Read the thread; almost every response has a long-winded “…but I support gay rights and stuff! I’m not a bigot!” disclaimer. Most of the others in this thread acknowledged that; the only dispute seems to be whether it’s irritating or not.
Since when does “most” equal “three”?
Well, you should be.
We’ll rearrange your living rooms.
You’ll be sleeping with the koi. Wearing cement pumps.
But will they be open-toe??
Would you please? Keep in mind the cable TV connection is on the south-southwest side.
Well Freejooky on the first page of the thread (and I had already read most of it), I count six posters who post anything remotely ressembling a disclaimer. Basically I included anyone who said words to the effect of “I don’t have a problem with gay people” regardless of how unlike a disclaimer it read in context.
Now first up you say everyone did it. Now you’re saying most did it and I’m suggesting to you that a minority did it, and the fact you took so much notice says a lot more about you than them.
I am impressed though that you’ve actually started a thread and then returned to it at a later date, did you ever clear up the circumstances involved in your u-turn thread?
Bullshit. The OP of that thread, Priceguy, counted 57 responders near the end of it.
Very few posted anything like a disclaimer. Some went into more detail about their feelings, but there were very few apologetics.
This is the SDMB. People assume you are an OK dude/dudette until you prove differently. PC disclaimers aren’t needed.
Maybe you should get your facts straight before you start a rant?
The only thing I added was that when I said it seemed unnatural, I meant unnatural TO ME, personally. And the only reason I put it there was because in the past, we’ve had people come to blows in the Pit over silly misunderstandings like that.
Even without the [my engaging in] part, in my opinion, isn’t offensive as long as you’re not spouting that opinion when it’s unsolicited and/or not relevant.
I do agree with the OP. When I have friends that are in some group that has is sterotyped, I like to joke with them in ways that would be offensive, but they understand that it’s a joke and in doing so I’m treating them as equals.
I wonder if some people are also reassuring themselves by putting in all the little disclaimers. I, personally, feel like I have this inner homophobia/racism/sexism/whatever elseism that needs to constantly be fought back. But maybe I’m just fucked up and nobody else does it to reassure themself.
I just counted, and out of the 57 unique responders, there were 21 disclaimers. It wasn’t “EVERY FUCKING RESPONDER,” and it wasn’t “a whole fucking paragraph.” But then, this is The Pit, and people hyperbolize. Most often it was just a “live and let live” or “other people can do it, as long as I don’t have to watch.” And 2 attempts at a Unified Theory of Orientation, and a theory that was based on the supposition that homosexual and bisexual men are not masculine.
Not long-winded, really, but I got the vibe from the thread that people were consciously putting in the disclaimer (albeit well-intentioned). It didn’t make me as angry as it did Freejooky, but then he always seemed a sensitive lad. (I think he might be, you know, one of those “delicate” types, if you get what I’m saying.)
Tee hee.
Anyway, I wasn’t allowed in that thread so I have to say something about it here. None of it offended me personally, but the bits that I did find kind of “disturbing,” for lack of a better word, were the people saying that they were more repulsed by the thought of two guys cuddling or kissing than actual gay sex. It’s hard not to read that as, “I’ve got no problem with two guys going down on each other or doing each other up the ass, as long as it’s all just a goof and they’re not really serious about it.”
Don’t know if I’m as gay as all that, but I am at least 99.9% homo. And the idea of me having straight sex doesn’t disgust me, it’s just that it’s such an absence of turn-on that it’s physically impossible. It does absolutely nothing for me, and it never has – the point at which most guys go from thinking girls are icky to thinking girls are who I want to be with right now, never happened for me. I was just left wondering where all the guys had suddenly run off to. You know how they say that black is the absence of color? You have to ask yourself how much more black could my heterosexual attraction be, and the answer is none. None more black.
But hey, I’m becoming more conservative, so live and let live I say. What other people want to do is fine, as long as I don’t have to watch.
I might have to do with the fact (I think it’s a fact - otherwise, “opinion”) that kissing is such an intimate thing. When one sees two men kissing, I guess there’s the feeling that this is on a par with a heterosexual relationship. Indeed, part of the motivation for the feeling (of “repulsion”, dislike, whatever) may be that it reminds the heterosexual of the current poverty of their own relationship. We do fear that which we do not know.
Since I’m here, I’ll respond to something you wrote earlier which I don’t really agree with, but wasn’t going to bother with. Now, it might fit better. You wrote: ‘Saying “I’m repulsed by the idea of…gay sex” isn’t offensive. Saying “Gay sex is immoral and wrong” is offensive’. Well, if it is, then you will have to learn to live with it. It isn’t hate speech, it isn’t illegal, and it is what some people believe. That is not to say that it’s very kind, or wise, or good to enter any debate with all guns balring “Homosexuality is a sin”, but it is to say that an individual’s right to say this must be cherished and protected.
