I think what we’re trying to say is that we’re not just looking at you as “That Gay Guy.” But at lissener, a poster at Straight Dope who just happens to be gay.
I personally would be offended if everytime someone talked about me they said, “OH, that’s That Straight Girl”, or that’s that “Catholic Girl,” as if that’s the ONLY thing about me, like I’m not a person, just a big blob of Catholicism.
So excuse ME for seeing you as a PERSON. From now on, I guess you’re just a BIG GAY THING…
*see how silly this is getting?
The Aryan Nation are being sued because they are willing to act on their “bad thoughts.” How would you feel if some group would shout, pointing to you, “There’s a kike. Go get him!” You wouldn’t think about their freedom of speech at that time, would you?
Apologies to any who are offended, but what I’m saying is that the Aryan Nation rhetoric is even less pleasant than the above to Jews, Blacks, gays and others who are non-white. They all but practically declared war on many groups and their perceived sympathizers.
Freedom of speech is not just freedom of POPULAR speech and saying no to UNPOPULAR speech. Sorry, but you take the bad with the good unless you don’t like your own freedoms and look forward to someone taking them away from you.
Yer pal,
Satan
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Freedon of speech does not apply when you use speech to incite unlawul and especially violent acts. The Aryan Nation have a captive audience in their camps from which to espouse their violent rhetoric. Hearing it day and night every day and night without counterbalance will either make one leave immediately or make someone feel like they will have to kill someone. This has been ruled not to be covered by the Constitution.
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Capacitor – not to be a jerk, but can you please provide a link to an online article on this? Sounds worth following up, but I’d welcome seeing some support, and additional background and clarification, for what you have to say. Thanx!
Polycarp, I grovel in the dust before your feet. I made an assumption that was terribly wrong. Beat me like the cur that I am! Oh, do it again! That felt good!
On a more serious tone, again, I apologize for grouping you as I did. I still think the point is a valid one, regarding homosexuality being immoral and holding Xians who hold that view to the same moral standard.
As for Lissener, I feel like I’m betraying a brother, but I have to agree with the others. I can see how he feels that way, but I don’t agree with him. And the point is too minor, in my mind, to keep up this arguement. That’s why I’m sitting on this fence post. snicker
Well, I can’t deny he’s got a point there, and I’ve never quite thought of it that way before.
The only parallel Christians can viably use for the “love the sinner, hate the sin” argument (regarding homosexuality) is “love the alcoholic, hate the alcoholism,” which some might regard as A-OK, but really is quite insulting and demeaning.
I don’t know lauralee well enough to form an opinion about her point of view, and Saint Zero hasn’t impressed me as being all that liberal, but I know Polycarp well enough to say I’m glad he doesn’t agree with either sentiment.
OK, don’t get too patronizing here - passionate or not, he has some good points. God knows you’ve had your own fair share of righteous rage on this very board.
Not patronizing. I pointed out that he is becoming what he professes to dispise because of this rage. Rage to vent is one thing. Rage which changes your views or blinds you to what you really start saying or thinking is unhealthy, IMHO.
Yer pal,
Satan
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I hadn’t intended to post any more to this thread, and I still don’t want to participate any further in the substance of this debate, as I’ve said everything I want to say (and defended it and repeated it and clarified it and repeated it and amplified it and repeated it and illustrated it and repeated it and questioned it and repeated it and answered it and repeated it and annotated it and repeated it), and I don’t want to waste any more of my limited time on this planet debating an issue that is one of extreme import to me every moment of my life with people for whom it is no more than an abstract intellectual exercise.
However, since a great deal of the recent posts to this thread make it clear that my last post included an ambiguously worded statement that was initially misunderstood, and that this misunderstanding has become the basis of much of the subsequent discussion, I just want to clear up one thing:
The RAGE I expressed was not at Lauralee’s opinion, but at her continuing to insist that someone was challenging her right to it. Her opinion ceased to enrage me around about 1982; I have little left for her and her kind but pity and, mostly, apathy. I was just totally last-strawed about having to address AGAIN the issue that my disagreeing with her opinion in any way infringes upon her right to have it. Her insistence on taking this whole exhausting exercise back to square one is what frustrated me, not her self-limiting, universe-narrowing, darkness-dwelling, reality-denying, snake-handling beliefs: those I leave her to gladly.
