Fuck you. Seriously. May you discover the joys of anal sex with the front end of a Land Rover.
Why, you ask? On the fourth day of school, you went into an un-lovely and badly worded spiel on why gay relationships are ‘unnatural.’ I tried to put up a coherent argument against you, but was unable to finish a goddamn sentence before being interrupted with something along the lines of “I understand what you’re saying, but…” NO, assmunch, you don’t understand what I’m saying; it’s all in sentence fragments because you refuse to fucking listen!
I really don’t think you understand the possible implications of the discussion you started. I had to make a quick decision between sitting there and listening to my lifestyle, and the lives of many people I love being bashed, or standing up for myself and possibly putting my person in physical danger. This is High School, after all, not a fucking ACLU convention. If I or any of the others in the class arguing on my side get so much as a “fag” in the hallway I’m holding you personally responsible.
I suppose an informed, moderately intelligent opinion was too much to ask for, huh? Stupid me, I can’t believe that I expected such from someone who describes himself as a ‘facilitator.’ That means you tell us to do an assignment in the book, then make unfounded, unsupportable and biased statements about anything that happens to be stuck in your testicle-sized brain, I guess, because that’s what you’ve done so far.
I, for one, am not going to let you be a dick, at least not in my class. I plan to be the least easily intimidated problem student you’ve ever seen. I’m sure we’ll enjoy our semester together.
Please, I beg of you – make some noise. Complain. Go as far up in the chain of command as you have to. Teachers are allowed to hold their opinions but straight-up homophobia directed at students is effed up.
Does your teacher believe this for religious reasons? Because this is one of my pet peeves. I mean, among nonhuman animals there are myriad examples of homosexual behavior, but none of religion. So which is the unnatural act?
(Note that this is only an argument I use against religious homophobes, and isn’t intended as an indictment of religion. Personally, I don’t give a fuck whether something is unnatural. Much of human civilization could be called “unnatural,” if the word refers to behaviors that don’t occur elsewhere in nature. But I don’t see the people who are against homosexuality because of its “unnaturalness” becoming raw meat-eating nudists…)
I wonder what the hell that topic had to do with your class. OK, sexual orientation might have something to do with sociology, though it surely isn’t a fourth-day-of-the-semester sort of topic. All the same, why a high school teacher feels the need to take any sort of affirmative stance on such an issue is unfathomable to me.
In my experience, the only things I ever knew high school teachers to stump for were school bond issues, where their self-interest is plain and they know they won’t have many complaints for being political. A teacher asserting “homosexuality is unnatural” in a sociology class would have been likely to face a great deal of controversy even at my high school…which was located in Springfield, MO, home to the ultra-reactionary pentacostal Christian sect known as the Assembly of God, near the buckle of the bible belt.
I’ve heard this argument countless times, the defense has always been evolution rather than religous. The implied conclusion seems to be that because something is unnatural it is immoral, or undesirable.
I used to think homosexuality was unnatural a long time ago, when I was a religious bigot. Now I realize a lot of heterosexual sex stuff seems to be unnatural, so I came to the conclusion that: as long as it’s enjoyable between consenting adults, then it’s natural.
bongmaster=straight, but I still think this person needs to be reported, especially in High School. Its not like you could have really argued with her and NOT have everyone is the class know you were gay.
Slippery definitions are a major problem here. I’m not sure I buy the argument that homosexual relationships are unnatural. It seems to me that since homosexual sex has existed since before the dawn of recorded history, and amongst members of the animal kingdom other than us, it’s hard to imagine how it can possibly be unnatural.
Nor do I see that taking a stand against this sort of slippery quasi-logic automatically brands you as gay.
Thanks for all of your replies - I wasn’t able to return for awhile, and got delayed because of the ‘crack hamster’ incident as well. Ack. Sorry about that.
I’m hesitant to go to anyone higher up, because of an earlier incident I made a very minor stink about earlier in the year when I was the target of homophobic slurs and physical threats from a couple of other students. I know that one bad incident earlier on doesn’t absolve him of any wrongdoing, but I doubt I would be taken seriously, and I do have a tiny feeling that I should give the guy another chance. If I were one of you, I would probably say the same thing; that he shouldn’t have been allowed to fuck up once, but I doubt I have enough evidence to get him into any trouble that would be worth the effort. There’s a little nucleus of people who agree with me, and we’re all on the lookout for any more of his ridiculous pseudo-logic. I’m forgiving, but not that much so; if anything else happens I will pursue it.
I’m really not sure why my teacher objects to homsexuality. He doesn’t seem to be intelligent enough to articulate it coherently. It might remain forever unknown. Heh.
RexDart, I know where you’re coming from. I live about an hour and a half southwest of Springfield. The fundies are everywhere here. I feel like I’m in a Flannery O’Connor story.
The topic of gay relationships had absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter. Some testosterone-addled dumbass mentioned the ‘g’ word and things spiraled from there. The whole thing started as a result of the teacher ‘facilitating’ himself right out of control of the class.
I’m sure the topic will come up again soon enough, and I’ll be using the points you made. Does anyone have a cite for the homosexual behavior in animals thing?
Okay, my reply didn’t go through last night when the board glitched on me, so I’ll try again.
If you want a book on the subject of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, the one I know of off the top of my head is Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl. I don’t have it (yet), though it’s on my list; my understanding of it is that it’s gigantic and fairly thorough in covering everything from bonobo apes to a species of Indian woodpecker that has never been witnessed by researchers in male/female couplings.
I don’t know how easy it is to find in bookstores; a search on “biological exuberance” should pull it up as the first (probably only) hit on online bookstores, if they have it. (Amazon does.)
I’ve never had this problem with any of my professors. My university has regulations and an advocacy office for this sort of thing, though, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it if a professor launched a homophobic tirade like that.
I did have a professor once waste nearly 2.5 hours “debunking” the theory of evolution. No, I have no idea what this had to do with early 20th-century Canadian fiction, or with that author (Ralph Connor) in particular.
Well, the links provided by Esprix do lead to interesting discussions, as pretty much anything and everything was covered in them. However, it may not be expedient to use reason and facts to debate the teacher in question. Said teacher will probably do one of two things:
A) reject everything you have to say with handwaving assertions of no scientific value whatsoever
B) get angry with you for exposing him as a fool
Neither one of those is a desirable outcome. You may be better off just letting it go, and only objecting when the teacher says something really egregious that can be shot down with a very simple statement of fact. You want to make sure your classmates aren’t turned into morons by accepting your teacher’s blind rhetoric, but you also want to cover your own ass and not get the teacher pissed off at you.
