I have to say, that I am getting pretty fucking tired of this attitude. Here is why:
First, it is not the place of folks that are not a part of the struggle to tell the folks that are how to fight it. Look, I am a hetero white male. I mention this not to establish my non-gayness, but because I want to point out that I understand my place in the scheme of the Gay Rights struggle. I will speak out when confronted with Straight Supremacy. If asked, I will offer my opinion on how to best achieve equality. I will vote for candidates that most closely match the goals of full participation in societies institutions. I will also vote with my consumer dollars for companies that do the same. I will not, however, hold these actions hostage in an attempt to get the justifiably pissed off people that are on the front lines to be polite about it.
As far as I can tell, Equality for minorities is not something that is granted. Rather, it is something that those self-same minorities take from an iniquitous society. In this case, I will support the efforts of my brothers and sisters to take these rights by the means that they see fit, or get the hell out of the way.
You fence sitting so-called moderates make me want to puke.
Well, speaking as one you would probably call a fence-sitting moderate, may I say that your high-handed, holier-than-thou attitude makes me want to puke. Although I haven’t participated in the thread you linked to, I have taken it upon myself on occasion to tell those engaged in the struggle how I think their actions could be harming them in their struggle. In the first place, I have a right to speak my mind as I see fit. In the second place, yes, I agree that minority rights are not something to be granted…but they are not something to be “taken” either. Neither blacks nor women nor gays would have acheived anything worthwhile at all had not a large number of those outside their struggle come to accept that their complaints were legitimate and that they should indeed be accepted as equals by the majority. If absolutely everyone outside the group struggling for equality had dug in their heels and refused to “grant” it, it would not have happened, pure and simple. It was due to laws and legislation that were passed, and rulings that were made, and acceptance in day-to-day life on the part of the outside majority that ultimately allowed these advances in equality to occur.
To the degree that those who are struggling make their cases sympathetically and in a way the majority can identify with, they will advance their cause more quickly. To the degree they put the majority off, it will make their struggle more difficult, and the desired results will take longer to acheive.
And secondarily, regarding your statement that it is not your place as an outsider to tell those engaged in the struggle how to fight it, I would say this is a minority opinion on this board. Plenty of people around here seem to be perfectly willing to tell politicians how to handle their jobs and/or how to run their campaigns and/or how to fight their wars. Why should this struggle be off limits to those not directly engaged in fighting it? Everyone has opinions and everyone has the right to speak their mind. No subject should be off limits in a free society. Yes, no?
Starving Artist, I am not sure how my attitude is coming off as “holier than thou”; indeed (as somewhat of a lefty) I try to avoid that. Be that as it may, sorry to have caused you gastric distress.
Also, I am not trying to state that some subject should be off limits. What I am trying to say is that, when a group of people are engaged in a struggle for equality, it is for that group to determine how that fight should be waged. I see a trend of late where folks seem to be saying that they would support the cause, if only the oppressed group were not so strident. This strikes me ad phony and lame.
I guess what is being said is, all gays should go back to hdiing, blacks go back to the plantation, women should go back to the kitchen etc. News flash - nobody ever got anything by quietly waiting for it to be handed to them. They took it by being loud, aggressive, and pushy. Even 100 years after the Civil War, blacks were still treated like shit until they got angry. Women were almost property until they got angry. Look at the Log Cabin folks. They were"good little children", working to change things politely and quietly from the inside. What happened? They got shit on and are not endorsing the incumbent this time. DUH! Eventually, being sympathetic and polite gets old, and the patience wears thin. We don’t have any secret agenda to steal anyone’s freedom or destroy their marriages, or redecorate their homes, or “convert” anyone. We just want to be left alone to live in peace. Unfortunately, too many people have a problem with that. When it is OK for any jerk off to get on TV and demonize us or make comments about killing us, and others actually do, when we are not allowed the same job protections as anyone else, when some people think it is OK to actually kill us, the time for being nice, patient and sympathetic is over. It becomes time to start talking, campaigning, voting and telling the people in charge “You are fired”. Try going for a while with people freely talking trash about “your kind”, and supporting those who want to “keep you down” and see how patient you are.
Yes, I know that. It’s just that I disagree for the reasons I stated. Progress in equality requires movement by both sides. The minority group must move toward gaining the equality it deserves and has a right to; the majority has to move in a more positive way to adjust its attitudes and behavior toward the oppressed group.
