My reference to gay adoption in my previous post sparked a thought: what about straight students with gay parents? If having gay parents isn’t an excuse for other kids to pound the tar out of each other at school then I don’t know what is. What’s the solution? Send the straight kid to the gay school? Give me a break. First of all, he or she wouldn’t stand a CHANCE of surviving outside the school. (“You go the GAY school?!”) Never mind the fact that now you’d have a minority of straight kids in a gay school. I don’t know about you, but I see a potential for teasing here.
Either that or we’re gonna have to have a separate school for the straight children of gay parents. Thoughts?
Also, how is it ‘stupid’ to use the word “lifestyle” in reference to sexual orientation?
I’ll grant you that my sexual orientation (straight) is not a lifestyle choice. Neither is homosexuality a choice. What IS a choice, however, is how one acts on one’s sexuality orientation. If I was having sex each night with a different IV-using, HIV+ prostitute, I’d imagine not many would consider that a wise “lifestyle” choice.
Men who engage in unprotected homosexual sex are certainly in a higher risk group than heterosexuals when it comes to contracting various life-threatening diseases. This is not to say that many gay men are not in monogamous relationships, but to say that it’s NOT a risky “lifestyle” is what I’d call ‘stupid.’
I’m sorry eve, but what do you mean I have a lot in reserve? I checked the pit forum earlier. Well, just don’t get me going on abortion, cars, or stuff like that.
I meantthere seems to be more to youm than meets the eye—but if you keep on saying things like, “It can be a lifestlye because they could pretend they aren’t gay and live the so called being straight,” I may have to rethink that . . .
Well, I guess that didn’t come out as I wanted it. There are different lifestyles out there to live. You can be straight, and choose to live the life of a gay (I don’t know why), but more realistically, gay people decide to live the life of a straight person.
No, Kputt, that doesn’t help your case one bit. You are asking healthy, loving, productive people to pretend they are something that they aren’t. The pressure from this can be overwhelming (and deadly) to many people. Why should I deny who I am and what I feel because you “don’t want to hear about it?”
And Stephe, your comment "I’ll grant you that my sexual orientation (straight) is not a lifestyle choice. Neither is homosexuality a choice. What IS a choice, however, is how one acts on one’s sexuality orientation. If I was having sex each night with a different IV-using, HIV+ prostitute, I’d imagine not many would consider that a wise “lifestyle” choice. " just makes you sound like you have your head in the sand. Not all gays flooze around with junkies. The ones that do aren’t doing because they’re gay. They do it because they’re slutty drug abusers. I know a shit load of straight folks that wrote the BOOK on whoring around while getting high. Don’t try to connect this behavior with being gay.
kputt, do yourself a favor and don’t post things like this.
Something you think you remember reading somewhere is not evidence. I doubt very much that you ever read anything of the sort, and if you did it was not from a reputable source. As you will soon learn, a favorite question here on the SDMB is “Cite?” If you are going to make claims like this, you need to have a solid, verifiable source on hand that other people can check.
But I wouldn’t waste my time trying to find a cite for this, because it is wrong. It is just wrong. I don’t believe I know any homosexual or bisexual people who didn’t realize before they were 17 or 18 that they weren’t quite the same as their heterosexual friends and relatives. Even if it were true that many people didn’t figure things out until their late teens, this would not mean that no one has a clue until then. Milk only has room for 100 students, they only accept new student who are between 14 and 16, and they have a lengthy waiting list already. I think that’s proof enough that there are plenty of teens in New York self-identifying as GLBT who want to attend.
Again, I’ll quote you, Stephe. "What IS a choice, however, is how one acts on one’s sexuality orientation. If I was having sex each night with a different IV-using, HIV+ prostitute, I’d imagine not many would consider that a wise “lifestyle” choice. "
You are talking about sexual orientation (in a thread about GAY sexual orientation) and connecting orientation with a “lifestyle”. The lifestyle part has NOTHING to do with the orientation part. It is irresponsible to connect lifestyle with sexual orientation whether you’re talking about gay OR straight orientation.
Because sexual orientation is not a “lifestyle.” How one lives one’s life is a lifestyle. My sexuality may inform my lifestyle, i.e. I would do things that a straight person wouldn’t, but my sexuality does not determine it. Anything that one would consider a copmponent of one’s “lifestyle” can be performed without regard to sexual orientation. The word “lifestyle” is used by radical right-wing people to imply that being gay is purely a “lifestyle choice” like where one vacations or what kind of car one drives. It’s demeaning. I will grant you the benefit of the doubt–once–that you did not intend it that way.
So all this fuss over a voluntary, accredited, 100-student school that is open to anyone who wishes to apply and will focus on tolerance, specifically for LGBT people.
I still haven’t seen any convincing arguments as to why this is a bad thing.
This makes me so sad, mostly because it sounds so much like something I said to my younger sister about 15 years ago. We were discussing an article that a classmate of hers had written for the high school paper, coming out as a lesbian and talking about the teasing and exclusion that were routine in her life. This was a friend of my sister’s (I had no idea how good a friend), my sister experienced the same kind of bullying. I had experienced less of it, but only because at that time I would have sold my soul for popularity and was willing to buy into more of what it took to get along.
I knew that by identifying herself as different in this particular way, this girl was opening herself up for a year of extra special hell. I didn’t have the capacity to appreciate the courage it took for her to claim her identity, and I didn’t have the smarts to listen to my little sister when she told me so. I had no idea that my sister was also gay, and was asking me to understand, in this roundabout way. I totally blew that opportunity, because I was ignorant and unthinking.
My sister is dead (for reasons that have nothing to do with being gay), and it just kills me to think about the years of understanding that we missed out on.
My basic take on the high school is cautious optimism. I’m as liberal as they come, I was brought up in a liberal family, I’ve known gay people all my life. We had gay friends, gay neighbors, gay relatives. But in high school, when it came to my peers, I was just as much of an asshole as anybody else. Not because I hated the girl who came out, but because I thought she was bringing the trouble on herself. Teenagers are strange people, driven by powerful hormones and a strong group instinct. Sometimes I think they do need to be protected from each other. I’m sad that homophobia is still openly allowed in schools, the way open racism is not. But while it is, I think the ones who are vulnerable need a safe place.
ok. I wasn’t trying to say they pretend to be something. I’m saying it’s a lifestyle because they can choose to live that way, just a straight person can choose to live as a gay.
Ok People. I can say that as long as I say I’m not sure.
Also, herownself, I wasn’t saying that because I wanted these people to live a lie, but because kids are cruel. Heck, people are cruel, kids and adults. They can be so ignorant.