First of all, pervert, the idea of scholarships for homosexuals seems silly to me. But if such a thing were offered, these days it would be more a reward for the courage of living openly as a homosexual than actually being gay. In the ideal future where homosexuality is no more nor less than heterosexuality, such a scholarship would be more difficult to administer fairly, but would also be totally unnecessary.
I want DOMA struck down, if that’s what you mean. Human rights are not special rights, and I don’t want the law changed as much as I want equal protection. You get legal recognition of your relationship and I don’t. That’s not equal protection. In 1967 it was illegal in the state of Virginia for interracial couples to marry–would you have denied them the rights a white couple would enjoy, employing the same argument? Should Loving vs Virginia be overturned, since that was accomplishing by judicial means what could not be done with legislation?
If you oppose gay marriage, you are denying me equal protection under the law.
pervert, in the improbable situation that I was called on to administer a scholarship for gay students, I would (given our current social climate) be inclined to believe on face value anyone who is willing to declare themselves to be gay. The social stigma of being gay is pretty severe and few people would be willing to declare themselves to be gay just for a shot at some money.
If the social stigma changes so that false declaration becomes a problem, there will be far less need for such a scholarship.
I’m assuming this is a “redress of inequity” type of scholarship. If it’s a “just-like-me” type of scholarship, than the principal donor’s wishes (as set forth in the trust’s organizing charter) will control the decision making process. If the charter requires applicants to provide a videotape of them engaged in gay sex, then that’s what will be required.
I wrote a longer response to lissener which the hamster ate. So let me sumarize for him and you [BKellyM**. I’m sorry for the hijack. It appears that a simple declaration would suffice for you. In which case it does not help me to understand the non sexual part of being gay which a youth could understand. I guess I was hoping for some other way to “tell”.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “redress of inequity” I think that most scholarships for special interest groups are silly. I was refering to specific finalcial aid packages I ran accross several years ago. I did find a case in Massachusetts where the money was intended to help students who had been cut off as a result of coming out.
Let’s see if I understand your post.
[ul][li]The first point hasn’t been addressed at all in this thread, because it wasn’t made in this thread. If you are going to start lots of stupid, ranting threads, don’t get pissy if I can keep track of them and you can’t. [/li][li]As far as I can tell, you are getting your knickers in a twist at me for not responding to points that you didn’t really mean. Since you are now claiming “Just kidding!” about your jokes about violence and failure as a parent. Which leaves unanswered my response, which was if you thought that jokes and hyperbole were appropriate responses if your kid tells you he is gay. [/li][li]And, again as far as I can tell, you also didn’t mean that you would assume that your kid is brainwashed if he said he had become a fundamentalist. Very good, but perhaps you could have said something to that effect when you posted what you claimed your response would be. [/ul] [/li]So you are essentially ranting about my response to points you never made, or didn’t mean in the first place. Is that about the size of it?
You aren’t exactly covering yourself in glory in this thread, lissener. If you would like to talk about orientation vs. choice, either read what I posted above, or go over to the other thread you started and read what I posted there.
Or not. I can’t say I am waiting breathlessly for your next occasion to embarass yourself in public.
I can’t control what assumptions you care to make. As I said in a different context, knock yourself out.
Yes, that is what I meant. What you want is not that current law be applied on your behalf - exactly the opposite. You are asking that current law (specifically DOMA) not be enforced, and that there be a major change in the interpretation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
That is an assertion, rather than a settled or established principle. Whether or not it is “egregious hypocrisy” to treat it as a proposition rather than self-evident truth is not for me to judge.
Probably a topic for a different thread. God knows some here at the SDMB are having enough trouble keeping them straight (sorry) as it is.
Regards,
Shodan
And I say again that DOMA is an unjust, unconstitutional law. Would you advance the same argument against desegregation, which was also, in your view, “asking that current law not be enforced, and that there be a major change in the interpretation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution”?
And how do you define “assertion” and “settled principle”? Every other principle that we accept as bedrock truths was first advanced as a novelty by intrepid pioneers. That you sneer at these truths as “assertions” affects their validity not one jot.
pervert wrote:
Sexual orientation is not a decision in the first place, pervert; it’s something that one notices about oneself. When I noticed that I “liked boys”, that was sufficient for me to identify attraction to males as a component of my orientation. As of the moment, I cannot say conclusively that I am not bisexual; however, given that I do not find women in general attractive, nor have I encountered specific women that I find attractive, I consider it at the moment the way to bet. The only “decision” is “Does the fact that I’m female and apparently exclusively attracted to men mean that I’m what’s called ‘heterosexual’?” and that’s, basically, a decision to look in a dictionary.
