Can you show me where I made this claim. Other posters might assume from the phrase “keep repeating” that I keep repeating it. To the contrary, I have not made that claim even once. I am beginning to suspect that you are misrepresenting my words deliberately.
Yes, it’s terrible when people misrepresent others’ words deliberately. People shouldn’t do that.
I inferred from this…
…that there was a different kind of debate that was better than the one that I am using.
If I was mistaken in that inference, I’ll be happy to be corrected.
On the other hand, I don’t think that this:
is a fair restatement of this:
Note that this was NOT an inference. Babale said it was “literally what you said”. That was literally untrue.
One of these things is not like the other.
Another thing that is not inference:
Putting Babale’s words in a quote box with my byline on it to make it seem that I had said it. That was dishonest.
That’s entirely because you didn’t quote that bit properly in your own post (you used blockquote rather than quote). That’s not dishonesty, that’s just compounded user error - you used blockquote rather than attributed quoting, which is not what blockquote is meant for, and they just likely quoted your post directly using Discourse’s lovely highlight functionality, and the attribution to you got automatically tagged on.
Now, sure, they should have more strenuously previewed.
But regardless, you are just inferring nefarious intent. The very thing you decry in others. Something about beams and splinters comes to mind.
Official Warning and Thread Ban for kevlaw.
Still finding clever ways to call other posters liars and still taking the thread off-topic. The accumulation of your posts in this thread are problematic. But more importantly you specifically ignored the modnote addressed to you.
If you return to this thread expect a suspension. There is no style points for clever in accusing other posters of lying.
Never mind, I just saw the thread ban
I wasn’t ever in the “marriage is by definition between a man and a woman, so just use a different word” camp, but I was (and in some cases, still am) in the camp of “stop trying to change the language for political reasons, work to change reality instead”.
It comes down to how entrenched one is with a given language association, which in turn is largely based on one’s age and culture growing up. Because the more “forced” (unnatural) a language change is, the more it feels externally forced - an imposition.
I have no particularly strong association with the word “marriage” except as “two adults forming a lifelong pair bond with legal/social benefits and penalties thereof”; inasmuch as they’re usually between a man and a woman, that’s just because that’s the most common configuration for people pairing off.
But if I had been raised that “marriage is one of these enumerated sacraments of the Church”, and said Church is very clear that it is only done between a man and a woman, I could see being unbigoted/tolerant enough to be perfectly comfortable with same-sex couples “pair bonding” and conferring the same “benefits and penalties thereof” to them, yet still have an attitude of “But why call it marriage, is it just to piss us off who consider it a sacrament between a man and a woman?”
In my case, the de-genderization of words is something I’ve had to get comfortable with.
In the past 15-20 years for various gendered profession terms to become gender-neutral, either by adopting a third term (“waiter/waitress” => “server”, “fireman/woman?” => “firefighter”), or by using the formerly male term as the universal one (a “Best Actor” award going to a woman as well as a man).
This felt forced to me at first, but then I saw how much overt (never mind unconscious) sexism is at work in the workplace, and how very sexist it felt to see older “woman” versions of professional names used (“aviatrix”, “doctress”, “lawyeress” => “women generally aren’t pilots, doctors, or lawyers, so let’s tag this one so you are forewarned and can, er, act accordingly”). So now I’m on board.
Then there is the increasing use of de-gendered terms for personal relationships - for example, using the term “partner” instead of “husband/wife” or “boyfriend/girlfriend”. This bothers me because after a lifetime of referring to my “partner” first as my “girlfriend” and then as my “wife”, it feels like referring to her as my “partner” would be to de-sex HER in some way; conversely if she were to start regularly referring to me as her “partner” out of nowhere, I’d feel demoted to a legal designation.
But, I do understand the point that if using the term “partner” is going to stop being code for a same-sex partner then opposite-sex pairs have to adopt its use as well, and that one SHOULD be able to refer to one’s partner without having to “come out” in that way to strangers without an explicit decision to do so. Because our society still has many places and people where a SSR person might be unwilling to do so.
So I am in the middle position of, you know, I am not going to force myself to change how I speak - but I no longer assume use of “partner” is code for a SSR, nor internally eye-rolling when a known M/F pair refers to their “partner”.
