So, like, do we hug now? 
Here is a link to a news snippet which illustrates the sort of equal treatment" and due consideration" our “compassionate conservative” was going to give us for playing nice, giving him a chance, and being quiet.
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/09/092404civServ.htm
It was a blatant attempt to institutionalize and legalize the bigotry that we are sick and tired of. I ask again, where are YOUR facts???
You’ve shown by your post previous to this one that you are beyond rational discussion. I had said this previously but decided to give you the benefit of the doubt when you seemed to want an honest dialog. I was wrong to do so. You are beyond reach. This isn’t to say you’re a bad person, but you are blinded by your own passion and simply aren’t making sense. I bring up your response to my Bin Laden/al-Zarkawi statement as an example. Clearly I was suggesting that an attitude that says there’s no communication and no middle ground is one that leads to conflict and not resolution. Your response was to suggest I’m equating you with mass murderers, therefore I’m simply not going to invest any more time discussing the subject with you. It would be wasted time.
Sure. So, how does that Kumbaya go again? 
The problem is that on this board, there are two different tasks that get done in the Pit, sometimes at the same time. One is argument, and the other is kvetching.
Both of these are perfectly appropriate for us to do: somebody gets kicked, s/he’s going to kvetch in the Pit, and kvetch in loud and vulgar tones, whether it’s about brain-dead co-workers or about a homophobic government. And then people who tell us to suck it up get flamed.
There’s also reasonable argument, and that can happen in the Pit too. That’s where we’re trying to change minds, as opposed to venting.
The problem is when somebody is expecting the one and gets the other. And I think it’s unreasonable to expect gay people (and only gay people, and all gay people) to police their venting, in the Pit of all places, just in case somebody might be traumatized.
I don’t usually go for out-and-out flaming (the insulting kind, at any rate). But it IS pretty stupid to go “I won’t listen to what any of you have to say, nor will I support your equal rights, because that guy over there was rude to me.”
To the OP: Thank you. Jesus wept, thank you. I’m so tired of being expected to “ask” for rights that should be a given. It gives me some hope that a heterosexual person would understand this.
For the love of God, Rosa Parks didn’t say, “I’m going to sit here if that’s okay with you, sir? Do you mind? I’m really tired and everything, and if you really think about it, I was here first. I mean, it’s really not right of you to ask me to move.”
She said, “I ain’t moving.”
Starving Artist, I see the point you’re trying to make – you catch more flies with honey and all that. Truth be told, the same debate comes up constantly in the GLBT community – simmer down, don’t be so faggy, so butch, so queenish, so loud, so offensive, so brash. In other words, homogenize until you don’t seem a threat to the heterosexual world and then they just *might * stop being so afraid and let us have what we want. Sarah Schulman addressed that topic some years back when a group wanted to erect a momument to the Stonewall Rebellion in New York. In actuality, it was a black drag king and several queens who started the fight against the police force, but that was just too scary to contemplate putting up. Therefore, the statue was to be three very white, very non-threatening gay people looking very happy that, y’know, the cops didn’t kick their ass. She said she’d rather have nothing than have that, because at least that way you know what you’ve got.
My point, I guess, is that it’s a trade off – do the shuck and jive shuffle for the majority and maybe they’ll throw us a bone. Too bad that’s goddamn undignified and humiliating, at least to me. Dude, it’s **hard ** to sit and converse politely when people are basically telling you that you’re immoral/wrong/biologically flawed/sick/dirty/depraved, no matter how nicely they phrase it. It’s damn near **impossible ** to be civil and courteous when folks think it’s perfectly okay to dismiss your relationships and friendships and history with a wave of their hand and a sanctimonious sneer. So yeah, I’ll keep yelling at the top of my lungs and shoving back and twisting arms, if I have to, because sometimes people won’t open their eyes until you pull back their lids and shove their face into the sunlight.
There are more of us than you think. I ain’t moving either.
I haven’t really gotten rude yet, I haven’t even started. I stand by what I said. There is no middle ground or dialogue, that didn’t work. The only thing left is to go to the polls and tell various politicians “You’re fired”. Dialogue hasn’t worked. Promises were broken. Politicians tried to roll back the few protections (shams though these protections were) we had. It’s time to show our leaders the door and get new ones. I presented my opinions and a cite. I have my own experiences with keeping quiet and not making waves. Honey isn’t working, so it’s time to let the vinegar flow. Sorry Mr. President, you’re fired. Sorry Senator, you’re fired. See how it goes?
