Well, as a non-flamboyant gay I sometimes DO get sort of embarassed that many people think the drag queen in a feather boa is representative of all of us. But then again, I would cut off my right arm before I betray my belief that people must respect differences, and not persecute those who may seem strange or off-beat, as long as they aren’t hurting you or interefering with your rights.
You think the majority of young, heterosexual American males “get it” and are perfectly comfortable with man on man snogging in their presence? Good luck with that fascinating hypothesis.
There are lots of people across the heterosexual demographic who are 100% on board with gay rights but are somewhat uneasy with gay men getting physical with each other. It does not make them bigots.
:rolleyes:
First of all, I said generation. The homophobic young men in America are more than outgunned by the non-homophobic young women. And, yes, when removed from situations where they feel societal pressure to assert their heterosexuality, most of the time, I find them to be perfectly progressive. Anyway, the difference between straight and gay is about 6 beers.
I know a lot of them who are, actually. And pretty indisputably the onus is on the rest of them to learn to be comfortable with it. Normalizing it by showing it on TV and not hiding who we are in public seems to me like the most sensible way to help the rest of these young heterosexual American males improve themselves.
I think the majority of people who are okay with gay rights are not particularly distressed by the sight of two men kissing. And since youth is directly correlated with acceptance of gay rights, it seems likely that young, heterosexual Americans in general are probably pretty comfortable with two guys kissing in their presence.
I think most people are annoyed by excessive tongue wrestling in public, period. In the case of the ad, it was a man greeting his boyfriend who had been away at war. Obviously, you’d see some more enthusiastic displays.
Most of the time, gay or straight, people are usually pretty much hold hands, simple kiss. I think we’ve all yelled, (or at least thought), “Get a room!” at a straight couple.
Haha!!! Wow. I read through this entire thread before watching the video, and I am insanely aghast that anyone could even be remotely grossed out by this. This wasn’t even heavy making out. In fact, it wasn’t even making out at all. It was 2 kisses, possibly without even any tongue. After a guy comes home from war. And his boyfriend proposes to him.
If anything like that happened to anyone here, I think you’d see a LOT more passionate kissing that what we saw in that ad.
If that grossed you out, then… I feel sorry for you! I know you can’t help it, which is why I feel sorry for you. I hope stuff like that won’t continue to gross you out for your whole lives.
To be fair here, the ire over the burkas and hijabs is their perception that the women wearing them aren’t allowed a choice thereby subjecting them to a lesser station below men, a situation then exists of which a ‘free society’ is complicit in oppression.
And perhaps they have a point.
‘Misunderstanding’ would be the harshest accusation you can level at most of them.
For me, it wasn’t so much that I was convinced by arguments for it. I was convinced by the weakness of arguments against it. That, and a gradual realization as I grew up that gay people weren’t icky.
I’m not entirely sure, but I think I had already come to that realization before I joined the Dope. Not entirely certain, though.
I don’t think anyone in the thread has been grossed out. tdn appears to have been mildly uncomfortable about it.
It’s not even the only kind of gay man you see on Glee. That particular show has two gay teen boys in the main cast, and two others who were significant recurring characters. A major character is also the daughter of a gay couple, although her dads (played by Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes Mitchell) have only appeared onscreen a couple of times.
Bit of a spoiler, but one of those meathead jocks on Glee is gay. One of the slutty cheerleaders was also a closet case who was sleeping with guys primarily to keep people from guessing the truth about her.FWIW Glee is also one of the few shows to regularly feature non-white LGBT characters. Although the show has plenty of problems, lack of diversity of LGBT characters isn’t really one of them.
Perhaps you missed all of astro’s [del]concern trolling[/del] posts.
But are you female?
The reason I ask is, it dawned on me the other day that I find it kind of ‘gross’ whenever people I don’t find attractive kiss. This advert doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable per se, but I do have a similar internal reaction to others when two guys kiss. Two girls kissing on the other hand would almost always not create this reaction.
I’ve seen heterosexual couples kiss in public where I’ve been very much grossed out, far more so than my reaction to this video. I realised this is because those particular couples weren’t exactly what you’d call attractive, very much the opposite. Is that bad? Maybe it is, but it’s not like I can control those reactions. Regardless, I’m sure my feelings have nothing to do with the fact that they’re gay. And I definitely support this video.
Yeah, I admitted a bit further up that I was wrong about Glee.
I meant astro, not tdn. Mea culpa.
Not necessarily. I don’t like watching men kiss each other; but then, I don’t like watching men kiss women or puppies either. There’s just something about men kissing that bugs me; gay porn with close ups of anal sex gets a shrug, but kissing gets a “yuck”. Why? I’ve no idea.
If that really is the reason for the ire over seeing women wear traditional head coverings, then it is stereotyping a group of people, in that many Muslim women do so by choice. It is also arrogant and ignorant to assume to know the reason a woman wears a burka or hijab, just as it is arrogant and ignorant to assume that all gay men are effeminate.
So my statement of support for gay rights, while at the same time expressing that I was not all that personally comfortable watching two men share soulful kisses was “trolling”. I had no idea that dilemma would give you such a case of the vapors. Sorry about that.
It’s good to know where you set the bar for people being able to support gay rights or discuss issues openly and honestly. Best of luck with that position.
Actually, it was the part where you repeatedly argued that we shouldn’t depict gay people doing normal things in TV commercials and pretended that it was for our benefit because you knew best. That was the part that constituted concern trolling.
Wow…did I do that with respect to the OP’s question? Let’s see
Initial comment
.
and then
Yeah… wow - I see now I was really being brutally oppressive. Those over the top comments about how the commercials might have some difficultly re heterosexual audience reactions to the PDA were waaay out of bounds.
You spoke out against a commercial whose content should be completely unremarkable, attempted to couch what you said in faux concern for gay rights, and talked down to gay people by explaining how straight people react to us, as though we aren’t all much more familiar with that topic than you are.
So the standard you set for yourself is not being “brutally oppressive”, then.
I set a higher standard than that for myself. Since you’re congratulating yourself on meeting that low standard, I don’t think we’re going to reach a meeting of minds on this point.
If those same people shit their pants every time they saw Amish women or Hasidic Jewish women in their traditional wear you’d have a point, but with rare exceptions they don’t.
No, bigotry is still bigotry and it’s especially hypocritical coming from people claiming that women should be allowed to choose what they want to wear.
FWIW, I’m not talking about Afghanistan or the handful of Muslim countries where such outfits are proscribed by law(which are outnumbered by states where they are actually prohibitted by law).