No, being born gay isn’t a choice.
Being an intolerant bigot is.
So, you could make another choice and you CHOOSE to be an asshole bigot.
I understand what you’re saying, and I thank you for enlightening me. Yes, it must be frustrating when you are surrounded by people who don’t seem to feel any great concern.
However, you are not suggesting that this is the case here, are you? Do you think that nobody here is “backing up” gay people? Are we all sitting back, complacent and silent?
How is it useful (or beneficial, personally) for spectrum to nut out? Would it not be better for him and his blood pressure if he expressed his outrage in a little less extreme manner?
As a newcomer to this Internet discussion forum, I was interested to read a comment that SDMB was considered by some people to be a liberal’s domain, even pro-gay, if I remember correctly. My first impressions have been rather different: to me it seems very American, where that is meant as objectively as possible, even positively in many ways. Which just goes to show that different people will judge its ‘core values’ in different ways.
With regard to the current debate, a number of ponts are raised. First, this is not a gay message board, and therefore by definition people who write here will come from a range of backgrounds, some of which will not share the same viewpoints. Specifically, a lot of people here will hold Christian views of various hues, some of which will reflect/interpret the Biblical position on homosexual sexual activity.
While we are all under an obligation not to attack another poster personally (at least in GD), there is no obligation not to attack his or her position by making one’s own points as vigorously and rigorously as possible.
Those who support the views of a particular poster are placed in a different position from that they would be in in a gay forum by dint of the fact that proponents of differing views will inevitably put forth their arguments in discussions on this board. *There * succour, support and advice may be offered in a supportive environment. Here a plurality of different ideas and persectives will jostle in a competitive and open environment. Some of them might even have merit.
The greatest merit of critical rational discussion, though, is, as Popper put it, is that it allows the protagonists’ ideas to die in place of the protagonists themselves. It is the best alternative to violence that ‘man’ has invented. If it puts people in a quandary from time to time, caught between their natural affiliations and their desire for the truth, then it’s performing its task.
:dubious: dude where are you get’n that I’m’ saying being gay is a choice?
Then dude, I’ll be straight with you. Or at least, honest. I don’t fucking understand you. At all. It’s like I already said in the other thread:
If someone is trolling, just trying to piss people off, then they usually just drop their bombs and run instead of keeping it going, and they usually don’t hang out in the other parts of the board. So the only alternative is that you’re saying these things and you honestly don’t understand how deeply offensive they are. That you’re genuinely surprised that people take offense when you tell them that they are diseased and are incapable of understanding true love.
Either way, the result is the same: there’s nothing I can say to that, and it’s pointless for me to get worked up and try to argue it. You’re lost, and nothing that I say will ever make you understand how just plain fucking wrong that is.
The difference is that one of those alternatives, I can handle. There are plenty of morons who are so lonely that they get their pathetic kicks out of getting people all worked up over the internet. I’ve seen them, and they’re easily dismissed, I just have to kick myself for being naive over taking the bet. The other alternative is too horrible for me to think about.
Your having asthma is a disability. Sucks, but that’s the way it is. My being gay does not ever leave me unable to breathe (unless I get too pissed off arguing about it with someone), it does not prevent me from getting up stairs, I don’t have to use a Gay Inhaler, in fact I’d say I’m better able to use a gym than you are. My life is in no way impaired simply by my being a homosexual, I don’t want it to just go away, and I sure as fucking hell am not unable to understand “real” love.
You listen to some asshole come online and tell you that it’s a fucking pity you can’t ever know what true love is like because women are turned off by your constant wheezing. And then tell me that you wouldn’t get pissed off. And that you’d be at all concerned that they were “just starting to like you.” Jesus, do you really not understand how grossly offensive that is? I grew up in Georgia, and I think I heard just about every nasty, hateful, just plain evil thing that was ever said about black people, and I still never heard any bigoted idiot say that black people were incapable of love.
I said it before, and I mean it this time: I’m DONE. Seriously. You want to learn more about the fascinating world of homos, read a fucking book about it. Or go to any one of the gajillion posts mentioned in this thread.
SolGrundy - sometimes, people are so moronic that it sort of turns in on itself and you can’t do anything about it, because everything is filtered through their moron-coloured spectacles.
I have to say that I understand spectrum very well. The idea that people are DEBATING about your private life is too bizarre for words. And mediaeval.
It might be sensible to react calmly - again and again - but I ‘get’ it, when you explode.
Enough is enough.
