Another gay marriage brouhaha in the Central Valley of CA

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This was going to be a pitting, but I’m too tired to brush my hair, let alone work up the indignation necessary to cut it in the pit. Plus, this is more depressing than angering.
Anyway, Monday night marked the first gay rights rally to ever be held in Poterville, CA. The local paper did an article on the event (found here ) and through their website there is a comment feature.

As of yesterday, the comments were actually surprisingly civil. Sure, there were a few comments about how gays are fags, but for the most part things were squarely in the realm of reasonable discussion. Well, as reasonable as discussion can be when one side is citing science (“No, seriously, there’s no difference between gays at straights”) and the other is citing God.

I even left a comment where I compared the gay rights movement to the African American Civil Rights movement, praising the organizer of the rally for their good work. I didn’t really say anything hostile, other than the fact that those who are hiding behind the Bible to deny gays their rights would have been doing the same thing to African Americans 50 years ago.

I was surprised later last night though when I returned to the page and every comment in SUPPORT of the rally was deleted while each that was preaching the evils of the homosexuals remained. Apparently, if more than two people flag a particular comment as offensive, it is automatically removed.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect the people of this valley to be progressively liberal or anything, but I guess I just had some expectation that a newspaper of all places would value the idea of freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas that such a freedom allows. I do know that a paper is a private thing and they can certainly censor their website as they see fit, but I suppose I just naively thought they wouldn’t in such an obviously manipulated way.

Sort of a lame post, I know. It’s just more than a little depressing to see such strong hatred and ignorance from people who are more or less my neighbors. At the same time, of course, it is amazing to see so many others standing up for what is truly a Civil Rights issue.

I often wonder what people felt like who lived in the times up until the Civil Rights movement; like, if they felt the whole thing was as hopeless as this cause seems sometimes.

2

Diosa, This is why I refuse to ever move back into the valley. My family thinks I don’t want to live near them because of them, but I just can’t tolerate the prevailing attitude there anymore. It doesn’t help that most of them are a part of it either. This kind of stuff always makes me sad, because every time I hear it, it sounds like the situation is just as futile.

3

It’s really depressing, isn’t it?

I guess for me the thing is that I can’t reconcile what I think Christianity stands for and what these people are saying. I’m not the most religious person or anything, but to me the prevailing theme in the Bible is love each other, take care of each other, and don’t worry about judging each other because that is someone else’s job. To see so many people using something so inherently good for what really is- imho- evil is just really discouraging. Particularly when it is the people I interact with every day.

4

Heh. I know what you’re getting at, here, but the way you phrased it made me laugh.

Poster 1: That gay rights rally was pretty cool.
Poster 2: Hey, didn’t you know all those gay people are really fags?
Poster 1: What?! I had no idea!

So, get two of your friends to sign on to the site and the three of you flag all the anti-gay posts as “offensive.” Turnabout is fair play, after all.

Although in seriousness, there’s a good chance that the removal process is automated, and no one at the paper has noticed that it’s being gamed to remove an entire side to the debate on the issue. If you contact them, they might restore the missing posts and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Or not. But you never know until you try.

5

A lot of the people who were deleted are going back and adding new comments. The first page of comments is primarily in support of SSM now.