When they actually show that they’re not still putting forth yet more bigoted crap.
WhatEVER.
He spouts yet more bullshit about the superiority of heterosexuals and I’M the asshole.
I’ll say what I think, speak as I please, and you can go fuck yourself sideways with a rusty pitchfork.
Jesus H. is not walking through that door!
He was confusing him for Bill W.
It certainly is a leap of faith; if you’re going to invoke evolution, it is important to acknowledge that evolution doesn’t give a flying toss about such lofty things as love, just as it doesn’t care about literature, theatre and hot fudge sundaes. Love is just what we call a particular set of phenomena that just happen (from the point of the biologist) to have arisen out of reproductive expediency. But that’s the point; for homosexuals, it’s the same thing - the same set of chemical reactions or whatever - it just happens to be expressed in a different way.
Bonds exist between people for any number of horrendously complex reasons; I’d not be too surprised if the Father/Son bond thing occurs mostly because of the way social and cultural pressures program the average male. I don’t see this as particularly compelling evidence of any transcendent attributes.
So what? Homosexual love is also unequalled; hot fudge sundaes are also unequalled, but if you consider cheesecake superior it doesn’t make you wrong (or right); Not everything in life is just begging you to rank it neatly in order of (supposed) absolute value.
All you’ve demonstrated here is that, from the point of view of a heterosexual person, heterosexual love is indeed the one that seems to be of greater worth. I believe the appropriate response is “Well, DUH!”
And none of this will change the fact that you’re a bleating idiot. I’m sure Cecil is proud of all the ignorance you and your herd are fighting here FUCKHEAD.
Well, I said in the other thread: I don’t understand you. I still don’t agree with you, but at least I finally feel like I understand you a little bit better. And I don’t hate you, for what that’s worth.
But you’ve still been an asshole. Not for believing something I don’t agree with, but for showing so little respect for me and people like me when you say it. You say people can’t hate you until they get to KNOW you; why the hell should I bother trying to get to know you if you insist on saying stuff that pisses me off? That’s not speaking your mind, that’s not being a piss-poor public speaker, that’s just being a jerk.
When some little twat like clothahump comes in and calls me a pervert and says he knows that people are going to object but he’s not going to listen, I know how to deal with that. I ignore the little twat, and then go on about my business. But with your bullshit, it’s frustrating, because I kept getting the sense that there was debatable stuff at the heart of what you were trying to say. But you kept insisting on wording it in the most offensive way possible. I showed some of your posts to some (straight) friends of mine who don’t read this board, and their response was unanimous – “I’m not even going to bother reading that shit. You’re wasting your time trying to argue with such an idiot.”
When you talk about the “gay-sickness” and call it a disease, you’re going to piss people off. And you’re just being stupid if you act surprised that people are getting pissed off. You complain when people say that you should never have been born – how the hell do you think it makes other people feel when you say basically the same thing about them? Ignorance is excusable. Total lack of respect is not.
But whatever. People don’t change their minds instantly, and you seem to have made an honest attempt to hear the “other side’s” viewpoint. Others can jump on the dogpile if they want; I’m not going to. I’ll just respond to the rest and hopefully this’ll be the last gay-friendly post I’ll have to make for a long time.
The 200,000 years of evolution bit doesn’t fly. By all indications and all accounts, there have been homosexuals for as long as there have been people. The Greeks didn’t invent it. The Bible wouldn’t have come down on it if it hadn’t already been going on. It hasn’t been naturally selected against, it hasn’t gone away.
As far as the mental states between men and women being perfectly attuned to each other – uh, what in the hell are you talking about? A million copies of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and even more stand-up comedy routines say otherwise. If anything, we’ve got it easier than you guys, because we know how men think.
Not the same thing. You’re talking about the love between a child and his parent, not heterosexual love. You pointed out the distinction yourself; you said that you still love your son, even though you no longer love your ex-wife. But the love that made you want to marry your wife in the first place – that is what we’ve got, and that is every bit as valid as heterosexual love. And fuck anybody who says otherwise.
