Could you explain how you plan to vote to deny us equal rights; but then expect us to believe you hold no animus towards us?
re-read the whole post you quoted. Then tell me how a state vote in ND affects you in MO. You are exactly the type of person that makes me want to dig in and ignore any rational arguments.
Then show me how I want to deny your rights. Can’t do it?
Now remember, I offered a vote of ‘no’ to banning SS marriage. It’s retracted. I give up.
Nah, you’re supposed to be in your Slut Phase.
And that’s a lesson some people, gay or straight, never seem to learn so bug ups to ya, Sol. A lot fo people never become comfortable with themselves and beleive they have to conform to the wishes of others to be accepted.
I never said that Bricker was evil and he’s clearly far from an idiot. I don’t say that he may not see how wrong his current position is, but this message board, IMO, will not be his Road to Damascus. That’s not to say you shouldn’t defend your position aggressively, just that you nee to keep some perspective and realize that transforming bigoted attitudes is the work of years.
Well, that’s the hell of it–nobody who supports bigotry rubs their hands a la Snidely Whiplash and openly revels in their villainy. They believe they stand for the Law, or God, or Traditional Values. I have no doubt that Bricker believes himsefl to be on the side of virtue, but to quote George Gershwin, that ain’t necessarily so.
The truth is that you are a shrill, self-pitying nutjob and an embarrassment to any cause you embrace. You have no sense of proportion and you seem to havce only two speeds in your posting, Snivel and Shriek. In all the time you have posted here, I have yet to see you discuss any subject in a calm, rational manner like an adult.
Don’t be such a literalist pedantic ass. You personally said you would not vote “no” on a gay marriage ban. (By the way, your smarmy " I’ll forgo my personal beliefs and my religious beliefs and vote ‘no’" is null because I doubt any of us are going to accept your “deal” that we vote for Bush.) If I were to live in North Dakota, then it would be affecting me somewhat more personally. However, I believe the premise that “none of us are free if one of us is chained”. And that principle is what I was asking about.
But go ahead and dig in anyway because to claim otherwise only makes you a lying sack of shit. You have no intention of ever changing your mind and pretending that you would if only we message board posters were nicer to you is bullocks. You, sir, are a liar. I don’t give a flying fuck if you, personally, ever change your mind. You are a dying breed. This backlash is temporary and the steady march of freedom will trample your kind.
Real Mensch, like Scylla, will vote their conscience. For they understand that Right is Right. Despite the fact that he and I mix like oil and water, that we personally don’t get along, that I think his views about Big Brothers/Big Sisters is wrong, he is beholden to his own sense of justice without regard to my personal merit. And for that I salute him and write you off as irrelevant.
[QUOTE=duffer]
As far as hospital visits, I don’t see how a hospital can deny a visitor if the patient has it set up ahead of time that a lover be allowed in./QUOTE]
This is the one I don’t get. Are gay partners actually barred from visiting loved ones in the hospital? Is anyone barred? I ask because I once had a girlfriend who almost lived in one, and I was allowed to visit her anytime I wanted. And visiting hours never applied to me. And she had a bunch of friends with the same priviledges. Some of whom were gay men.
And when my current girlfriend underwent surgery, I was allowed to visit with no restrictions. As was her lesbian friend.
In fact, I have never, at any time, even heard of a hospital denying visitation from anyone, not even complete strangers.
So where is this happening?
Guess that’s your way of winning people over? I weep for gay rights.
Who needs to win you over? You only need to be correctly identified. You’re an asshole.
I think you’re all being a little hard on Guffer. He’s not actively evil like the unlamented Gruesome Twosome from NJ. He’s just doesn’t comprehend that gay epople are not treated equally and that we are entitled to the same rights he enjoys as a matter of course.
Excoriating the opponents of gay rights will only serve to deepen their intransigence. The most effective engineers of social change, like MLK and Gandhi, held steadfast to their core values, aggressively took the battle to their opponents, and appealed to the better angels of their opponents’ nature. They didn’t call names or give in to hate but kept clear their right to the high ground.
