Sol, I missed your short post (with the link) after the long one until just now rescrolling up to it. I blame Netscape.
Still, it wasn’t in the OP and it is a big cite to leave out. I’ll assume it was an accident, as the hyperbole lable by me was.
Carry on…
Yeh, it’s that pat on the head that really gets our little goat, eh? 
Some day, someone’s gonna try that one more time with me and pull back a bloody stump.
:smack:
Dude. Look at what you just wrote there. Seriously, look at it. I’m not trying to be insulting here, but… damn that’s dumb. I know you mean well and all, I’m not saying that out of anger. Just… look at what you’re telling us not to do, and look at what you’re lauding Ali for doing, and try to understand how you just completely undercut everything you’ve said so far in this thread.
And Sol, sorry to disappoint, but I’m not acting out of complete disinterest, here.
No problem; I blame me for not checking the preview and seeing ETF’s post before I posted my ongoing tirade.
Damn damn damn. I hate when I do shit like that. And I was on such a roll, too.
How to get out of this one without looking stupid… how to get out of this one without looking stupid… Um… it was a pun!
With Mr. Moto, Shodan, Brutus and their ilk on here, you can’t help looking anything short of gloriously brilliant.
Sol, thank you for your post. I don’t imagine it’s an easy thing to bear your soul like that, especially to someone such as me whose generally conservative point of view is widely regarded as being that of someone who is not necessarily symathetic toward gays and/or gay rights. But I am more sorry than I can express with words that you’ve had to suffer the way you have, and while I could take issue with some of the points you raise in your post, I don’t think I’ll say anything else by way of rebuttal. I’ve made the points I wanted to make and it seems the things I’m saying are resonating with you in a particularly painful way.
The things I’ve been said were aimed at the overall tone of the posters to this thread and not toward you or any other person in particular. All I can say is that it has been my experience that the more people can be around gay people and see them for they really are, i.e. normal, the more supportive they are of gay people in general and of the lifestyle they should be entitled to live.
People eventually come around…or at least most do. If Coburn were younger and perhaps had been brought up a little bit differently, he might very well feel differently now. And while I know it’s hard to wait, time is on your side. People used to be scandalized at the sight of racially mixed couples, and some years back a black man was shot and killed by a sniper right here in the city where I live while doing nothing more than walking from his car to a grocery store with his white girl friend.
Thank God this kind of thing seems to be a thing of the past. Most people hardly seem to even notice racially mixed couples anymore, and the more time that goes by, and the more that the old guard either changes its thinking or dies out and the new guard grows into adulthood, more and more will be the number of people who see nothing wrong with it at all and see it just as normal everyday life. It used to be said by blacks that they looked forward to the day when instead of white people seeing them as black people, they saw them instead as people who just happened to be black…the inferrence being that instead of viewing them as people who behave a certain way because of their color, they are just regular people who happen to have a certain skin color in the same way someone else might happen to be blond. And to a great degree that day has arrived.
I’ve seen more than enough to show me that it will be the same with gays as well. But it will still take time. And to the degree that you can show that gays are good and caring and sensitive people, as I’ve found them to be (in other words, normal), the more you will help to disspell prejudice against gays.
I hope you will take my words in the spirit that they’re given. It wasn’t my intent to offend you or to dredge up painful experiences, and while I don’t have the standing to say I look forward as much as you do to the day when being gay simply isn’t an issue, I do look forward to it very much indeed. 
Regards,
SA
I think you (and a great many others here) are taking my words to a ridiculous extreme. I never indicated that a passive and sweet-smiling attitude would get you where you want to go. One can work passionately and determinedly toward gay rights without being aggressively hostile and consumed with hate. To do otherwise is counter-productive in my opinion.
I never gave thought one way or the other as to whether Miller was gay. I addressed him (and you) because it was his post and yours I was responding to.
Well, you probably won’t like what I just wrote in regard to your long post either, but what you view as condescention is my attempt to point that you’re really getting what you want after all. Make of it what you will.
