That’s right, Gaudere - the mere existence of homosexuality (and, presumably, anyone different than Tarkus) is offensive and forced upon him. How he has managed to survive such slings and arrows this long I’ll never know, but I salute him!
Esprix
So, you have a problem with your child finding out that other people in the world live differently than you? Why in the world do you let them leave your house? burn your TV, give your computer away, do not let the real world enter your Utopia.
Ohhhh, c’mon now - don’t get your panties in a bunch!
Let’s all just calm down and address the question at hand. Let’s recap. The posted thread was, “Is it ok to be homophobic?”
I say, yes it is.
And for the record Kirkland, it isn’t hateful bigotry. It may be bigotry, but it isn’t hateful. I wouldn’t hate you because you’re gay. I may hate you because of your attitude but, certainly not just because you’re gay.
And another thing “Gay-bashing Monster”? I’ve never bashed a gay in my life.
There are at least two questions there. “Am I allowed to be homophobic?” Sure, go right ahead. “Is it a good idea to be homophobic?” I would say no, and it continues to surprise me that anyone might disagree.
I’m gay, and I defend Tarkus’s right to be homophobic. He’s allowed to have opinions that dissent from the majority. Mind you, I think he’s dead wrong, but that’s his right.
Do I approve of homophobia? Of course not, but the way to combat antigay bias is to persuade, not brainwash or call names.
We need to show people like ** Tarkus** that gays are ordinary folk. We pay taxes, we support our communities, and we throw fabulous parties! We can show him by kind words and acting in a stand-up fashion that his ideas about us are mistaken. Calling him “homophobe” and “gaybasher” will only intensify his prejudices.
Really, Tarkus is punishing himself by not getting to know good folks like Esprix or Matt. If he will take the time to learn, he might find that gay folk are not what he imagines.
Ah, but Tarkus, while nobody (except maybe Kirk) is condemning your right to have whatever opinions you want within your own mind, you have almost immediately brought to the table – the table we all share – some propositions that by a lot of people’s standards impinge on their rights. Like the kid being brought up by a gay couple and how the idea that his parents are treating him in much the same way as you and your wife treat yours might give your kid the to-you-destructive idea that it’s OK for two people to form a family and raise a kid, regardless of their own sexes. Like what I presume is intended as your stance against gay marriage in the Adam and Eve reference (by the way, name just one of their daughters!).
“I’ve never bashed a gay in my life!”?? You may not have committed a physical assault, but right here in this thread you’ve constructively bashed some in your own hypothetical – the two people trying to raise a child whom your child will immediately tell, after you’ve indoctrinated him into your ideas of right and wrong, that his parents are evil and should never be allowed to have children. Of course, since in your view they are committing evil and putting brussels sprouts on your table, that’s OK.
Nice dodge, Tarkus - you’re starting to sound like Wildest Bill. If you can’t handle getting called on saying stupid, ignorant things then don’t say them in the first place.
Esprix
Tarkus is right. He’s trying not to get pulled into this Gay is good or bad thing. If we want to change directions and start with that, I’m in. There’s too many threads addressing the same shit. This thread is about whether it’s ok to be homophobic. That’s ALL it’s about. Havn’t heard from Power Station though. It’s not about brussel sprouts or aspargus or children of gays OR the bible.
If we’re talking about America, people have died to give us our right to have our free speech and give our opinion about anyone, including gays.
So, is it ok to be homophic, I say sure.
Is it a GOOD thing. I don’t know. I mean, I’m not going to gather people up and go door to door and say “Hey what about them gays?” That would be careing too much. You want to have a phobia, have a phobia. I don’t care.
While its not “wrong” to have homophobic beliefs (just incredibly stupid and indicative of a shallow intellect and poor character), no one has the right to take such beliefs and use them as justification for denying gays equal rights (right to adopt, right to serve in military, right to have relationships recognized by law) is no different than the racist “second class” citizens Southern whites wanted to turn American blacks into throughout the first half of the 20th Century.
One can only hope and pray for a day in the future when people spit on homophobes, figuratively or whatever, in the same way we now do racists.
Well, that’s not entirely what it’s about. It’s also about issues like sodomy laws and discrimination laws and gay marriage and gay adoption and gay families–issues which are brought into the debate as much by the one side as the other. (Said Tarkus “If an adopted child of homosexual parents befriends a child of mine on the playground or at school, no harm done right?”)
There are no Thought Police. There can be no possible consequences for what people think inside their own skulls. (Except for whatever unhappiness they may cause themselves by those thoughts.) There are no Speech Police either, at least not in my country–freedom of speech is a fundamental right in the U.S.–but when we exercise that right, we have to expect that others may exercise their right of freedom of speech in response.