In my opinion, deliberately or inadvertantly adopting behavior that alienates those whose support or acceptance you need to acheive in order to attain the equality you seek is at least counter-productive, if not self-defeating.
Well, perhaps this is where our disconnect occurs. I have not said I would support the cause if only the oppressed groups were not so strident, and perhaps I overlooked that aspect of your OP. I support these causes whether I agree with their methods or not. I interpreted your post to mean that anyone who suggested that a less strident approach might be more effective was being phony and lame, which I certainly don’t consider myself to be. If you only mean to critisize those who would withhold their support pending a less strident approach, I would agree with you and offer my apologies. On the other hand, if you are saying that anyone, supportive or not, who may suggest a less strident approach is being phony or lame, I would continue to disagree as I said above.
SteveG1 and Blalron, I said nothing whatever could even be remotely exrapolated into the types of attitudes and behavior you’re talking about. Unfortunately, there’s just no reasoning with my-mind’s-made-up-don’t-annoy-me-with-facts people like you, therefore I’m not even going to try. :rolleyes:
Yeah, tell me about it but you know what *really *bugs me? Those ball busting bitches that act like they’re my equal! The *nerve *of them! Why, it was only a hundred years ago that we had them in the kitchen where they belonged but now?! They’re everywhere! Even in office!
The world’s gone to hell in a handbasket, I tell you what.
Once again, SA, you demonstrate your ignorance of history.
This kills me.
When does a conservative celebrate liberal ideals? When his power is at stake.
“You must discuss and persuade; make tea and communicate!” WHat a crock of hypocritical bullshit.
A dyed-in-the-wool rightwing nutjob like Starving Artist will only urge caution and compassion when it’s a cause he doesn’t believe in.
“Change slowly and quietly, please, I want to be able to sleep through it. So what if it doesn’t happen in my lifetime? Patience, dear, patience.”
Sorry dude, but that’s not the way it’s gonna happen. It was through interactions on this board that I came to see the folly of polite persuasion in the face of monolithic, stagnant homophobia.
I have been severely taken to task since then for refusing to be polite to homophobes, but that’s the only position it’s possibe to take.
Homophobes–and this includes anyone who is willing to accept a society in which homosexuals have diminished rights, whatever color you paint it–should be as shunned and marginalized as racists.
It’s my recollection (though it could of course be a little of my monomaniacal self-aggrandizement) that I was among the first in these forums to say so. I’m glad to see that in the couple of years since then it’s become a less radical position. But we’re still a long way from when someone like Starving Artist will feel embarrassed to voice such backward thoughts.
“…deliberately or inadvertantly adopting behavior that alienates those whose support or acceptance you need to acheive in order to attain the equality you seek is at least counter-productive, if not self-defeating…”
I don’t get what sort of behavior you talk about. I feel no desire to placate or pander to anyone who thinks I am somehow less worthy than they are. I feel no desire to coddle anyone who is upset by a simple demand for basic respect. Why would I care about alienating anyone who already hates and/or is disgusted by me? Should I make “tea and communicate” with someone like that? There is no communication or middle ground. To obediently accept the status quo and hope some self serving bigoted political hack is going to hand me anything is self defeating. I don’t want or need “acceptance” or “support” of that sort. I would prefer either grudging respect or fear.
False and ridiculous attribution/false and ridiculous analysis of false and ridiculous attribution.
“Rightwind nutjob?” And here I thought we were becoming friends. You make me regret the compassion I felt for you when I offered my previous apology for an insult I came to feel was unintentionally cruel and wrong. Oh well, like they say…no good deed goes unpunished.
Nope. Never said it; never thought it.
No, you’ve been taken to task for being an asshole. A quality in which you excel and which you apparently come by natuarally. If I remember correctly, you even had to start a thread to in order to find out just how much of an asshole you were.
Are you suggesting I said otherwise? If so, you’re even more full of shit than I had thought.
Logic, compassionate motives and a common sense acknowledgement of human nature require no embarrassment.
You (and so far everyone but the OP) have illustrated yet again – and so far it’s 100% so – that rationality can never find a home in a discussion of gay rights.
Okay, I’m going to go against my better judgement and answer you.