Then there are the “de-genderizing” efforts that I still find eye-rolling. For example, the term “Latinx” that is meant to be a “gender and non-binary inclusive” term for Latin Americans. It’s ugly because it’s not natural in the language itself - I know of no Spanish speakers who use it, at least not while speaking Spanish. I have seen/heard some use it, but only when communicating in English about Hispanics as a socio-political group in the USA, and when they’ve “got their progressive hat on”. It feels very much like a “woke English speakers decided the term Latino is inherently sexist because that’s the masculine form of the word” without understanding that in an inflected language, “gender” isn’t (always) the same thing as the “-ess/-ette” thing in English.
The version I’ve heard that’s most appealing to me (for the minuscule bit that’s worth) is “Latine,” which is natural and pronounceable in Spanish. The “-x” ending is well-intentioned, but wasn’t created by someone with a flair for language, IMO. It’s the Esperanto of gender-neutral Spanish terminology.
Let’s just use a Hypothetical Catholic as our example here, but obviously this argument can be applied to any faith.
Fine, HC is upset about the word “marriage”, which means something sacred and specific, being applied to a man and another man.
Is HC also upset that Lutherens, Jews, Muslims and (Gasp!) Atheists are getting married? After all, they could all spit on the catholic’s “sacrament”. They have their own sacraments, which he might find sacrilegious, or no sacrament at all!
The state recognizes all of those as marriages, no problem. Why is that OK, but the state (NOT his church, which also doesn’t recognize the Jewish or Atheist marriage, but the STATE) can’t recognize gay marriage?
The fact that our Hypothetical Catholic takes different stances on a Jewish man marrying an atheist woman in a secular ceremony, and a man marrying another man in a secular ceremony, when neither affect his church or his marriage in any way - that betrays HC’s homophobia.
I’ve never flirted with a woman basically for just the reasons you’ve said.
I was born in 1961 and I feel that I am not only a product of my upbringing but a product of the times I lived in. I honestly feel that the fact that I’m not violently anti gay to be little short of a miracle.
In the Michael Lewis book “The Big Short,” later in the book the Tuohys are helping Michael Oher graduate high school by getting him some tutoring, and they happen to hire some tutors (or maybe it was a school?) that were, as it happened, Mormons. the Tuohys are fundamentalist Baptists. One of them told Lewis, totally matter of factly, “They’re really nice people. It’s too bad they’re all going to hell.”
The “nice person, but going to hell” thing isn’t a fringe belief. It’s very common.
I was born in 1963. It’s not that difficult to avoid being violently anti-gay.
Victim shaming seems to be really popular now a days, but did you ever take into account the victims feelings? Both of the times I was Sexually Harassed I broke down into tears afterwards.
I’ve had it leveled at me by a very sweet, older matronly lady of my past acquaintance. She was very sad about my atheism and while she thought I was a “very good person”, she was even more sad that an upstanding person like myself was going to hell. I thanked her kindly for her concern 
.
On the other hand I had a JW co-worker who kindly told me not to worry because Jehovah’s Witness don’t believe in hell.
I’m hoping they at least cancel each other out. 
If I’m following your line of logic, on two separate occasions a (presumably gay) man flirted with you, which you found a very upsetting experience each time, so much so that you believe both men to be “trolls” (not sure what that means in this context, usually in gay circles a troll is a ugly old person, or online it means a person who is speaking or acting insincerely to get a reaction; perhaps you have your own meaning). And so, because of those experiences, you believe you deserve credit for not being violently anti-gay. Have I got that right?
In this thread you only mentioned flirting, which isn’t sexual harassment. It can be a component of harassment but you haven’t mentioned it until now. How would you expect another poster to know what you were talking about?
I’m certainly sympathetic to you if you were sexually harassed. There’s no excuse for that. But presumably the sexual orientation of the harasser is mostly irrelevant to the crime. If women sexually harassed you would you become violently misogynistic?
Yes, I do. Blame me if you must but these guys were bullies plain and simple. If the fact that I feel somewhat bigoted due to these experiences bothers you then so be it.
I was unaware that there was some kind of official meaning to the word troll so I apologize for using it wrong.
BTW I just want to state for the record that I don’t believe there’s any non bigoted reason to be anti gay or anti gay marriage.
Dude, I was literally raped by men, more than once, and I’m not the least bit bigoted because of it. Blaming any bigotry you may have on your mild negative flirting experiences is a cop-out.
There’s two takes on it:
- “It’s too bad you’re going to hell. You should give yourself to Jesus.” This is a very common take, and not particularly interesting.
- “It’s too bad you’re going to hell. I cannot understand why a loving God would send a good person to hell.” This is the take of someone experiencing a religious crisis and hopefully leaving their evil-deity-worship behind, and is a lot more interesting to me.
Folks in the first category don’t get much of a pass from me.