And the only reason I’m writing this post at all is this: what makes you think that homosexuals are so different from that? I didn’t grow up in some petri dish, or on some planet that only broadcast Queer Eye and Liberace specials on the TV. I grew up with the same ideals, the same values, the same morals, as just about every other suburban, Christian WASP kid. I think about the idealized life of getting a house in the suburbs with the person I love and starting a family. I went through years being terrified, and I’m still terrified, that I was never going to be able to have that. So why is it that when I want it, then I’m “throwing the word around?” Why am I “crapping” on the ideal? That makes absolutely no sense.
You had a story, I’ve got a story, too. And I hope this is the last gay-friendly post I have to make for a long time:
The hardest coming-out speech I’ve had to make so far was to a woman I used to be crazy in love with. I’d been convinced that she was The One – that if I felt such a connection to a person, that it would make everything else not matter. That we could be together always, raise a family, and live the perfect life. Basically, that she could turn me straight. But when it came time to take our relationship to the next step and turn it into a romantic thing, I couldn’t do it. Because I knew that there was no physical attraction there. And I knew that it would be wrong, and that I would only end up hurting her. That every time I was with her, I’d be keeping a secret from her, and I’d know, even if she didn’t, that I was still attracted to other guys. So I made up excuses and gave her the “let’s be friends” bit. And over time, she became one of my best friends.
And just over a month ago, I finally told her I was gay. She was surprised, but was cool with it. I explained about the excuses I’d made and how I’d been lying to myself, and how I hated lying to her, and how I’d been convinced I could just turn myself straight. And like everyone else, she said the whole thing was silly and I could’ve just saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d just come out a long time ago. That the only person who ever had any problem with my being gay was me. And now I think we’re even better friends than we were before.
And I’m telling her all this as we’re driving home, and after we’ve talked for a little bit and I’m feeling more comfortable about everything, I see a family walking down the street. A husband, a wife, and their little girl. And it hits me all of a sudden – I’m never going to have that. That’s what I’ve been wanting my whole life, and I can’t have it. And I just stopped in the middle of a sentence, and couldn’t speak or else I’d have started to cry.
And my friend notices this, and asks me what’s the problem. And I tell her – I’d been so happy about coming out that I hadn’t thought about the fact that I could never have a family. Without skipping a beat, she said, “That’s ridiculous. Of course you can.”
“I guess I could adopt, but it’s not the same.”
“Why not? And if it bugs you, you could use a surrogate mother or something.”
“It’s just not what I always imagined my life would be like.”
“Well… do you know anyone whose life is exactly how they imagined it?”
I hope the point of that story is obvious. Basically, shit happens. There’s the ideal, and then there’s the best we can make with what we’ve got. Trying to make the best life you can for yourself and the people you love is the best you can do. And that’s not crapping on any institutions, or undermining any family values, or being any less of a person.
It was interesting to meet you, SHAKES, and good luck to you.
Oh. I can’t believe I missed that bit. Yeah, that’s one of things you don’t want to be saying, man. There’s no “gay agenda.” The only thing all gay people have in common is that they’re all attracted to people of the same sex. Period.
But if there were one, it’d be pink and would be filled with hair appointments and reserved time for clothes and furniture shopping.
Remember: only the hateful, dirty Jews, with their vast Zionist conspiracies, have an “agenda.”
:rolleyes:
I don’t know if this is something that still bothers you at all, but in case it is, some of my firm opinions. . .
Parenting isn’t a matter of genetics. Parenting is something that you do. A sire and a dam do not make a pair of parents make.
What makes a parent is being up at 3am when the kid’s crying and you can’t figure out a thing to do to make it better and you’d move heaven and earth to fix it if you could. What makes a parent is teaching that child love, giving that child comfort, raising that child to be a good human. It’s piano recitals and karate lessons and trying to remember how to help with the math homework. It’s sharing your personal joys in the universe. It’s all in the stuff you do.
Whether you adopt, surrogate, or anything else, it’s raising that child that would you a father.
(I feel very strongly that adopted children are just as much the real children of their parents as those parents’ genetic offspring. That’s family, damnit. My feelings on this have only gotten stronger due to personal circumstances; I nearly commented on the subject earlier but couldn’t get anything coherent enough to post.)
Family matters. So yours won’t look like Joe Typical’s. Mine doesn’t either. But it’ll still be family.
I wish you the best for finding the man of your dreams, and I bet you’ll be a kickass dad, if that’s what you decide you want for your family.
