What if I donate money and time to help burned kids? Is that ok, or do I need to stick to gay rights?
What if I donate money and time to help burned kids? Is that ok, or do I need to stick to gay rights?
I’m not trying to put words in gobear’s mouth, but I think you missed his point. The risk is enough. Prior to the ruling (and perhaps even still) he was at risk for encountering such treatment. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t tell a Jewish or Black person that because they have no personal experience with Neo-Nazi’s they have no clue when they rail against it. Of course, I could be wrong. I’m assuming a lot there, I admit, so maybe you would. <shrug>
Presidebt:
I did respond to that possible consideration on the previous page or so. Gobear’s risk of being arrested for sodomy in the privacy of his own home is most assuredly quite a bit less than being struck by lightning.
Straight people share the same risks as these stupid laws get used against them as well, as Wring has testified to in earlier pages.
Debauchery and sodomy are used against straight people.
Somehow I think gobear is psychically strong enough not to collapse under the weight of this threat.
He should be more worried about getting hit by meteorites.
And how is deprecating Strom Thurmond post obitum “drunken Fratboyery,” especially given that I’ve had no alcohol and am 20 years past college?
Yes, it would. This is not that hard a concept: Be better than the bad person.
No. It wouldn’t. This is not that hard a concept: Be better than the bad person.
gobear & Mockingbird: Do you see anywhere in this thread where I suggested anyone mourn anyone? If so, let me know where y’all got that invisible posting reader so I can go get me one posthaste. What I have done is state that acting in a mean and spiteful manner is acting in a mean and spiteful manner. Why do y’all want to do that instead of being better than the bad person who, by the way, is now dead and can’t change a lot of his actions at the moment.
gobear: When I was in Japan, the local law and the madeuponthespotatthePhilippineEmbassy “law” both were used against me and the girl I was living with at the time to prevent us getting married. Reason the local law didn’t permit the marriage: “Must have statement from Philippine Embassy.” Reason the Philippine Embassy didn’t permit the marriage: “It would be better for the child for the mother to marry the man who impregnated her during the rape.”
Do I wish anyone dead over that? No! I pity people who think that’s the right way to go around and act. Now, if the folks at the Philippine Embassy were to pass away, I wouldn’t attend their funerals; however, I wouldn’t dance on their graves either.
Care to guess why?
I don’t know… I think there is a distinction between being happy that someone is dead, and happy that someone is gone. Although obviously, people that are dead tend to be gone, so there is a lot of overlap.
It is kind of sick to be glad someone is dead, but it is extremely sick to wish torture on anyone, in this life or the next.
However, if you are really just happy the person is gone, that might take the form of being happy that they are dead, in which case you would not be evil but merely imprecise.
And you should be more worried about being hit by a clue, you pompous classist piece of shit.
Scylla, my point is that nittering away here does not help anyone.
Scylla opined
I’m sure Mssrs Garner and Lawrence thought the same thing, as did Mr Hardwick and his guest when they were arrested back in 1982.
They shared no such risk in Texas.
You really are an asshole. Do you have any idea the number of times the existence of sodomy laws was used against gay people as an excuse for discrimination? Do you have any notion how many lesbian and gay parents were stripped of their parental rights because they were “unindicted criminals”? Has this ever happened to a straight person? Even once?
You know, I really try to avoid playing the “it’s a gay thing you wouldn’t understand” card. But Scylla, you need to understand that this in point of fact is a gay thing that you are not capable of understanding. If you take nothing else away from this post or this thread, take away the knowledge that you simply have no conception of what it means to live as a despised minority and a stranger to justice.
And I’m sure Lee Trevino didn’t expect to get hit by lightning either.
Did you look it up? You may be right, I’m not particularly familiar with Texas Blue laws, but if you want to make this assertion you’ll need a cite.
Experience generally tells me that when someone reverts to personal insults in a debate, it usually means that they don’t have any substantive rationale.
WTF is with you and Mockingbird that you need to attack me because I disagree with you?