You have enslaved a beagle for your own megalomaniacal self aggrandizement? That’s absolutely disgusting. People who would allow a defenseless dog to live in a state of servitude and inequality have no business processing oxygen. I HATE YOU KIRK! Now hold me…
PS- Just so you’ll know, I’m not a beagle.
Personally I think people who are born with both sex organs should go screw themselves.
PS- I’m not a hermaphrodite (though I do own a herm).
As someone who’s supported gay rights longer than you’ve been alive (think it’s rough now? try coming out in 1970’s Alabama), I have to take issue with that sentence. Substitute the words “child molesters”/“pedophilic” for “homosexuals”/“gay” and you’ll see what I mean.
Personally I feel that if there is a God it’s long past the time the court appointed a conservator as I really don’t think he knows what he wants anymore.
You’d be surprised how many gays would argue with you. Most famously, perhaps, is one of the world’s few openly gay closet cases, Gore Vidal, who attests that an act, not a person, is homosexual. Semantically speaking he’s right, but we’ve long moved past the semantic origins.
However, this brings up a point that takes me to a peeve mentioned earlier in this show: the issue of polygamy v. homosexual. It irritates me when opponents of gay marriage bring up the “well if we legalize gay unions, what’s next? Polygamy?” (We won’t even go into the goat that’s always waiting just around the corner in these debates.)
“Homosexual” is an orientation. “Polygamy” is a lifestyle. You can die a 103 year old virgin and be homosexual, but you have to actually unite ceremonially with multiple partners to be a polygamist. One does not hit puberty with the strongest drive psyche ordering them to enter into a menage-a-X- while some would still argue that homosexuality is a choice, polygamy is by definition a choice.
Now to some of course polgyamy is a divine mandate. They’re wrong of course, but even if they weren’t, they still have a choice of whether or not to obey. Gays don’t have that option.
That said, frankly I have no problem with the legalization of polygamy so long as all partners are consentual and of age. The main reason I would vote to keep it illegal is that, as it is practiced, it usually involves teenaged girls who themselves grew up in polygamous households and are twenty-five years old with no employable skills and six children before it really occurs to them this isn’t the only way to live a life. If a 32 year old psychotherapist wanted to enter a union with two thirty-something dentists I’d have no problem with it, though I would not require their employer to provide healthcare coverage as it would get damned expensive really quick, and I don’t want to see them having sex with a pig while unbathed and stinky in a library.
PS- I’m not a polygamist or a stinky pig in a library
Enslaved, huh? 
My 13-year old baby beagle princess, who sadly lives with my family in Houston, since she needs to be with the other dog, is anything but. If anything, we’re the slaves. We bring the food bowl to her, lead her out the door when she wants to go out, scratch her when she demands to be scratched. She went blind a few years ago, but still gets around quite well. She’s so cute. Beagles are quite good at training their humans. 
When she figured out where the pantry was where the dog treats were stored, she would go and paw the door stopper spring, until we would come over and give her treats. Then she knocked it off. So now she just goes over there and howls.
**
Sadly, few are. Truly the highest form of evolved life, the beagle.
Those are poor analogies. Child molestation is solely an act. A person who is a child molestor is someone who abuses children. If he never abuses children, then he’s not a child molestor. Someone who is gay is gay even if they never have sex.
And as for pedophilia, doesn’t that require Holy Orders?
Okay. Sorry. I’m Catholic, so I can get away with that, right?
Pedophilia is the same way. Its an action. Specifically an action against a minor.
Homosexuality does not entail the mistreatment of minors, nor is it simply something one does, such as pedophilia or child molestation, but something one is.
Read Leviticus. He wants us to stone children who talk back.
Kirk
When I was a kid I used to talk back to my father when I was stoned. I think the semantic confusion allowed me to get off on a technicality. (There are worse things to get off on; Jim Nabors comes to mind.)
Thank you for confessing. It makes things so much easier. I’ll contact your local Baptist church, and have them send a Stoning Squad over first thing tomorrow.
Actually, just to clarify, pedophila and child molestation is RAPE; sex between two of-age consenting adults is not. Ergo, homosexuality and pedophila are not, in any conceivable way, comparable.
It just bugs the shit out of me whenever the two are mentioned in the same thread, even if they’re not related. Thank you.
Esprix
[tangent not worth starting a new thread for]OK, I’m gonna ask this because I know that we do have a rule about registering names and implying a connection with another messageboard which supports the same aims.
Without in any way meaning to cast aspersions on the poster who has included “snopes” in their user-name, have we actually checked with the Mikkelson’s whether there is any connection? Id we haven’t, wouldn’t we be kinda pissed off if people were going around tacking SDMB onto their user-name on other message boards?[/tangent not worth starting a new thread for]