Oh, you do not. Stop being disingenuous.
Any rights that are predicated on the collective gay community kissing your straight ass aren’t worth the price.
[QUOTE=tdn]
A lot of hospitals have policies that say that if somebody is in critical condition, only the person’s immediate family is allowed visitation. That doesn’t usually apply to somebody who goes in to have his appendix removed, but it would if the person were in a coma, for instance.
Just because a joke makes the listener think a little bit, doesn’t mean that it isn’t offensive to most people, as this one certainly appears to be. I don’t know the “Blacks into Whites” joke, but one can’t know that using the word “nigger” is a hot button for many people, and for good reason. It’s disingenuous to think that you aren’t going to get some flack for it by saying “But it’s a joke.”
And you’re right, my dick is exclusively righteous.
Huh. So where would the line be drawn on someone in ICU due to kidney failure?
duffer, before you dismiss any of the posts you see here as being overly shrill and vitriolic, re-read what you wrote here:
After a few hours of talking to some vocal people on an internet message board, you have dangled an offer of a vote over people’s heads and then claim to retract it. You must understand how this can come across as being more than a little less than sincere.
I fail to understand how someone could be so eager to assure everyone that he’s not prejudiced against gays, and then go off in a huff and say “fine, I’m NOT voting for your stupid rights!” as soon as the first homo is rude to him or says something that offends him.
I’d respectfully recommend that you vote as your conscience tells you, not claim one thing so that people will stop being all up in your shit, and then going to do another. I’d recommend that you vote for the issues that you feel are right, not those that are championed by the people who are most polite to you. You claimed that it would require you to “forgo your personal and religious beliefs” to vote against a same-sex marriage ban. You have the right to do that. But you have the obligation not to think one way and vote another.
Anything else comes across as being dupllicitous, which is extremely unnerving – as I’ve said before, I would much rather someone tell me directly to my face that he thinks I’m wrong, instead of smiling and nodding and then stabbing me in the back as soon as I turn around.
That’s where I stand, but I’ll respond to the rest since you took the time to write it:
Congratulations. In your 31 years you have personally known more homosexuals than I did by the time I was 31. Call it a sheltered southern suburban religous life, but I didn’t meet an openly gay man until I was 27. Over the years, I was mostly indifferent if not repulsed by and dismissive of homosexuals because, frankly, I felt that I could force myself not to be gay and therefore it didn’t have anything to do with my life. I’m still not familiar with Act-Up or other gay activist groups, because the extent of my being “out and proud” is that I’m very vocal about the issues on the SDMB and among my friends, and that I have sex with other men when given the opportunity.
I should hope it’s obvious, but my point is not that everyone is a closeted homosexual. My point is that I was dead wrong for having my misconceptions about homosexuality and for being opposed to same-sex marriage (which I was at one point). I don’t get any slack for being in the closet. I don’t get any slack for being Christian, or southern, or a WASP, or my conservative suburban upbringing. I have now and always had enough sense that I should’ve been able to tell that two people in love should be allowed to be in love and it’s nobody’s business but their own.
I don’t have a problem with disagreement. I have repeatedly asked for disagreement, so I can get the opportunity to present my feelings on the matter. But I expect the other person to actually listen to what I’m saying instead of waiting for the first instance where I say something “rude” (in the Pit!) so they can ignore every bit of it and write the whole thing off as another case of shrill queer whining.
And when you say, “I think I know the general feeling of gays in America, and I have nothing more to say” that is exactly what you’re doing. Respect has to go both ways. You can’t expect me not to lump you in with all the bigots when you say something that I feel is bigoted, and then lump me in with all the other homos when I say something you feel is typical gay extremist talk.