If you all want perfect agreement why don’t you send each other mutual admiration emails, instead of making arguments in public debating forums?
No I don’t. Enlighten me. How many?
Hey, according to you I’m just an asshole. Why are you asking me these questions? So tell me, how many?
I’d bet it has, but again, why you asking me?
Well, if you would have asked me, I would have guessed that desiring men over women wouldn’t really be all that big a deal.
Maybe I should go and buttfuck a guy so I can achieve enlightenment and enjoy your special perspective instead of travelling through this life with blinders on to true reality.
Who do you think you’re kidding?
I’d rather be the hammer than the nail, and I don’t court victimhood, or histrionics. “Stranger to justice?” I know all about that. Saw it on a lifetime movie.
WTF does “stranger to justice?” mean?
Does it mean that you’ve never ever experienced justice? Not once?
Everything in your life has been unjust? Never got lucky once?
Wow, that sucks to be you.
Or does it just mean that you don’t have a clue what “Justice” means?
I find ignorance to be a much more credible interpretation.
I’m just having difficulty with this concept. Maybe you can help me out.
You don’t like it because you’ve perceived that Strom Thurmond has judged you and dismissed you as not deserving of equal protection under the law.
You don’t like it when individuals judge you.
You don’t like it when society judges you.
In fact, you argue that people shouldn’t judge you because of your beleifs attitudes, sexual preference, all that stuff.
Doesn’t it behoove you not to be a judgemental prick if you’d like to be taken seriously.
Don’t you see that your histrionics turn legitimate issues into bad jokes and make it easy to dismiss you?
Bahh, Muffin’s right. You wouldn’t understand. How could you? It’s a reasonable thing.
Thanks for responding. I understand the principle but I also understand that it is difficult to feel that way for those directly affected by the human being in question.
How many amongst the relatives of the 3000+ dead do you think will fail to relish the prospect of OBL dying? (Hell, sometimes, I feel that the death penalty exists to sate the victims of the dead)
But, I do agree it is a goal we as humans should strive for.
In response to this, and many other posts on the same line, I offer the following:
I have spent thousands of hours organizing and working for gay rights organizations.
I am a member of a minority group that has suffered vast persecutions.
It is because of my belonging to this group that I am committed to the Civil Rights and Gay Rights movements.
It is also because of my belonging to this group that I deplore the celebratory nature of some of the initial postings and the ignorance and vile hatred that has spewed forth since.
I have previously brought up MLK and Gandhi as examples of true humane behavior, and many posters reacted strongly against this proposition, saying that I was setting the bar too high. If we cannot (or will not) attempt to emulate the behavior of our heroes, what good are they?
To ask someone to show some humanity, and not dance on the grave of Strom Thurmond, is in no way to challenge their right to live their life according to how they see fit. As I have said many times in this thread and others, I wholeheartedly support the full rights of homosexuals, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and women. I have devoted thousands of hours in promotion and defense of these causes, and I hope most you you have as well.
Asking people whether they would also ask for decorum after the death of UBL or Hussein is off the point. The true point of this discussion, and the true tragedy of it, is that Strom Thurmond was not a dictator or tyrant. He was one vote in the Senate. A vote that was consistently approved by the people he was supposed to represent. The true tragedy of this story, and the true target for all this frustration and anger, should be at the attitudes that allowed him to stay in the Senate for as long as he did.
By showing such a crass attitude towards life and human dignity, you accomplish nothing other than to alienate those who would normally be sympathetic to your plight. Strom Thurmond was a symbol. A symbol of a value system that refused to acknowledge the basic dignity, freedom, and equality of all people. To defeat the ignorance that he symbolized, you cannot fight it with more hate.
I’ve read through most but not all of the pages so please excuse me if this has been said before but I find it easier to cut Strom maybe just a bit of slack because, like us, he is a product of his times. The guy wasn’t 20 or 30 or even 70 when he died. He was a 100 freaking years old. What do you think America was like back when he was a young man? What do you think black/white relations and views on homosexuality were like during his impressionable years? Arguably a far cry from our our more compassioned and sympathetic views of today.