So far, all I’ve been hearing is be nice, play the game, don’t upset people. I suppose though it’s alright for them to upset us with their rules, laws, total lack of respect and all. No one ever got respect by rolling over. No one ever got their due without pissing someone off. You don’t get anything by sitting in a corner waiting, you get things by taking them. So, this year, I will once again be voting against rather than for anyone. Hopefully, this election won’t depend on hanging chads and the Supreme Court.
Exactly. Why can’t you all see that this is the type of approach I’m advocating? She didn’t say, “Fuck you, asshole,” and she didn’t say “Please, sir, may I sit here?” "She said “I ain’t moving.”
See the difference? You can be strong and you can advocate for change without sacrificing your dignity and without adopting a type of behavior that will only antagonize your opponents and lend weight to their prejudiced viewpoints among the fence-sitters.
Here is some of what we are up against, and for fairness I included some postive things from our very own Governator:
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/09/091404CalPart.htm
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/09/092304calHate.htm
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/09/092404gop.htm
http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/09/092404civServ.htm
http://www.365gay.com/opinion/Releases/Releases.htm
The last cite is intriguing. I wonder what would happen if all gay and bi people do this. Would the country finally be shocked back to reality?
This topic makes me angry. I’ve read some heart breaking anecdotes on this site and watched others on the television. I’ve read the threads.
AFAIC if you’re against equal rights for all humans then you’re wrong. If it’s out of religious conviction, political beliefs or just plain prejudice I don’t really care. You’re wrong.
People have been and are being truely screwed by this. It’s very wrong and I can’t see why people would be against equal status under the law I really can’t. It confuses me.
I wish that happened worldwide or at least in the west to start.
Along side continual active and aggressive protests and demo. In this day and age there is no place for such State prejudice.
Okay, right, but what does “I ain’t moving” really boil down to? It boils down to “Fuck this shit, I’m tired and I’m not moving for some racist fuck.” It’s all a matter of phrasing. She didn’t say, “I’m not moving because of _________ and ________ and you shouldn’t want me to move because of __________” which is what you seem to be suggesting we do. She simply said, “I ain’t moving.” I mean, hell, don’t you think that, deep down, Ms. Parks would have loved to tell that man to take a flying fuck on a rolling chainsaw? Fuck yeah, I imagine she would have, but she could have paid with her life for a comment like that, or at least earned a beatdown from the local Good Ol’ Boys. Same with the Freedom Fighters, IIRC. They went into a cafe, sat down and said, “We’re not leaving until we’re served.”
I do hear what you’re saying – I really do. The Civil Rights Movement had graceful and inspiring mouthpieces in MLK and Medgar Evers, and they moved people to compassion (or their fucking common sense, IMO). We have the HRC and GLAAD doing that for us. We also have ACT UP handcuffing themselves to buildings. There’s room for both, and more than that, there’s a **need ** for both. There are two kinds of people in this world, methinks… those who respond to logic and common sense and those you practically have to slap with a clue-by-four. Hell, it took the 101st Airborne to make Arkansas get with the program in 1957. Some people **have ** to be antagonized. Those who won’t let their mental pyramid flip over to a new base have to be shoved.
**Binarydrone **, you have no idea how that makes me (and I imagine all gay Dopers) feel. The constant arguing and persuading and pleading and yelling get so wearisome – it’s really, really nice to know we aren’t in it alone.
Given that this thread was prompted by another specific thread and the comments in it, I’m not sure that this statement* addressed the actual issue of the OP.
I have not seen anyone call for an end to marches, demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience, etc. What I have seen are people who are willing to support the rights of the GLBT communities savaged in this MB when they deviate one whit from some members’ personal desires. I have then seen a few of those people respond to such abuse with “I don’t need this crap.” I would tend to agree with the OP that if a position is morally or ethically correct, it is wrong to decline to support it simply because some supporters are not very nice or coherent. (Do any of the Iraq war supporters or opponents feel they should change sides because Razorsharp or Reeder share their views?)
