My fiance has this extremely bad habit of attempting to grab my boobs in public, sneakily. So in retaliation, I usually do a quick butt grab or, even worse, pat his nether regions quickly. One of these days we’re going to get caught. Other than that, we are SO not into PDAs - I won’t do much more than a quick peck in public. It’s just not me.
That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with nuzzling and a little PDA from either gay or straight. I think it’s cute. When I’d catch my roomie sneaking a long kiss from his boyfriend, they’d usually get an ‘awwww’ from me (of course, they’d view it as sarcasm and give me the finger).
Argh. I meant to add something to MrVisible in there. I am so sorry your nephew has to go through this. It’s heartbreaking to think a kid can’t be who he is without fear of harm. I really hope this works out for him. He’ll be in my thoughts. And he’ll always have a safe haven in Ohio.
mutters forcefullyI won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread! I won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread! I won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread! I won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread! I won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread! I won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread! I won’t link to the PDA in the restroom thread!/mutters forcefully
My deepest sympathies, MrVisible to you and your nephew.
Hate is ugly. It is blind to social status, to age and nationality, to skin color and intelligence. Hate is deaf to all pleas for reprieve. It simply does one thing, and that is tear people down. It breaks people down mentally, it breaks them down physically.
I’m bisexual, and while I freely say that here, I was closeted up until midway through last year, very deeply so. I finally told one of my closest friends and worked from there. One of the people I thought I could trust had obviously misled me, and seemingly overnight, everyone at school new.
I was lucky. I live in a relatively liberal town. Most people ended up apathetic. Some didn’t: a select few are very supportive of me, and others are decidely unsupportive.
I was at a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting after school today. Much of the meeting was spent trying to comfort a friend, who had overheard a teacher referring to her as a dyke.
Hate builds upon itself in someones mind, too. The more times someone is called a faggot or dyke, the more it hurts, like a cancer, spreading throughout the mind. Many people, such as myself, are lucky. I have a safe haven, I have a very strong circle of support. I have an older cousin, who I adore and truly view as a role model, who is openly gay. He’s been a shoulder to me many times, someone to simply sit and listen and assure me I’m not a freak; that some people are simply mean and intolerant.
Suicide rates for teens of alternate sexualities are often said to be higher than that of straight teens. In my own experience, depression occurs much more in GLBT teens than straight ones.
No one is asking anyone to accept homosexuality. No one is forcing an alternative lifestyle on anyone. No one I know is trying to force people into GSA meetings, or trying to ‘convert’ people. I am attracted to males and females alike; if a female is straight, that will pretty much kill the attraction.
The only thing your average non-straight person wants is tolerance. Tolerate our existance. If that is an ‘agenda’, fine, we have an agenda. We ask you to not scream at us that we’re going to hell, that we are allowed to mind our own business and you mind yours. Allow us the right of marriage. Tolerate us to the point where we are equals within the law and in polite society. Say what you want in private, if you must. But keep your private thoughts private. Tolerate us.
I’m sorry, this seems to have turned into a semi-hijack. MrVisible, please, give your nephew my deepest sympathies. And please, for me, just tell him that he’s not out there alone.
My above post was a parody, but it was not “hateful” or “trolling” at all. I knew it would draw ire from one of the liberal monitors, but I was trying to make a point.
The original poster is all afraid of (his-her?) gay nephew going to a small town in Nebraska, thinking that this kid will get his ass kicked the moment he’s there or tells anyone that he is gay? I doubt that many people there are going to care one way or the other about his sexual issues.
The OP mentions “small town” and “Nebraska”, and to me, these are just code words for white, conservative, and Christian. To the OP, a person can be beat up, harrassed or abused anywhere in the world. So can everyone else, because we all have our biases and prejuduce. Your nephew could get “gay-bashed” anywhere, in New York, the south, or even parts of San Francisco. To come here and state that because this kid is going to Nebraska is an insult to Nebraskans.
I think many of us, including our liberal friends think all homosexuals (especially men) are weak, and feminine. I have had gay friends in the past, and I knew one man who was in the US Marine Corps, very patriotic and a basic jarhead. If you called him a faggot or queer, you may get your ass kicked. Please state criminal files to me about how many homosexuals have been “bashed” for being gay. Very few if any in a given year. Matt Sheppard was robbed by two thugs. Robbery was the motive, not his homosexuality.
Lastly, OP, if you are so afraid of these mad homo-killin’ Nazi corn farmers, there are support groups out there. There are two large cities (Omaha and Lincoln) that I’m sure have GLAAD services. I bet you that in Lincoln, where the University of Nebraska is, he can find a gay/lesbian group through the campus.
yes, they beat him cause they didn’t get enough money!
:rolleyes:
this is why I hope my son won’t turn out to be gay.
Not because of God, but the prejudice Still.
Blacks no longer get beaten up (as often) because of what they are, methinks we need a Gay Panthers to put some fear into em.
It worked with the Black Panthers.
Matthew Sheppard was beaten to within a millimeter of his life, literally crucified on a barbed-wire fence, and left to die in the cold and dark. That level of horrific inhumanity was not motivated by robbery. Even one of the defendants did not argue at trial that the motive was robbery; to the contrary, he attempted (unsuccessfully) to introduce a formal defense of “homosexual rage” (rage brought about in a straight man by being hit on by another man, as if the lot of you are entirely lacking in self-control). When that was not allowed, his attorneys continued to obliquely allude to Matthew Sheppard’s homosexuality, their clients’ “fear” of gays, and the “fact” that Matthew allegedly made a pass at one of them in the truck (horrors!).