The fatal flaw in SHAKES’s little story, the fly in the Chardonnay or rain on your wedding day if you will, is the bio-dad of the step son. His non-involvement with his son kinda gives lie the whole arguement that a genetic link is somehow superior to all others.
Not to mention that his very story contradicts his conclusion. His story demonstrates that a parent’s relationship with a child has fuck-all to do with the relationship between the parents.
I really don’t get what you’re trying to say here. In your world, is every man-woman relationship perfect? No domestic abuse, no fights, not even a tiny lover’s tiff? And even if it were so, what business is it of yours?
And yet that bond seems to be completely lacking between your stepson and his biological father, so there goes that argument.
Well then, to be intellectually honest you have to outlaw every marriage that doesn’t involve a house in the suburbs, a white picket fence and 2.5 children playing in the yard. Every childless marriage, every marriage in the inner city, every single one of them. Gays can live your ideal, many straights don’t.
It certainly is. Kudos.
SHAKES said:
As an adopted child, thank you letting me know I am not as worthy as my parents’ bio-child.
That’s all.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
SHAKES, read what you wrote and pretend a gay person wrote it. How the hell you’ve decided you can judge other people’s love without experiencing it for yourself, and then saying you must experience something before you judge it is the absolute definition of hypocricy.
Judgement: Blind ignorance and prejudice.
For godsakes, you want to discuss this, start another thread-it’s a total red herring. But for the record, if that’s the law in Japan, yes, I feel it’s wrong. But we’re not talking about Japan, we’re talking about the US.
SHAKES, I’m sorry, but as I said-you can’t keep going around spewing this stuff and then act all hurt and say, “But you accuse me of being a bigot! I’m not-I just think that you guys are like a disease! But I’m not a bigot.”
And I’m sure millions of adopted children and adoptive parents will applaud your statements.
We’re talking about bigotry. Shouldn’t these standards that we’re discussing be applied universally? And -for the record- Sublight settled the issue on the last page, why are you bringing it up again if you don’t want to talk about it?
Of course they should. Whether the people who are in power want to apply them or not is irrelevant to the standards.
To sum up (again): Japan has bigotry that has been half-assedly, vaguely codified into law. It’s wrong that they did that. It would be wrong if we did it too.
What will it take to get you to realize that your experience or opinion is not that of the entire world?
Five adoptive and bio parents who disagree with you? Ten? Twenty? Fifty?
Because I can get that number. No problem.
I’m probably going to regret taking the time and effort necessary to respond to this guy, but here goes.
Before we get to that, my question is: how can you even know? Have you ever had gay sex? Been in love with another man? I’ve been in love with a female, I’ve had sex with women. I’ve also been in love with a man, and had sex with men. And ignoring the fact that I absolutely got nothing out of sex with women, focusing solely on the emotional, my relationships with men are just more fulfilling.
Having experienced both, I could argue that heterosexual love is inferior to homosexual love. But I don’t. Why?
Because I’m gay. Of course I’m going to get more out of a gay relationship. Even beyond the mind-blowing sex, there’s simply the fact that I am attracted to men. I find the little annoying things men do endearing, up to a point, just like you likely do the things that I could never stand about being in a relationship with a woman.
In other words, what may be superior for you is not superior for me, and the fault is not that you find being with a woman preferable, but that you seem to think that your experience has universal applicability, when it does not.
For as long as heterosexual humans have been evolving, so have homosexual humans. Homosexuality clearly is not detrimental to the continuation of the species, and may even be beneficial, for it has not been selected against by the forces of evolution. In fact, given its comparative rarity, it could be argued that evolutionary forces are perhaps at work to keep homosexuality in the genome.
Once again, ascribing universality to personal experience. Homosexual sex is great. It’s amazing. It’s like nothing you could ever experience with a woman. For me. I do not presume that such is true for everyone everywhere.
Likewise, as far as I can tell, I have the most powerful, nurturing and loving bond with the man whom in a better world would be my husband than you could ever have with any woman. Of course, that’s just experience, and isn’t applicable to you. But as in sync as you have ever been with a female, you have no way of measuring that against the connection, the intangible but always-present bond, that exists between gay partners.