Upon reflection I regret somewhat the vitriol expressed, still, in my last post. Of course I don’t seriously mean to suggest that I literally believe that Lauralee’s brand of Christianity is indistinguishable from the snake handling sects of the Appalachians.
However, I do mean to express this: I do get angry at people who feel about homosexuals the way she (and others) have expressed that they feel about homosexuals. And I maintain my right to be angry at them, though I don’t seriously claim a “right” to be rude to them. I was not exercising a right, I was just being rude.
I also meant to express (perhaps more subtly than I should have attempted, not being very good at subtlety) that, although I see the distinction between Lauralee’s brand of Christianity and some of its more extreme sects, I consider them to be part of the same spectrum of thought. It is my personal belief that Lauralee’s opinion about my humanity is as archaic and irrational, and as narrow and hypocritical a reading of the central text of her religion, and as willfully blind to the reality of the world she lives in, as the snake handlers’ practices of handling venomous reptiles.
So I apologize to the readers of this thread in general for my framing of that opinion in the form of an insult to Lauralee.
This old horse has a little life left in him; let’s beat him some more. :rolleyes:
Lissener, I think my own point of view was made pretty clear in my response to Freyr towards the top of page 2 of this thread.
I just want to direct you to one post by Lauralee, on page 1 of this thread, which I will quote here:
Except for Fred Phelps and a few of his cronies, and one or two televangelists playing up homophobia for ratings (and donations), no self-described Christian believes homosexual orientation to be sinful in and of itself – except insofar as it fits into the general picture, held by some Christians, of all of human nature as sinful, falling sort of God’s expectations and laws. Actual homosexual relations are considered sinful by Biblically-oriented Christians because they are proscribed in a few passages in the Bible. So are violence, pornography, and a bunch of other miscellaneous things that don’t get brought up. So, for that matter, are wearing clothing woven of two fabrics (Freyr? Esprix? Please note that I’m wearing 100% cotton bikini briefs. ;)) Note that these are rules they subscribe to for themselves. They are not being hypocritical, expecting you to live by rules they don’t. (BTW, from our online acquaintance I doubt strongly if Lauralee has the hots for Anne Heche or something, but what she had to say is that she found homosexuality (meaning, in the context, gay sex acts) immoral for her – she was not prescribing what moral code you ought to follow. And I’m certain she would be the first to say that it would be impossible for you to follow that moral code “without Jesus” – without the strengthening to do so that God will give you, on the traditional Christian understanding, upon conversion and growth in the faith.
Now, your point, reinforced by Freyr, that it is impossible to divorce one’s sexuality from one’s inner self, is a good one. And I for one would find lifelong celibacy very trying if possible at all. Nor am I suggesting that it is something anybody not called to do so ought to have to try. In that I differ from the more conservative Christians. I think that God made you gay for his own reasons, and that it has nothing to do with what his more benighted followers would ascribe to Satan (the guy with the pitchfork, not the music promoter). And I wish you nothing but happiness and joy in your life.
I do think it is quite possible to draw the line between what I can expect of myself, what I think is a good general rule for humanity, and what I expect of you. (On the latter, all I expect is that you read what I have to say and not prejudge me, and that you respect me as someone who may not understand things as you do, but gives trying to do so his best shot.) And the same would go for Lauralee and for yourself. She has a moral code that she lives up to; she is not expecting you to follow it. She mentioned it in response to a question to which she was able to provide the answer – conservative Christian views on gay practice.
Lissener, it may be very trite to use the Clinton line that “I feel your pain.” But I try very hard to be empathic to anyone who expresses hurt and anger about how they have been treated. And I think that ignorance by Chrstian leaders of how gays feel, absolute willful blindness to what is possible and not possible for them, and general discrimination have left you with a major amount of scar tissue that will heal slowly if ever. And I feel absolutely terrible about that. In trying to make the connection between Christians and gays, I wanted both sides to try to see what the other was saying…because neither seems to be listening to the other. And that felches woolly mammoths.