However, there are a number of issues on which one can take various positions that tend to elicit a fair amount of (unjustified, in my opinion) condemnation. Clearly, the marriage/civil union issue is one. We have several thousnds of years of cultural references to marriage as a heterosexual situation. People who truly support equality for all people may be reluctant to change that cultural meaning. In the linked thread, Bricker has stated that he is 1) in favor of eliminating marriage as a legal act, substituting civil unions for all adult commitments, and relegating marriage to a purely religious, spiritual, or emotional event, 2) in favor of modifying any law that refers to marriage (such as the Federal tax code) to refer, instead, to those civil unions that replace marriage for all hetero- and homsexual commitments, and 3) that he has openly fought against efforts to prohibit civil unions or to exclude homosexual unions from them. For these positions, he has suffered an alarming amount of calumny and abuse, most of them dismissively distorting his actual message in order to portray him as a champion of slavery, gay bashing, and other acts that he would clearly never support.
Similar exaggerated distortions have been hurled in this thread, destroying straw men left and right and doing nothing to persuade anyone on the fence to join the cause.
I understand the emotional reaction to suggestions that not every aspect of gay rights be granted immediately and in the manner that the GLBT communities desire. I suspect that if our culture demonstrated antipathy to some inherent aspect of my being, refusing to protect me from individuals who would harm me and even passing laws to encourage discrimination against me, my visceral reaction would be one of outrage, possibly even violent outrage. However, I am more than simple viscera and I would hope that I would have the sense to see that, strategically, abusing my allies for failing to support 110% of my personal goals might just cost me the support of those allies.
From the perspective of the fence-sitters (or even those who actually tend to support equal treatment of all people), watching threads such as the one linked in the OP is liable to drive them back onto the fence, or, at least to silence. Why should a person who supports 90% of the goals of a group bother to support that group if members of the group are going to rage at them and insult them over the last 10%, even claiming that the 90% supporters are actually 100% opponents?
If we’re going to cut some slack for those in the GLBT communities who rage in emotional anguish, then we ought to cut some slack for those who react to that unjustified rage with emotional outbursts of their own.
- Quote selected as fairly representative of the point of several posters, expressed in a coherent fashion, and not intended to call out chatelaine for special rebuttal.
I’d like to see Starving Artist acknowledge the worthy responses from **Equipoise **and matt_mcl.
SA, at a certain point in any rights struggle, the “oppressed” group must simply come to the realization that such rights are indeed natural an inalienable. They must stop asking to have those rights conferred on them in an act of charity, and instead act from the position that they (we) were born with those rights, and to defend them against such as you and your president.
You must come to understand that you have no real position of power regarding this issue, beyond the power we give you by playing along and asking nicely.
Those rights do not come from you; you have no say in the matter. As each of us comes to that realization and reacts appropriately–you are stealing our existing rights–rather than obsequiously, only thus is progress made.
So I, and many others, will react angrily against your suggestion that my rights should somehow be less than yours.
ISTM that this is as it should be.
I can’t see any way of looking at human rights and dividing them into subsets, such as “straight rights” and “gay rights”, that I am williing to posit as being rational.
It’s not a rational subject, and it doesn’t lend itself to rational discussion.
Exactly! And one type of phrasing is strong and dignified; the other is agressive and off-putting. One is effective at acheiving your goal; the other makes it more difficult. Like you said, it’s a matter of phrasing.
What is the matter with you? You completely ignore my obvious and stated point regarding the manner in which Rosa Parks made her statement, and turn right around and attribute to me an implication that I have flat out said I wasn’t saying! You and those like you have lost all perspective and can’t see things for what they are. tomndebb has a good point just above. Frankly, if I didn’t know gay people who I would like to see living better and happier lives, and if I wasn’t so compassionate as to want true equality for everyone, I would simply tell you all to go jump in a lake. However, I do feel the way I do about these types of issues so I’m still going to support them.
kaylasdad and lissener, your posts came in as I was writing my last one. I have to go now but I do want to address a couple of things you say when I return.
Regards to you both.
Dig a little deeper, solipsist. This board didn’t come into existence the day you signed on.