Read one of a zillion articles on the incident here, and educate yourself.
The point being that you clearly do not understand the attitudes that are prevalent, and further, tha you did not understand the Original Post, where MrVisible makes it clear that his nephew is not merely apprehensive about a town where people might not accept him, but that:
He’s not prejudiced against small-town folk, but some of them are againt him. But you continue:
See above. They apparently care enough to have done something to him that has made him so afraid and insecure that he’s seriously thinking about moving away to be safe, or maybe just to have peace from torment.
Because, of course, this kid and his uncle are clearly just trying to show, in a roundabout way, how prejudiced they are against white, conservative christians. You know, the good people. This whole thread is about slandering the normals, and has nothing to do with any actual distress that a young man may be in.
No, to state that it has happened in Nebraska is an insult to the Nebraskans who did this to the boy, and to all the people who hold attitudes and mores that justify doing whatever they did, or allowing whatever was done, or creating the conditions where such attitudes can go unchallenged.
And, like you said, maybe this is a town where everyone is very conservative, and so have taught their kids a very negative view of homosexuality. Nah, conservative-minded people wouldn’t do that. And so a town full of conservative thinkers would never be unaccepting of a young gay man.
Or, like you said, maybe this is a town with a very strong local christian culture. And maybe they’re the kind of christians, some of them, who think gays are all going to burn in hell. Nah, chirstians wouldn’t think that.
And in either of these cases you think MrVisible is ‘coding’ for, it’s highly unlikely that youth who’ve grown up with these views would ever act violently on them, right? Because teenagers, and people in general, never get violent against groups of people that they think are bad.
And of course, either or both of those cases don’t matter, now do they? Becasue it already happened. Something has shown the kid that him and his sexuality aren’t welcome. Perhaps violently, or perhaps just through very clear exclusion and social censure. Like it wasn’t hard enough being a teenager without those.
Good for him. You’re right, they don’t fit the stereotypes. Including the ‘sinner’ stereotype, or the ‘too wrapped up in their homosexuality to get over their irrational fear of the good, harmless people of smalltown America’ stereotype.
“In 1995, a University of Ottawa professor estimated there were about 60,000 hate-related incidents that year, including graffiti, gay-bashing, assault and murder” Look here.
The best one I’ve seen is at one of our dopers’ websites. But www.metrodemontreal.com/matt seems to be down right now. When it’s up, I’ll give you a link to the author’s memorial page, where he lists names and references for dozens of people assaulted or murdered for their sexuality, or even their perceived sexuality.
Yup. Not even 2,000 were reported by agencies in the US last year. Hardly worth mentioning. I mean, what’s two thousand injured fags? And it’s not like any would keep quiet about it, so I’m sure every last one is accounted for there.
“Aaron McKinney and Russell A. Henderson entered a Laramie Wyoming bar which was known as a place where homosexuals often hung out. The two men left the bar with the company of Matthew Shepherd, who they drove to an open field. After being tied to a fence and beaten within an inch of his life, he was left for dead in the near freezing temperatures. The two men had also stolen his wallet and shoes”
Right. They went into the bar, then lured him out into the boondocks and tied him to a fence to get his wallet.
Even if he did live in those towns, he may not be able to get there easily. Or, maybe he can walk there, but ‘the incident’ in the OP has led him to believe that he can’t go to obviously gay places alone without fear of being followed home and assaulted when he leaves.
But no, that’s paranoia. That doesn’t really happen, because small-town Americans are good, white, conservative, christian people. Gaybashing happens hardly at all in the real world. grady, I think you’ve at best misread what is going on here, and possibly have a misplaced loyalty to the values and residents of rural America. You appear to grossly misunderstand the hassle that it is to be a young gay person, faced with the choice of living in a bottle looking out at the world, or putting up with assault, fear, taunts, social censure, or simply (and almost ineviatbly) misunderstanding of what you are by most of the people you meet.
Something has happened to the young man in the OP. MrVisible’s afraid to say what, lest he give away his nephew’s identity. But whether he was beat up by a group of classmates, outed in front of his peers and then laughed at by the crowd, subjected to suggestive insults from the kids at school, struck by a rock thrown through his window, threatened by the school bully, or something worse, he doesn’t feel safe.
So much so that he thinks he has to get away from these people, either to protect his body or to protect his sanity. Either to keep from having his skin hardened by scar tissue, or his heart hardened by daily hatred from his former friends.
Hey, Wolfstu, anything in particular you want on your shrine? So far, I’ve got the past couple of posts of yours, engraved in steel, and a few candles and some incense. Oh, and some gummi bears.
I suggest you lurk a little more before you continue posting here. I’ve noticed your posts in various threads over the past couple days and they SCREAM, of extreme ignorance at best and what lynn accused you of at worst.
You’re going to have a very short tenure here if you keep this shit up.
lezlers, tarry not on the evanescent grady. Let us bask in the glow that is wolfstu.
Honestly, wolfstu, exemplary posts. You’ve really helped spruce up the Pit. Of course, you must feel quite alone: a solitary Stick-Up in the Cubs’ Locker Room comes to mind.
MrVisible I’m struggling with what to say, beyond I wish your nephew the best, that he may grow up without coming to too much harm from the thugs, lackwits and sadists in the world. I grew up in one of those kinds of places where it was safer to get out before you came out, and it makes me beyond angry that anyone is still facing that kind of violent prejudice. I wish that the bigots who were motivated to lash out from hate and fear were the ones facing ridicule, not the people just trying to live their lives.
I like my PDA. It’s terribly useful… got a little keyboard for it and everything…