Did I say you should? Or is this just the spin you’ve chosen to put on my words? Nowhere did I state, or imply, that you or anyone else should “placate” or “pander” to anyone. Now you can, and probably will, come back with something I said that made you think that, but that’s your interpretation and not what I said, or meant.
I don’t think a “simple demand for basic respect” is what has been under discussion here. It was my impression from the OP that people are out of line when they suggest to certain gays that they should adopt a less “in your face” approach in attempting to acheive equality. A true “simple and basic demand for respect” is exactly what I am advocating. Hate speech and vitriol, which I believe is the type of behavior being defended here, is not.
Because if you don’t alienate them further and push them to an even more opposite extreme, you will have a better chance of converting them in the future. If you don’t care about converting them at some point, you will just make your struggle harder.
Sorry, and I will try not to be disrespectful here, but this “tea and communicate” stuff is from the ether. I never said it, so I’m not going to address it. But to try to answer the question it implies, I’m not advocating that you try to sit down with a homophobe and charm him or her into your point of view. I am simply saying that deliberately antagonizing those whose acceptance you need in order to acheive the equality you are striving for is self-defeating. And some here would say, in effect, “Fuck them! I don’t care about their acceptance. I don’t care a whit about those assholes!” Okay then, for what reason are you marching and lobbying and holding demonstrations? Clearly it isn’t just for yourselves, is it? No, like it or not, you need the support and acceptance of at least a considerable portion of the non-gay population in order to get anywhere, right? So therefore, isn’t it just a little self-defeating and hypocritical to claim you don’t care about what outsiders think when it’s those very outsiders you are attempting to influence?
Isn’t this type of attitude currently being displayed by the like of Bin Laden and al-Zarkawi?
Again, I never suggested this…
nor did I suggest this.
No, you don’t need acceptance or support of that sort, but you do need acceptance and support by those outside the gay community, as I described above, and which again is the reason demonstrations and lobbying are employed in the first place.
These may be what you’d prefer, but they aren’t going to take you where you want to go. And besides, the kinds of things under discussion here aren’t likely to result in either. How is railing about homophobes and what assholes they are going to result in their regarding you with either fear or respect?
Now, having said all this, I believe I’ve said about all I have to say on the subject.
Yes. This is my problem. I seem to se a whole lot of folks that claim that they would be on the side of equality, if only the folks advocating said equality were not so shrill. It is they that make me want to puke.
Thanks for the clarification, Binarydrone. Like I said, I agree with you in this regard. I think it’s wrong, too, for people to withhold support pending a certain type of behavior. The cause can be just regardless of one’s opinion of the tactics used to try to achieve it. I apologize for my misinterpretation of your meaning and for the criticism I levelled at you as a result.
I think we are the ones who have been the target of hate and vitriol. Plenty of people think and ACT as if it is OK to criminalize, demonize, beat up or kill gays. How much more extreme does it have to get? The ones who don’t actually do it, talk as if it’s a good thing to do.
They are already antagonized by our mere existence.
The purpose is to get the attention of people and throw their hypocrisy in their face, to make them think for once. If they don’t change, they (hopefully) get voted out of office forever. If they do change, they have been served notice that someone IS watching them, in case they try to backslide.
As someone who was born and raised in New York I have a “special hate” for bin Laden and Al Queda, I have to say you are way out of line there. I guess now I’m a terrorist and a mas murderer because I simply want to live my life and be left the hell alone? You get a big two thumbs down for that one. You have not convinced me of anything other than you prefer the way things are, and to hell with whoever is getting the short end of the stick. As I thought I had made clear, some of us are sick and tired of waiting for “the great ones who know what is best for everyone” to give us anything. A lot of what you see lately is anger and frustration. We’ve had senators (Phil Gramm, that old senile bastard from North Carolina, etc.) whose only purpose it seems is to attack a group of people they don’t even know because they have always been an easy target. Bush promised in the previous election that he would be a “compassionate conservative” and would uphold everyone’s right to pursue life. liberty and blahblahblah. He courted the gay vote. Then he started doing the exact opposite, whoring his ass to the bigots and bible thumping hypocrites we despise. It’s time for a change.
By the way I’m still waiting for your “facts”. I have mine, based on the experiences of friends, and my own.
“Walk softly and carry a big stick” only works if everyone knows you are willing and able to use it.