Sure, I don’t agree with much that the guy had to say during his elected years but I try not to judge everything he did based on a morality learned in a vastly different time and society. He did make some effort to catch up with the changes. Can’t really wish him to hell for not making it all the way.
No problem.
Glad to hear that you understand the principle. A very neat thing about the human species is that we rise above instinctual behaviour.
One or more; however, the actual number is irrelevant. There are those among that group who are against the death penalty so I’m willing to bet that they might not relish his death either.
Agreed. I think that’s the only reason it exists.
Agreed.
Heh. Wondered how long it would take this time for Queer politics to be described as “courting victimhood.”
I don’t think the people on this list, or the people who’ve had their children taken from them, or the widows and widowers who, being strangers to the law, have had their late wives and husbands stolen from them by estranged parents they haven’t seen in years and buried in secret, or the people who’ve been thrown in jail for sodomy, were exactly courting victimhood.
And I don’t see how it’s courting victimhood to recognize and complain about the injustice and hatred that these people face and faced because of a sexual orientation they share with me.
Scylla
The whole point of the fucking case was that the Texas sodomy law did not apply to mixed-sex couples, idiot. Did you actually read the case, or the opinions, or any of the hundreds of news stories or threads about the topic? The Texas law was called the “Homosexual Conduct Law.” What would lead you to believe that straight people committing hetero-sodomy were at risk?
Sodomy map. See how Texas is listed as “applied to same-sex only”?
Experience tells me that you’ve been presented with my “substantive rationale” for thinking you’re an asshole.
I am not attacking you because you disagree with me. I am attacking you because of your belittling attitude toward the experiences of gobear and others who have experienced bigotry that you have not, can not and never will, which you dismiss with your “I’m sure gobear is strong enough to take it” attitude.
That you would think that being gay is about nothing more than “buttfucking some guy” demonstrates to me that there’s little point in continuing this. Would you dare to say to a person of any other minority that their lifetime of experience dealing with bigotry is reducible to that kind of simplistic shit? The simple fact is, if you’re not gay then you can’t know what it means to be gay. You don’t know what it means to live every day as what amounts to an alien in the culture.
It means that in almost every court decision involving the rights and dignity of GLB people, the courts have decided against us. It means that law after law after law has been promulgated to deny us equal rights, and on those rare occasions where such laws have actually passed they have been immediately subject to attack and repeal. It means that rights, duties and privileges which you take as a matter of course are routinely denied us. It means that we have had to battle to make every gain that we have made over the efforts of the entire system to prevent them. Try reading Courting Justice to see if you can grasp what it means to be a stranger to justice.
For the record, I have not been celebrating Thurmond’s death. I am not sad about it, and I don’t think he deserves the respect from me that he didn’t earn in life just because he’s no longer alive, but I haven’t celebrated it beyond saying “good” a few times. That’s not why I posted my response to you. I posted my response because of your cavalier bullshit attitude toward the actual, real suffering that gobear and I and millions of other gay people have endured. You may choose to continue to sneer at that suffering, but doing so speaks volumes on the content of your character. I think that I have in the past sorely misjudged that content. I hope that you will get it together, grow up a little and knock off the shit you’ve been spraying.
should read
It means that law after law after law has been promulgated to deny us equal rights, and on those rare occasions where such laws to protect us have actually passed they have been immediately subject to attack and repeal.
Scylla - I did not believe that you subscribed to the “unless you’ve experienced it personally, you have no right to get upset about it” philosophy, as I think I expressed.
Your clarification to me, tho’ doesn’t do it. gobear and co have the unique (in America) perspective of being adults who can/will be labeled “criminals” should they engage in their choice of sexual acts in certain states. Their sexual acts are designated criminal acts. generally speaking (that bizarre Michigan law aside) that’s something that heterosexuals do not face.
and as was pointed out, the law referenced by the OP did, in fact, specify same sex only. You and the Mrs. could have had all the anal sex y’all wanted in Texas. gobear and co, could not.