I’m sorry, but if your wife was twice married, and twice divorced, what was that about the perfection of the union of male and female again?
So? What does your being heterosexual have anything to do with this? In fact, the ability that you could have such a relationship with a child who is not even remotely your own is an argument in favor of gay adoption and gay families, not the vice versa.
Given the number of excellent step-parents I know in my life, as well as the number of excellent foster parents and gay parents I’ve met, I think it’s safe to say that most fathers would so bond with their step-child. And all good parents deserve awards, but we don’t give them any.
I don’t get this. You love your genetic son more. Big deal. If my partner and I have a child, it will genetically his or mine – or, through the miracle of cloning, both his and mine. If that’s not an option, we will adopt, and we will love our adopted child as much or more than you love your step-child. Fit parents love their children, and it doesn’t matter what the orientation (or race or religion or nationality) of the parent, or the child. Heterosexuals have no lock up on the market of good parenting.
I also think that you are dissing people with adopted children or surrogate children unfairly here, demeaning their relationship with the children they are raising as somehow being less than your relationship with your biological son. Again, you are taking your personal position (and in this case, perhaps a personal failing) and applying it as some sort of universal standard.
Cannot you not see that this is wrong? That you are not the Everyman, you are not the Average American, you are not a model by which all others aspire or live? Apart from your absolutely hateful attack on the health and normalcy of gays, close to 100% of why people jump on you is because of this: you keep presuming that your very narrow world view is universally applicable, and that this isn’t just true, it’s an obvious truism.
Clearly, based on the reaction to you here, this is not the case.
You need to sit down and rethink the very foundations of your world view. Here’s a good step: you’re neither representative of all people, nor are you the center of the universe.
Why not? A child can only love one father? The experiences of children with a dad and a step-dad, both of whom they love fully and unreservedly, clearly belay this absurd notion. At what point in the birthing or gestation process are children limited to only loving one person of either gender as a parent?
Or is this just more ignorant bullshit you just made up to support your “my opinion is fact, dammit!” argument?
So a gay relationship can’t be beautiful?
Gays can’t have a house in the suburb with a picket fence and 2.5 kids playing the yard?
Gay lives can never look like a Norman Rockwell painting?
Since when?
Why are these things not applicable to my relationship? We’re looking for a house in the suburbs (Plano, outside of Dallas, or Overland Park, outside of Kansas City, are the leading contenders, based on job offers my boyfriend has received). We plan to someday have kids. Though probably not 2.5 of them. We’ll have dogs. We’ll gather the family around a Thanksgiving table. We’ll take the kids to little league games and to church. Where does the fact that we both have pensises prevent this reality from being just as wholesome, idyllic and American as the lives your parents and grandparents led?
But how? What you’re arguing is that gays for some reason can’t live that sort of idyllic, all-American, two-dads-and-apple-pie existence, but that’s not true in the real world. If it’s true in your mind, then there’s something wrong with you, not with gay people getting married.
In other words, there’s some sort of bigotry here that’s impacting your perspective. If you want to be better received around these parts, you need to address it within yourself. Because what you’re arguing just isn’t grounded in reality.
How can you enter a thread that you yourself started? You were already there.
You’ve never noticed the abject, pretty-much systemic discrimination gays experience in modern America? If there’s any group it’s still “okay” to discriminate against, it’s gays. How could it not be a sore spot?
It’s not the fact that you have opinions that makes you an asshole. It’s the way that you think everyone’s experience must line up with yours, that everyone should simply accept what you say without a shred of evidence, that you are apparently under the delusion that you are knowledgeable about everything and that instead of responding to criticisms of your argument, you simply restate it in different words.
You know why I hate you? It’s nothing that you’ve addressed in this thread. It’s the “cure homosexuality” shit. It’s the “gays are mentally diseased” crap. You pussied out of addressing it here, and that’s not surprising — you couldn’t defend your statements in the other threads, either. That you simply cling to your ignorant assertion without even attempting to support it with fact or evidence, just with more
How can anyone see you, effectively, say “I think that gays are diseased and should be cured of their gayness” and not think you a bigot? That statement is the very HEART AND SOUL of all anti-gay bigotry. And then you won’t even admit that you’re wrong about it. That’s why I hate you. Others in this thread will have different reasons, I suppose, but for me, you became my enemy the moment you called my love a disease, my life an illness, the core of my being a condition that needs to be “cured,” and I will continue to hate you until you recant that, totally, fully and unambiguously.
