*Originally posted by dogsbody *
**Again, december, your source is rather plainly biased. Please find a cite (or site) that deals with the subject in a neutral fashion, one that discusses the facts without throwing rhetoric around and thatagrees with your conclusion, and then I might agree you’ve got a case.
For one thing, I’d like to see an image of these so-called “posters” in place and to scale, so we can see just how blatant their presence is. According to one of our other posters, the safe-zone markers is usually a sticker in the window.**
Yes, my source certainly is biased. I used the word "allege to question its reliability.
DB, I’m not particularly passionate about this issue. Hastur questioned whether gay pride t-shirts were encouraged and whether the homophobes had won a court case. In order to try to inform him, I provided some information.
I do have a passionate concern about the schools, which can be found on the “fixing inner city schools” thread.
So, is your passionate concern for the students or for the heterosexuals?
You stated that Gay Pride shirts were encouraged. As you cannot back that up with a citation, you have stated something untrue. With your other statements, even using the word alleged, you come off as being anti-gay.
All students should be safe from harassment. All students should be honored in their diversity. One bigot who wishes to cause a problem should be singled out.
Hastur – I had a feeling that this is where you were coming from. I stupidly thought I was doing you a favor in providing a cite that you had asked for. Sigh!
It’s amazing to attribute prejudice to reporting the content of something I read. Even if my memory was imperfect, that’s not proof of homophobia.
My not providing a cite isn’t logically equivalent to my statement being untrue.
This “gotcha” approach is ridiculous. If one wanted to play the game of “proving” bigotry by taking words out of context, one could read Hastur’s first comment to imply that gays are bad students. Let’s get real!
Getting Serious
I believe it’s a* fact* that some gay activists are “pusing the envelope” in a way that’s riling up homophobes. However, in my opinion, pushing the envelope may be nevertheless appropriate.
I have no patience for a school of “tolerance” that considers it evil to mention certain facts. (E.g., recall the flap over a recent book about African-Americans’ success in athletics.) IMHO it’s unhealthy for society to ignore reality.
Spare me the righteous indignation. You were asked for a cite, failed to provide one that supported your assertion that Gay Pride shirts were encouraged, and were called on it.
You can save the sigh. By not providing a cite, that does make your statement untrue. My remarks could in no way be construed to imply that gay people are bad students.
Seems to be that if they’re not offering equal time to the “heterosexual lifestyle” by also offering “safe zones” for kids to talk about heterosexual sex without fear of retribution, then they’re “promoting homosexuality”, just a tiny bit.
How about a cite from Elliot’s peer group (more or less), the University of Minnesota’s newspaper?
And, er, I’ve been sitting here reading what other people in the world have to say about Elliot Chambers and his shirt, and the consensus, in student newspapers and on other message boards, is that he’s not “one bigot who should be singled out”, but rather just a sophomore in high school who was upset by what he perceived as a strongly pro-homosexual bias in his school, which went directly against what he was being taught at home.
If “all students should be safe from harassment” and “all students should be honored in their diversity”, shouldn’t the straight students be free from harassment, and honored as well as the gay ones?
What would be your response if a conservative religious high school sophomore got upset by what he perceived as a strongly anti-God bias in his school (no praying, etc.) and decided to wear a “Smile if you love Jesus” shirt to school? Should the school make him take it off, as it might offend some of the atheists? Does it make him a “bigot who should be singled out”?
What if his whole family was killed in the Holocaust, and the school was allowing a neo-Nazi club to meet (just another club, right?), would he be “just another bigot to be singled out” if he wore a shirt with a swastika in the middle of one of those big red “NO” circles? Couldn’t it be argued that by allowing the neo-Nazi club to meet on school grounds, the school was promoting them?
Spoofe… not only does that not have relevance in here, your remark is inappropriate. For someone who has criticized me for bringing things into threads that were carryovers from other threads, you are being a massive hypocrite.
Whatever do you mean, Hastur? I simply pointed out that you can’t declare someone else’s comments to be “false” simply because they can’t provide evidence for them. I mentioned the thread in which this was being discussed… heck, I can go find a link to it if you want.
DDG your arguement does not hold water as it misses a very important fact. A closer anology than yours would be:
If a neo nazi went to school and percieved “a strong jewish bias” so far that they even believed in the holocaust and had meetings to talk about this without fear of harassment! That student wants to wear a shirt proclaiming his hatred of jews, should the school make him take it off. This is an obviously pro jewish school.
Now thats not exactly the same as I doubt jews would be harassed for being jews in todays enviroment. However it is alot closer than yours. To not tolerate hatred of gay people does not automatically mean the school is pro gay(unless you have a problem with people being gay and think that they shouldn’t exist).
You’re right, my analogy breaks down somewhat. However, your analogy is not 100% correct either, sorry. Wearing a T-shirt that says “Straight Pride” in the middle of a group of people who support gay-ness doesn’t necessarily mean that the wearer hates gays. It just means that he’s promoting his own lifestyle. In order to see it as “gay bashing”, you’d have to meet the person who was wearing the shirt and find out what his agenda was. Clearly Elliot’s agenda wasn’t “I hate gays”, but rather “I prefer straight”. And couldn’t this be viewed as “just another lifestyle option”?
I’m sorry everyone seems determined to extrapolate hatred of gays from this one IMO fairly innocuous T-shirt. You can be a conservative Christian and disapprove of homosexuality and still not hate gays.
I think a better analogy would be if a person walked into a meeting of the African Violet Society of America wearing a “Go Gloxinias!” t-shirt.
Or a Cubs bar wearing a Sox t-shirt. Does it mean he hates the Cubs? Or just that he prefers the Sox?
To me I don’t see how you can see this after reading their website. Being a part of the KKK is also a lifestyle option. They claim that they don’t want gays to exist. Nazies only wanted Jews out of their country because they dissaproved of them. Nazies could want to get rid of Jews one way or another and not hate them. Likewise people like Elliot could try to make gays not exist and not hate them.
Clearly Elliots agenda was not “I prefer straight” but “I hate gays” because the only refrences to being straight on that website was to claim that being straight is right and gay is wrong. Like a one way sign thats only refrence to being straight is to claim its the only way.
Really I don’t see anything on the website that has to do with being straight. Just stuff that has to do with attacking gays.
My guess-he wore the shirt to annoy people, like many teenagers. Personally, I would’ve ignored it, if that was all he did. He just wanted to get a rise out of people. At least, that’s MY theory. I could be wrong.
