Yeah, um…
What a bigoted moronic response to an issue with extreme consequence. Just claiming you are gay in certain countries is an offence punishable by death!!!
The amount of hate and vitriol I want to fling at you can’t be captured on this page, because I have too much respect for TSD to sully it’s forums with you trying to defend this horrible comment.
Yes, because it’s so much more constructive to fling hate and vitriol than to sit down and explain how sexuality fits quite nicely within the purview of equality and sociology. Seems to me that if you did respect TSD you would have gone that route instead of where you choose to go.
Your response seems extreme. FWIW I agree with the point you responded to. In most of the western world (the world in which Terry exists) homosexuality has minimal consequences and levels of acceptance and tolerance are moving in the right direction. On an individual basis I can see it being a source of misery and persecution, for (U.K.) society at large? definitely not top of the list.
In any case, homophobic/racist/sexist/species-ist are all part of the same bundle of prejudices and human frailties that Terry Pratchett comes back to time and time and time again. Though he touches upon sexuality here and there as a part of the wider human condition to have a specific full storyline about it would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Why focus on the discrimination due to sexual preference when one has a full spectrum of special discrimination to play with?
In fact I’d go further. He does homosexuality a favour by treating it as “no big thing” just another facet of being human (or troll, or dwarf, or vampire or Nobby).
From what I know of his work and his personal convictions he strikes me as a strong humanist and that outlook is mirrored in his treatment of this and many other issues.
He is certainly married and probably finished writing. I just saw a film on assisted dying he narrated as he is entering the largely unknown world of the Alzheimer’s victim. The sad thing is that, although assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, he won’t want it until he has lost marbles and, at that point, it won’t be allowed since you must be of sound mind to choose it. You cannot give an advanced directive. But he mentioned that his wife declined to be in the film.
Snuff very much had the feeling of being finished by someone else - much of it, especially toward the end read to me like someone influenced by Pterry, but not the man himself. I was wondering about 2/3rds of the way through how much of the actual writing he did. It made me sad, and that will probably be the only Discworld book I will never read again.
How many times do I have to scroll down the front page of Cafe Society before I finally STOP being struck by the initial thought that this will be a Pee Wee’s Playhouse Thread.