It’s a little frustrating to answer a question about the sort of understanding I would have had at the age of eight using the understanding as best as I can reconstruct it and the conceptual structure that was available to me, and getting a complaint in response about the phrase “like boys”. That’s the understanding I had at the age you were asking about. That’s the comprehension that was there, and how I would have put it if someone had managed to persuade me to talk about at it at the time. (I likely would not have done; it wasn’t the sort of thing that was done to admit in that age group, and my observations of adult responses to such emotions in reality and fiction suggested that they would just be patronizing.)
It’s quite possible. On the other hand, as I mentioned, the non-mainstream aspects of my sexuality persisted quite happily through to adulthood and a timeframe when I found words for them. I was never confused by them, though I had no referents for them in expressed norms around me; they were just true.
A question for you: If a child admitted to you an attraction to members of the opposite sex, would you doubt their self-identification?
Sorry. I mispoke. I have tried not to imply that homosexuality is a choice. I must have missed this one. I was only talking about the decision to identify onself as a particular sexual orientation.
Once again, forgive me. I was not trying to attack your use of words. I certainly was not trying to suggest that you were inadequate in any way for using ““like””. It is exactly the term I would have used as well. My only complaint was about the vagueness of the term. My issue involves the ability of a child to understand these issues sufficiently. And I think our language, as a tool for discussing this issue, is not “user friendly”.
As you say:
I agree. It is not something which is talked about much. Which is another aspect of the problem. It isn’t talked about, so we don’t develope the skills, concepts, and words necessary to talk about it. Kind a viscious circle.
It’s a little frustrating for me as well. I am trying to develop a plan to deal with the possibility contained in the OP. Not because I think it is likely, but because I think understanding the principles involved would be helpful generally.
It would depend on the way the question was asked. For instance:
<from a son Let’s say 11 yr old>
“Dad, I just like to play with the girls.”
“Dad, I don’t like the boys very much.”
“Dad, I’d rather spend time with Suzy.”
Are all quite different from:
“Dad, I’d like to have Sex with Suzy.”
“Dad, how can I get girls to have sex with me?”
And this is the crux of my problem. And 11 year old claiming to be gay is not suggesting that he likes to play with other boys. He is not suggesting that the girls don’t play fair. He is in fact suggesting that he wants to have sex with boys. <Again, unless there is some other aspect of Homosexuality that I am missing> And I don’t think an 11 year old has the emotional and intellectual maturity to decide who he wants to have sex with.
Would you say that my nine-year-old self would have been talking about fucking if you’d been able to persuade her to talk about that classmate?
Or would you recognise that the draw of the desire for partnership, the appreciation and intimate joy in another person’s existence, perhaps a preoccupying aesthetic appreciation, the draw of a desire to spend time in that person’s company into the intermediate future, possibly even sketching out futures in which that was accomplished in dreams and desires, and all of those things are more likely?
If you’d hold that I would have been talking about fucking, you’re dead wrong. If you’d allow that the list of things cited are actually plausible, I see no reason not to presume that those things are the case for boys who like boys as much as they are for girls who like boys.
Yes. This is exaclty my issue. I would not assume that a young persion was talking about sex. This is why I have trouble getting my mind wrapped around the concept of “coming out” at 11. I have a disconnect in my visualization of how this could happen. I don’t see how an 11 yr old could be talking about his sexual preffernce in terms of sex. But I also cannot see how he can “come out” without implying exactly that kind of sexuality.
If that youth said something like “Dad, I’m gay.”? What does he mean besides sex?
I guess what I’m saying is that when a young boy wants to spend time with a female friend it is easy to see how “like” can evolve into a more sexual relationship over the years. It just seems more difficult to understand how a boy spending time with other boys can develop into a sexual relationship over those same years. It seems incongruous somehow.
Pervert, when I realized I was gay, it wasn’t because, at eleven, I decided I want to fuck boys.
My dad played professional sports. I remember, at four years old, being in the lockerroom, and being hypnotically fascinated by the naked men. I remember, at five or six, finding my dad’s Playboys. There were only a couple photos of naked men in one of the issues, but I kept returning to that; I was not drawn at all the images of the naked women. In first grade, at age 6, I had a serious crush on a boy named Wesley. I never developed such a crush on a girl.