Irony.
Starving Artist, you are irony made manifest. A conservative artist who uses subjective terms like ‘normal’ as if it was a quantifiable absolute.
You find some of us on here, and I am probably one of them, to be angry and shrill. I doubt you really have an idea of what we go through and how difficult it can be to read from multiple people the same justifications for why we aren’t equal or why we shouldn’t be equal.
People who go from the point of clueless to being a Fred Phelps clone expounding in their own ways on either how we supposedly already are equal, or going to the extreme of treating us like subhuman abominations.
But it is more than what goes on here. It is constantly having an aspect of you scrutinized, found wanting by a loud segment of society, and being told how ‘we’ should be handling things by people who often are quite content for us to have nothing.
Grundy is far more reasonable than I am. Even he has been pushed to a point of anger by some of the things said in either cluelessness or outright malice. Then we are told our outrage isn’t deserved, are patronized, and are told to take it all with a smile.
So, Starving Artist… Perhaps you will get this and perhaps you won’t. Still, life isn’t simple and normal is just a word. No one is normal, and we are all entitled to outrage and to speak up when some would come to trample us.
I have to admit I can see how you would come to your point of view, and your take on what I said is rather amusing. But it’s quite the imperfect analogy to compare the one with the other. Do you really mean to say that the gay posters to this thread, who are so filled with bile and hate and insults toward Bush and Coburn, are really just trying to get them mad so as to outfox them?
I don’t think so.
And furthermore, I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do or not to do. I’m just giving my opinions based on my own observations of how I’ve seen things transpire in life.
Heh. That’s okay. Considering my posts in the dating thread, it was an obvious conclusion. If it makes you feel better, you were half right.
I think you’re the one taking things to a ridiculous extreme. “Agressively hostile” (which is redundant, btw) and “consumed with hate”? “Militancy?” In this thread? This isn’t even a particularly heated thread, by Pit standards. Hell, it’s not even a particularly heated thread by MPSIMS standards! This is despite the fact that the Pittee called gays “the greatest threat to our freedoms today.” Which, in the post 9-11 era, is pretty fucking strong language! He just said that gays are worse than Al Qaeda! Are you telling me if someone said that about, say, Repulicans, you wouldn’t be all over their shit? Of course you would! That’s a pretty fucking outrageous insult, and anyone who said it deserves to get jumped on, regardless of their political affiliation. And yet, this thread’s practically a tea party. You even got a post out of Mockingbird where he doesn’t call anyone any names! That’s like peace breaking out in the Middle East! You want passion and determination, well, this is what it looks like. It’s speaking up whenever you hear bullshit like Coburn’s, and it’s not giving up when you get a few concessions.
If you would like to provide me with a suitable alternative I would be happy to use it.
And yes, I know my screen name appears to be in conflict with my conservative leanings. Had I known when I joined on here that I would become involved in so many socio-political slugfests, I would have selected something less bohemian in nature.
Speak up all you want, to me it’s a good thing. And be outraged all you want, too. You don’t seem to be aware of this, but I can easily understand how easy it is for you to be outraged. I just think it’s counter-productive though, and given that I’d like to see the same acceptance of gays (can I use that word, acceptance? You know…being straight and all and finding that whatever word I select by dint of trying to recall words I’ve seen gays here use themselves, it seems there is no word that’s acceptable if it’s me who is talking) in society that you would (and that is what we’re talking about, isn’t it?), I would like to see more productive means brought to bear on the situation.
Regards.
Well, what would those “more productive means” be, then? A political candidate has just called you the biggest threat to freedom in the world. How do you respond to that?
SA: I’ve already used up my posting quota for the day, but:
I do genuinely and sincerely appreciate your concern. But it’s not particularly difficult for me to “bear my soul” like that. For the first time, I’m really, really happy (gay, even) that I can tell people about that. It’s not painful for me, now; I’m glad that I can point at that and say, “Look how stupid I was back then! Look how this can be such a complete non-issue for everyone if they would only wake up and take a look around!”