. . . and Polycarp, my lack of response to your posts was not because I didn’t read them, or because I wasn’t “lissening.” It was simply because all of those points have been covered, some more than once, in this thread and the one it sprouted from.
I feel like you’re demanding that I remain on the defensive with this issue on which, frankly, the Xians should be on the defensive. I’m truly tired to my soul of having the burden of proof be on me. They want to distinguish one form of sexuality from another and demand that their 2,000-year-old mythology be the literal and legal basis for the civilization that I live in. They’re the ones who should be marginalized and forced to live in the closet they’ve constructed for me.
My stance of dismissiveness and my indignity at perpetually having to be on the defensive in this issue is that the “issue” is theirs. The sequence of events is this: I am, they disapprove, I point out my humanity. The next step should be that they defend their disapproval, which is of course baseless, but instead we’re perpetually stuck on my defense of my simple, basic humanity. If I appear to attack, it’s because I’m trying to put this ball of theirs back into their court.
From my perspective, my tone is not so much a tone of attack as a tone of simple indignation.
Perhaps in light of this you can see why I feel like your suggestion that I be more “accepting” of their beliefs is ludicrous. Of course I’m “accepting” that other people will have opinions that differ from mine, so in that sense I’m “accepting” of their differences. But asking me to be more “accepting” of that particular “opinion” is akin to asking a black man in 1960s Alabama to be more “accepting” of the KKK’s “opinions.” (And as loathe as I am to mention WWII Germany in a levelheaded debate, please imagine yourself asking a Weimar Jew to be “more accepting” of the “opinions” of the National Socialist Party. I recognize the discrepancy of degree in the two examples, but I hope you’ll recognize the parallels of societal exclusion.) Insofar as a person’s “opinions” support a political culture that does not recognize my equal standing as a citizien, I will “accept” that they exist, but I will continue to be indignant about it, and I will continue to actively fight to push those “opinions” back into the closet where, in an enlightened society, they should be. Just as we as a society have marginalized white supremecists, antisemites, and all “opinions” supporting prejudice against any such segment of society, I will continue to fight to include homophobes among that group. I will not fight to prevent people from having those opinions, but I will fight for a society that recognizes those opinions as unenlightened and inhumane.
Polycarp, I wrote my last post before reading the one you posted while I was writing it.
Let me just put forth my bottom line:
Despite your thoughtful tone and careful consideration, as far as I can tell there is one major point that I feel we will never agree on. You (and many others) seem to believe that the “opinions” of the Xians in this debate regarding their own moral choices are harmless to me. I fully agree with their right to hold such opinions, but we will never agree that they are harmless to me.
I live in a society that uses those opinions as justification for excluding me from full participation as a citizen of this country. In this way, they are, in a very real way, harmful to me.
So I will continue to be unable to see these opinions as being as innocuous as most other opinions. I support their right to these opinions, and I do distinguish them from actions based on these opinions, but it is my duty–if not to my community then at least to myself–to continue to “preach” against these opinions. It is my duty to myself to continue to try to change the cultural fabric that implicity condones those actions that we all agree are not specifically at issue here, but are very real issues in the real world.
This is not to say that I hold Lauralee (et al) personally responsible for, e.g., Matthew Shepard’s death; not in any way. But I hold the culture responsible for the pervasive feelings of prejudice and mistrust of homosexuals, and I hold Xianity partially responsible for that culture. I don’t hold any individual Xian responsible for today’s culture, but I do hold individual Xians (among others) who maintain such opinions, responsible for the perpetuation of this culture, and for a failure to address its need to change.
So in a very real way your asking me to be more accepting of those opinions is to ask me to be more accepting of the status quo, which I refuse to do.
I will agree on their rights to such opinions.
I won’t leave such opinions unanswered.
Last I checked, OPINIONS were not ACTIONS and the two should not be confused for one another.
Admittedly, one must first have an OPINION which causes them to take an ACTION. But an OPINION which does not result in any action has never hurt anyone.
In my opinion, of course…
You are certainly entitled to your OPINION as well. Has anyone disputed this?
Yer pal,
Satan
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