gobear:
This is not a gay rights issue, and it’s not an issue with empathy on my part.
It’s because I do care about certain issues, that I take issue with your tactless grave dancing. It makes you come off as an insensitive prick to blast an elder statesmen before he’s even in his grave.
Don’t turn a personal disagreement into a gay issue. It demeans you.
A loathesome bigoted elder statesman who spent his life working against everything I and many others believe in.
I don’t think you will be content until you get your way and each of us recants that we’re happy that the bastard is dead.
Keep waiting. Wait as long as you like. Your tirades show you to be the same control freak who can be activated by an SUV thread into sputtering incoherently at how others are trying to tell you what to do.
Now you are demanding that I and others agree with you and do what you say to stop being glad that a viper has died.
That you are behaving as you do, minimizing his effect and scope, and are acting as if this hasn’t become a gay issue on this board is ludicrous.
Let me get this straight, you’re making fun of Wring?
You’ve lost all contextual cohesion. Go reboot.
I was referring to this thread, you moronic turd.
:sniff: Can’t we all just get along? :sniff:
Apparently not.
Anyway, as a further contribution to this trainwreck:
Strom Thurmond had a long career of bigotry in politics. Dead now. No great loss. Sorry, but I can think of other “conservatives” (Barry Goldwater) who didn’t foul the air with their existance as this piece of shit did.
Did I dance on his grave, laugh, or clap my hands when I learned of his death? Nope. The most I reacted was, “Well, even bigotted old fossils have to die too.” Disrespectful? Yes indeed! I have no respect for someone who works tirelessly to hold the status quo of second class citizenship for anyone based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other factor that I and a good many other Earthlings regard as irrelevant to good citizenship! Simple as that.
**gobear, Mockingbird, Otto, Esprix,**and other GBLT Dopers have way more of a personal stake in what a lot of what Thurmond, Frist, and their ilk have done and continue doing. To me, it’s an issue of compassion, empathy for what they have to go through on a regular basis. I was once “accused” of being gay, and some troglodytes attempted to beat me. I ran. Very far and fast. I don’t want to imagine what it would be like to have that be a serious threat on a regular basis. Thurmond, Frist, and their ilk lend those attitudes some legitimacy by supporting, or cynically pretending to support, legal gay oppression.
People can complain all they want about “bad form” being shown by people expressing positive feelings about Thurmond’s death. Or (and this is a good’un) saying others are “sinking down to his level.” I don’t agree with the complainers. If I was a member of any group, who, through an innate quality that was irrelevant to good citizenship, was the target of bigotted laws, made a scapegoat, and generally oppressed by some cynical politician whose main achievement was living 100 fucking years, and this asshole kicks off, I might not crow about it, but I’d probably say, “Good riddance.”
Don’t see why some of you have so much problem with that.
All the dinosaurs are dying off. Most of them had been ineffective for a long time before their demise. What frightens me are the younger ones they infected, like Frist, et al. It’s easy to dismiss or excuse the Thurmonds as products of their times. My parents were contemporaries of Thurmond and pretty racist and homophobic by my standards, but I saw them change with the times because they were intelligent, empathetic people who were able to see past the stereotypes. They didn’t seek out a single sentence in the bible in order to condemn, and they didn’t think the Constitution was intended by the Founders as a weapon for discrimination.
I’m not sorry Thurmond is dead, but neither will I waste my time rejoicing when he and his ilk have so many worthy successors out there practicing their hypocrisy and devising ways to torment those who differ from them.
With Frist elected by Congressional Republicans as the Senate Majority Leader and Tom Delay in the House, the DOJ debacle, the muted response to Santorum, etc. I wonder how the Log Cabin Republicans are convincing themselves that the party wants them there.
The Log Cabin Republicans are the (forgive me) Queens of Denial. They’re convinced that they can separate the social and economic facets of the Republican party, but it’s becoming increasingly impossible. Like they did to the Southern Baptist Convention, the social conservatives are continuing the process of hostile takeover of the GOP. Just as moderates were edged out of the SBC, they’ve been edged out of the Republican party.
The LCR are going to find themselves standing completely alone in the middle of a big tentful of homophobes very soon. May whatever deity they believe in help them then.
An analogy just occurred to me:
The Log Cabin Republicans aren’t so much the chickens electing the fox to guard the henhouse. They’re the chickens moving in with the fox with the mistaken belief that they can provide therapy to relieve him of his chicken-eating psychosis.
Nicely put. Mind if I quote it?
Not at all, matt! Use it in good health! 
Why?
Esprix
OTOH, what can the LCR do? If somebody agrees with the Republicans on every issue except for the gay rights one, should he jump parties? The Democrats might be right on gay rights, from his perspective, but wrong on everything else, and it probably is easier to get the Republicans to change their stance on gay people than to get the Democrats to change their stance on everything.
And I don’t know that the Republicans are really as anti-gay as they get portrayed. I mean, a lot of the leadership is, but I don’t think most rank and file Republicans are. I think, and anecdotal experience has borne this out, at least, even if I don’t have much data at hand, that most Republicans don’t strongly care one way or the other. (I think it likely that most Democrats don’t strongly care one way or the other, either. A lot of Democrats in Congress voted for DOMA with a clear conscience, and that vote didn’t hurt them among their constitutants.
I think the general attitude among most Americans today is “Look, if you want to be gay, be gay. Just don’t talk about it, don’t make us acknowledge it, and don’t make us think about it.” That seems to be the general attitude, rather than “Gay people are EEEEVIL”
re Esprix’ good question: what’s the derivation of the word “marriage”? I don’t own an OED. Too lazy to look online. Besides, the puppy needs his walk.
Apparently, according to my Webster’s, “marry” comes from the Old French “marier”, which comes from the Latin “maritare”, which means…err, to marry. <sigh> I really need to get a better etymological dictionary.
If it is apples and grapes, why are you so upset? It is very real and part of the same circle of hate. You are blinded by your righteous indignation just like the bigots are.
If I make you lose your job, if I ensure that you cannot be married, if I make your life as diificult as I possible can, simply because of the color of your hair,
would you be angry with me, or would you passively accept your fate?
If you were angry, how would you react on being called a bigot?
Hey, Dopers, let’s play a fun game, it’s called “Find a post by Mockingbird that isn’t hateful and doesn’t harm his side’s argument!” It’s a fun game, but there can be no winners because such a thing doesn’t exist!
i wouldn’t like you but i wiould take no joy in your death. and who is calling you a bigot? You and yours are the ones labeling me with the now almost meaningless term based solely on my objections to how you treat a dead man. I’m just pointing out your behavior is just as hateful, and maybe moreso since you are using your right to exist (the very thing you fight for) as an excuse to be hateful.
While I am not defending Mockingbird’s style, I have to correct you on one matter: his posts do not harm our cause. Justice is based on the equality of all people under the law, not on the qualification that we be “nice.” If we deprived people the protection of the law just because they can be jerks, we’d have a new slave class made up of NFL coaches, Republican politicians, Enron executives, and Martha Stewart.
Citizens are entitled to equality because it is their birthright as human beings, not because you approve of them.