And luckily, none of us is given one single vote that we have to choose to apply to the most important issue. Luckily, I can choose to help the refugees in Sudan AND vote in favor of equal rights for homosexuals. Is same-sex marriage the most important issue facing the United States right now? No. It’s not even the most important issue to me. However, it’s the one I’m most knowledgeable about and the one that affects me most directly, so I will take the time to speak out about it and try and educate people to know exactly what it is they’re voting against.
All the time and effort it takes is to listen to what people are saying and try to understand it, and then take a second to make the correct choice on the ballot when you’re in the voting booth. It’s not that hard.
Because as you say, there are a hell of a lot of other issues than just sexual orientation. Why on Earth would I want to leave the United States of America just because I like men? Why should all the homos have to keep to their own country? And let the bigots keep America to themselves?
You said you don’t think gay men should have to hide it, but this is crucial, and it took a long time for me to understand so it bears repeating: No one should have to mask their sexual orientation. Because it just simply isn’t a big deal, and should matter to absolutely no one other than the consenting adults involved.
Yes, sexual orientation is much easier to mask. I’ve found out that in the 10 years I’ve lived here, not a single one of my friends suspected that I was gay. So I can pass for straight and make people like me! I win, right? Wrong. It was one horrible fucking decade. Constantly feeling like you’ve got a big neon sign over your head that reads “FAG.” Being paranoid in every single conversation with your closest friends that you’ll slip up and say the wrong thing and everyone will find out and hate you. Knowing that people would say that I brought all that loneliness and desperation and paranoia on myself because I could just stop being gay if I tried hard enough or prayed hard enough or just suppressed it far down enough. Convincing myself that all of that was true, and the only reason I hadn’t beaten it was because I had failed somehow, so I just had to try harder.
Being closeted sucks. Is it as bad as being beaten, or tortured, or murdered, or even being denied the right to vote? Hardly. But I still wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And it fucking kills me to think of someone else having to go through all that just because of a bunch of strangers’ “personal and religious beliefs.”
You’d have to ask your hospital what its visitation policy is. I really couldn’t tell you.
I refer you to Siege’s post above. My understanding is that in many medical situations, it may be necessary to restrict visitation, and when that happens, it can end up bio or legal family only.
Duffer, that engineer I mentioned is picking me up for lunch. I’ll give you the link this evening!
CJ
That’s funny; you’re like the fourth person who’s told me that. Here I thought the whole purpose of coming out was to stop the self-loathing slut phase and finally have a stable and loving relationship with some permanence and that I didn’t have to be ashamed of.
I’m always getting this stuff wrong. Human bodies really should come with instruction manuals.
Well, I have. I frequently disagree with Mockingbird, but I have definitely seen him deliver thoughtful and well-reasoned posts on a subject when it was necessary.
And I can imagine that after years of seeing your statements completely dismissed because you didn’t word it politely enough, or because you’re acting only out of self-interest, or because you’re part of some hidden agenda, or just because someone doesn’t care enough to pay attention to your problem, then it might seem that the best recourse is just to say “fuck it.” Go in, say what’s on your mind and figure why should I give a damn about hurting anyone else’s feelings when they obviously don’t give a damn about mine?
No reason you can’t be both. I’ve been doing it for over a year. 
“Self-loathing slut” is one of two options for the closet, the other being “timid celibate” (my choice); and “stable and loving permanent relation” can alternate with “non-self-loathing slut who knows what he’s doing”.
What’s self-losathiong about having sex? Thr slut phase generally comes when a closet case finally comes out, and then realizes: “Hey, I’m cute and guys want me, whee!” Think of it as “a kid in a candy store” syndrome. Self loathing has nothing to do with the frequency of sex you–you can be happy or self-loathing whether you stay virginal or are having it off in a back room with 3 guys at once.
A stable and loving relationship will come when you are ready for it. Work on yourself, be the boyfriend to yourself you want to have, and you will attract the right guy.
Nothing wrong with venting as long as you recognise that’s what you’re doing.