What you said, what you proposed, calling gayness a “disease,” calling homosexuals “diseased,” saying we need to be cured, is beyond the pale of bigotry.
When you call homosexuality a disease, that is pretty much the definition of NOT “accepting it” to say nothing of “embracing” it.
Recant your statement that being gay is a sickness, recant your desire to “cure” homosexuality, and then we can talk about you not being a bigot. But you didn’t even have the character to address that issue in this post, which gives me pause about the sincerity of everything you said here.
Calling homosexuality an illness that needs to be cured tells me everything I need to know about your heart, your inability to love, your simplemindedness and bigotry to legitimately hate you. If I’m wrong to hate you, prove it: recant all of your statements regarding homosexuality being an illness in need of a cure.
There is danger here of a reply to the effect ‘Oh yeah, well neither are you, so you have no right to tell me what to do’. But this is precisely the point, if you think about it - nobody has a privileged viewpoint, so heterosexuals should not feel able to dictate to homosexuals (and vice versa, of course , although I’m struggling to think of a real instance of that).
'You’re wrong, you should be doing it my way, the right way (the essence of many an anti-homosexual argument and certainly this one) is not the exact mirro image of ‘You’re wrong to interfere, just leave me the fuck alone’ (the plea of many a homosexual person).
SHAKES, I have a genetic quirk which makes me different from 98% or 99% of the population. It’s apparently hardwired, and I couldn’t change it if I tried, and believe me, I have. It also makes me unattractive to what’s seemed like a rather large proportion of American men, and I am a most assuredly heterosexual woman. I have been told it is ridiculous for me to expect someone to even like me, let alone love me or want to marry me. I’m not gay, but so help me, I’ve heard similar arguments made against me, and that is, in my opinion, one of the cruelest things you can do to a human being. It nearly destroyed me.
Could you choose to not be attracted to women? Could you be cured of your heterosexuality? If not, then cut out the codswollop about homosexuality being a choice and about curing homosexuals. Does being homosexual make it harder to find a potential mate? Sure, it does, if only by reducing the size of the pool of available potential mates, just as that genetic quirk reduces my pool of potential mates. On the other hand, I wouldn’t trade that pool for a larger one, any more than Sol Grundy or Spectrum or Kung Fu Lola would trade for it. We’ve found people who suit ourselves better than the likes of you would allow us to.
I’ve got news for you, bub. I’m not suited to the white-picket fence, 2.4 kids and a minivan lifestyle. It’s not for want of trying – that’s the default way of life in my hometown and a friend of mine jokes that you are issued the whole kit when you buy a house there. That’s why I left it. Should I, then, not be allowed to love, have sex, or some combination thereof? Should I shut myself off from decent society because I’m some kind of a freak? That’s what that town taught me, and that’s why I’m damn lucky to have lived as long as I have. For years, I thought freaks like me had no business surviving, let alone seeking happiness.
You may think you’re a decent human being, but when you tell people one aspect of them makes them diseased and unfit for the basics of love and marriage you take for granted, in my book, you’re not. One of the finest human beings I know, the guy who helped me survive that hometown is gay. He and his husband have been married for nearly 11 years, and they have one of the best marriages I’ve seen. I’ve said it many times here, and I’ll continue saying it. It may be willful ignorance, but nothing you can say can convince me that he is less moral or less worthy or less healthy than the rest of the people I went to school with. Homosexuality is not a mental illness. It can, however, result in a rather nasty and potentially lethal mental illness called “clinical depression” if people like you keep telling homosexuals and odd ducks like me we have no business hoping for love or marriage because we’re so different.
I read your posts in the thread you started. You may indeed believe you’re not a bigot, but the attitudes you expressed are characteristic of one. People are different from you and want different things. I may not want a white picket fence and 2.4 kids, but I do want to see someone’s face light up when I walk into a room, or spend an evening snuggling on the couch with someone who cares as much about me as I do about him, just as the gentlemen and lady I mentioned earlier do. It seems to be part of being human.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and get ready for just such a person.
CJ