Well, rest assured, SolGrundy, two guys cuddling is very sweet. Or two girls. It’s more of an, “Awwwww…”
Well, yeah. It is an intimate thing, and it is on par with any heterosexual relationship. And that’s exactly why the comments bugged me. To me it implies that homos act out of pure lust and carnality, while heteros act out of intimacy and true love. It implies that gay relationships aren’t “real” somehow, but that we’ll “tolerate” them because it’s none of our business and it’s just for kicks, anyway.
I never once mentioned rights. I said that it’s offensive when people say that, meaning that it offends me, because it does. I’m not in the business of controlling what people think. I’d hope that after hearing me and other homos ramble on about what it’s really all about for long enough, they’d start to change their opinions and really understand how other people, the people who it directly affects, think about it. But if they don’t, they’re perfectly legally entitled to keep on thinking whatever they want.
But it’s still offensive. I’m offended when anyone puts a value judgement on what I do and tells me that what I do is “wrong,” especially after I’ve sacrificed my privacy (and now, the privacy of my boyfriend) to explain exactly why I don’t believe it’s wrong. But as has been said before: I don’t have the right not to be offended by what they say, and they don’t have the right not to be offended by what I do. The world keeps turning, and hopefully, people keep learning and staying open to the idea of changing their beliefs.
What, you mean being involved in it myself? Dunno – it’d all depend on the context, I’d imagine. I don’t think you need to be gay or straight to recognize there’s a big difference between (say) consentual sexual experimentation vs. being forcibly raped/sodomized/violated.
But like I said, this is not something I lose sleep over. If Joe and Jack want to hop into bed and have a good time together, I say more power to 'em.
Of course I did, but like in this thread, your inferior monkey brain somehow missed it. BTW, nice user name - you probably came to the SDMB like 30 years after that joke was totally played out. Maybe someone will start choose a “funny” user name based on another long-played-out joke like “once, in 1963, for 12 minutes” or whatever! Har har har! “Hi, Opal, and stuff!”
Re-read; the “most” was not referring to the original thread, but to this one.
Anyway, hyperbole aside, many people in that thread felt that it was necessary to add these irritating disclaimers, which is the point of this pitting. People need to argue with the actual point of the thread (or not at all) rather than attempting to nitpick (“well, it wasn’t actually every responder…”)
I love you. Let’s be best friends.
The idea of having straight sex doesn’t disgust me, exactly; it just doesn’t interest me particularly. I support the expression of libidinous attraction in all its wondrous forms, I do find some women attractive, and my fag hags seem to have an unnatural interest in cushioning my head between their pillowy breastesses, but to me straight sex is rather like Poland; it doesn’t turn me off, but I have no particular interest in going there in the near future.
Oddly, lesbian sex interests me rather more than straight sex. I believe that if I were a woman, I’d be a lesbian. I guess for me, ‘queer’ is more basic than ‘guy-schtupping,’ although Og knows that’s pretty high on the agenda.
I have a certain agreement with the OP - but then again I think this thread might have been ill-advised. A similar story with the PaulBeserker stuff of the last couple days.
Sometimes this board can be frustrating. For example “some of my best friends are gay”. Say that, and you’re shot down in flames. But dammit, some of my best friends are gay. What am I supposed to say?
There is a hive mind mentality on this board. As a conservative, I honestly think that most of the liberals here are decent and intelligent people who would be genuinely shocked if they were accused of participating in that - so no, I’m not about to don a tinfoil helmet and I believe there there is no agenda, but sometimes… eh well. Put it this way, the latest buzzword seems to be shrill. You can say that Bush felches rabid iguanas and that’s okay. Say something like “I choose not to vote Democrat”, and you are being “shrill”. The gay threads have gone this way a bit too. It’s a shame for all sides really. I think it will do more harm than good.
BTW, I used my conservatism as an example only. I’m a marginal conservative in that I believe in a plethora of traditionally left causes from gay marriage to abortion. Damn, now I’m doing the disclaimer thing too. 
How interesting – I, like many other Queer people and feminists, have frequently been accused of being shrill, usually for saying something on the order of “Equal human rights for Queer people is not something with which reasonable people can disagree” or “I think we have an interesting culture.”
Then we have common ground (and no I’m not being a smartarse when I say that). It’s awful, isn’t it?