to criticize a play they’re watching. The whole point of the play is to try and get the audience to like it, to sympathise, to evoke some particular reaction. So it’s quite reasonable to see what kind of response people give to a movement or event, because it is precisely that response that is important.
Beyond even that, when we’re talking the gay rights movement, “gay” is just one word within the phrase. People may not be gay themselves, may not be experts on that subject, but may very well have experience or advice to offer on the subject of gaining rights, or of organising a successful movement or event. Take Starving Artist upthread; his criticism was based around how a movement in general should work if it wants to be effective. TFD’s initial OP was likewise based on the effects he thought this particular event we have.
Somewhat veiled suggestions, I would suggest also, are probably not the most effective way of convincing someone towards your viewpoint.