The only part that’s painful is to realize that this kind of thing is probably still going on for an awful lot of people. And when you’re going through it, it is a pretty big burden to bear, and by definition, you bear it alone. And it’s so completely unnecessary.
I said earlier that you reason with the people who will listen to reason, and you call bullshit on everyone else. The downside to that is that you end up “preaching to the choir.” You have to find the people who are in support of gay rights but maybe not quite enough, and use them as a sounding board just so that the issues can get out there at all. And then that gets interpreted as gay people just itching to dogpile on anyone who dares to disagree with them in the slightest.
I was on this board for a couple of years, from deep within the safety of the closet, and I can see how these posts are perceived. I would read any thread about some gay rights topic, and have the reaction: “Oh great, another gay guy trumpeting the same old Gay Agenda. Of course he’s going to say that; he’s acting out of self-interest. Can’t these people ever talk about anything else? How am I supposed to relate to that?”
Of course I’m not implying that everyone who thinks I’m a big one-note blowhard is somehow a latent homosexual. I’m just saying that sometimes, what people see as the “angry young gay man syndrome” as Jodi described it in one thread, isn’t really anger or violence or an obsession with being gay. It’s just frustration plus the relief of finally being able to speak out about it.
So regards to you as well.
I ain’t normal. Do I get rights or not?
Except that those seeking change passionately and determinedly are too often demonized by those opposing that change as being “aggressively hostile and consumed with hate”. One person’s respectful but firm insistence on equal treatment is another person’s vicious attack on the very foundations of all that’s right and holy. Believe me, I still have painful memories of the backlash that hit me when I politely pointed out that I should receive equivalent pay for equivalent work. The reaction couldn’t have been more outraged if I’d done the asking with a picket sign and an eight-hour polemic.
Yes, I know you don’t feel hatred for gays and oppose their progress, but neither do you understand just how powerful an issue this is. For you, it’s an abstract issue that, heck, will come out okay just because it’s a Good Thing. For those in the trenches it’s a struggle for their very existence.
And anyway, what’s wrong with those of us who care passionately about our rights blowing off some steam about the rabid rantings of a jackass that would eradicate us all if given the chance? That’s about as logical as criticizing blacks for expressing pungent outrage at the KKK. Think about what Miller said. And think about this: Gay folks will do the deciding on what tactics are productive or counterproductive. Not well-meaning but clueless outsiders. Gay folks have done a hell of a lot better since they got militant and kicked down the closet door. So, please, don’t pat us on the head and tell us everything will turn out all right if we’ll just tone it down a little, okay? Because I for one am NOT going to hide what I feel about the Coburns of this world. I am NOT going to give his venomous bile a free pass.
Okay, well, this is just about it for me. You’ve lost all perspective.
In the first place, if he said contact with gays would give you purple hair would that make it so?
In the second place, get real!!!
al-Qaeda is a threat to our safety, not our freedoms. I’m not going to allow myself to inadvertently get manuevered into taking up for Coburn, but yours is an utterly ridiculous assertion. He did not say gays were worse than al-Qaeda, and that’s all there is to it. And as a matter of fact, it’s this kind of ridiculous bullshit that brought me into this thread in the first place. Go ahead, keep this silly kind of shit up and see what kind of credibility you have when you’re trying to convince someone of the need to get rid of someone like Coburn.
So I guess that since this is the same kind of shit that brought me in here in the first place, it seems now appropriate as a good reason to leave. Rave on, see what good it does you. :dubious:
Not if Starving Artist has anything to do with it.
Sol, thank you.
[QUOTE=Mockingbird]
Originally Posted by matt_mcl
I ain’t normal. Do I get rights or not?
You know (yes, I know I said I was leaving. Just cleaning up a few loose ends, or in this loose screws), I’d really like to see a show of hands…okay, posts…as to who here really and truly believes this. So come on, speak up. No long dissertations, no qualilfications or hedging, just a simple answer: Does anyone other than this idiot think I would deny rights to gays?