Sexual attraction is like any other attraction. It is an electro-chemical bath born of synaptic discharges. I suppose I could choose to eat seafood, but I certainly am not attracted to it and following through on my choice would be unpleasant. It is the same with you, Shakes and Bodswood. You could choose to French kiss a man but you do not because the set of brain chemicals produced from sexual attraction do not occur when you do. What you must come to understand is that the exact same brain chemistry that occurs when you have sex with a woman occurs when a homosexual has sex with a man. It is a matter of attraction, not action. As far as a spiritual interpretation, Jesus teaches that flesh is born of flesh and spirit is born of spirit. There is no life in the atoms. Brains and their chemicals are made of atoms. Stop attaching so much importance to them. One thing you CAN choose is to stop looking for the living among the dead. Many homosexuals will enter the kingdom of heaven before we do, and it will be because they followed our Lord’s commandment to love. Jesus never tattooed a pink triangle on anyone.
Liberal, great post. Thank you.
Well Sol I tell you right now I am definately not trolling. I been here for nearly three years, if I was really a troll I think I’d be long gone by now.
Now, I wont lie to you Sol if you were to come down here to Dallas you’d find out that I have no shortage of people here that would consider me a complete ASSHOLE. But then again you’d find no shortage of people that think the world
of me. 99% of the time when people think I’m an asshole; it’s becasue of situations like the GD thread you refer to. If people want to know whats on my mind or what I think I’m gonna tell’em and I’m not gonna beat around the bush about it. That is to say I wont back away from certain topics (even if I know my views are going to piss people off) just for the sake of being pollite. Maybe this is a character flaw, I don’t know, you decide.
What I don’t get is why do people get SO pissed off on what my views are? I know I don’t give a shit about what other peoples views are. I mean they’re sometimes intresting to hear but if I don’t agree with it; it’s not going to get my blood pressure going. So why are people so offended by mine.
To me this is why there is so much animousity that goes on in this world today. I mean surely we have to all understand that we can’t all come to a common ground on our personal beliefs. If only peole could learn to accept that and just know (as pragmatic as it sounds) that whats really important is that we treat each other civilly.
So yeah, I make no apologies for what MY beliefs are. But for what it’s worth I wish You (SolGrundy, Mangetout, spectrum and everybody else I pissed off that thread there very best in your ventures. I hope this isn’t comming out as sarcastic because I’m being very sincere.
I guess I should apologize for the hijack too… :smack:
I understand you, spectrum. Believe me, I do. I know exactly where you’re coming from. I don’t want to have to lower myself to debate with these pieces of trash.
But we do.
We could kill them, but it wouldn’t help. We could harass them, but it wouldn’t help. We could legislate against them, but it wouldn’t help. We could do almost anything we wanted, but it wouldn’t help. We have to try and reach them. That’s the only way we’ll ever get them to come around. That’s the only way we, or our children, or our children’s children, will ever have the opportunity to live in the kind of world we want, where they can love whomever they want.
It’s a hard path to walk, but it’s the one that gets results.
The answer is simple, horrible and utterly unsatisfying: because it’s still socially accepted, in wide circles, to be “against” homosexuality. That’s why we need to have this debate. We need to make more people get it, so that one day it won’t be socially accepted to be “against” homosexuality. Then we can breathe flames at the motherfuckers all we want.
I haven’t been through what you’ve been through, and I won’t pretend that I have. I’m from Sweden, for starters, which is much more gay-friendly then the US. I’m bisexual, not homosexual, and have only ever had two serious relationships, both with women. My parents have never called me a pervert or disowned me. I’ve never been the victim of gaybashing. I do get incredibly, insanely, blood-burningly, heart-achingly angry, just like you do, but it doesn’t hit so close to me. Maybe that’s why I can look at it this way.
But please, spectrum, try. You want to make homosexuality accepted, you want people to get it, and you’re not doing that. Your anger is perfectly justified, but it’s not doing your cause any good. So try.
By the way, I’m fully in favour of matt_mcl’s plan.
Is there a part 5? I linked to the first four above (post 307). I didn’t know there was a V. Do you have a link?
You should apologize for breathing.
You have made it clear that you care nothing about the views and experience of others. Further, you have made it clear through your smug and self satisfied bigotry that you like to piss people off to support your pathetic illusion that your heterosexual(theoretical I’m sure) life is superior to that of any one in a same sex couple.
You work to be offensive, pretend to be shocked when people are offended and pissed off, and then try to placate people with your pseudo naivete and immense stupidity.
experiences nuclear meltdown
Oh, don’t even give me that! Because you’re telling us that we, personally, are diseased! That the part of us that makes us able to love is a birth defect! That I ought to have the aspect of my life that’s provided more joy and more development and more growth than any other medically removed!
Christ, have you read anything that anyone’s written here? Listen, I know this is a subject removed from your experience, and that straight people interpret their sexuality differently than we do, but can you grasp the notion that you are talking about people’s lives here? You’re talking about my life, my future! You’re telling me it’s a sickness! How shouldn’t I be pissed?!
Nah… the condom company should apologize for the pinhole that allowed him to get through and the rest of the sperm for being too slow.