At eleven I was sent to a boys’ boarding school. We all took showers together. I could never understand why this made me feel so funny, in a good way, but also in a scary way. I fell in love with a boy named Jeff. A boy named Ed came home with me one weekend, and we had to sleep in the same bed. I was powerfully drawn to him and did not know why I simply wanted to put my hand on his leg as he slept.
Meanwhile, all around me at school, the other boys were calling each other faggot and queer and homo. I gradually came to learn what they meant by those words. And I gradually came to learn that they were talking about my secret desires, which till then I had not known were “wrong.”
I struggled for years to “change.” Meanwhile continuing to get crushes on boys, and never on girls. (My next school, though also boarding, was co-ed.)
I had no one to talk to about these things. When I was 11 I talked to my mom about them (parents divorced previous year). She was horrified and cried for hours. I never brought it up with her again, but she never acted the same to me after that. I have not lived at home since I was eleven.
What about the son who says “I want to hold Billy’s hand. I want to kiss Billy. I want to sit beside Billy on the bus and in class. Why do I like Billy so much?” Are those plausable? Are you going to tell me 11 year-olds don’t hold hands or kiss?
pervert, why are you considering “I like boys” to be a qualitatively different statement from a male child than it is from a female one?
What would you presume that an eleven-year-old girl who admitted a crush on a male classmate would mean by it?
Presume that an eleven-year-old boy who admits a crush on a male classmate means the same things.
There isn’t some secret meaning to homosexuality. There isn’t some secret meaning to heterosexuality. People fall in love, and when they do, people want to be close to each other in ways that they think are reasonable. Congratulations! There’s the secret decoder ring.
Because they are. Let me expand the cases a little.
Gay boy says: ‘I “like” boys’.
Straight boy says: ‘I like boys.’
Gay girl says: ‘I like boys.’
Straight girl says: ‘I “like” boys.’
Are you saying that all of these children mean exactly the same thing? If so, then ok, I obviously don’t get it and will seek enlightenment. If not, then I am trying to understand the difference. Especially the difference which might be apparent to someone else (the child’s parent for instance).
Odds being in my favor, I would assume that she is begining to experience attraction to the opposite sex and is struggling to understand it. I might also assume that she was exceptionally insightful to realize that her experience was a crush.
Well, I would not have lumped all of those statements in the same catagory. I think that your second sentence is a qualitatively different question. Specifically, all of the others could be asked by straight or gay people and mean exactly the same things. I’m not sure that the second one has the same quality. Perhaps I should have added a third catagory to my earlier post inbetween the two I mentioned.
I am truly sorry to hear that you were treated so badly.
Doesn’t the quote suggest that at 11 you were not 100% sure? Seriously, I’m not trying to get you to admit that homosexuality is really a choice, and I don’t mean to imply that maybe you weren’t always gay. I’m simply asking if the child cannot be sure for whatever reason, how can the parent? How would I help my son be able to discover for himself? Should I assume he is gay unless he shows an interest in girls?
BTW Thanks for the opennes with which you are willing to discuss this. I realize that I may be using language or saying things which you might find objectionable.
I was only “unsure” to the extent that it was a semantic issue. I came more and more to understand what the word “gay” meant, but my own feelings never changed one bit. I just learned what to call it.
Right. That’s what I understood you to mean. I really hope I did not indicate otherwise. I find these topics difficult to converse about, and am often unsure what impression I might be giving.
pervert, first of all, and again, I am using the word “like” because it is the language I believe to be most likely used by a child in that age group to express the experience of attraction.
Second of all, you are apparently positing that there is a difference in experience when a girl has a crush on a boy in her class from when a boy has a crush on a boy in his class. Can you articulate what you believe that difference to be, and your evidence for this belief?
Yes. I understand, Lilarien. I am using that word too because as you say, this is the way a child would understand it.
As to your question, I’m not sure. If you mean a straight girl and a gay boy, in which case I agree, there probably is a very close parity to the experience of the first crush.
All I am saying is that there certainly is a difference between the attachment a straight boy might feel toward a male peer, and the attachment felt by a gay boy to the same peer. Do you think they are exactly the same?
And I am struggling with how to tell the difference.
If your children understand that you do not judge homosexuals negatively, then if they ever come to wonder about themselves in that context they’ll know they can talk about it with you, like any other difficult subject they might need a parent’s support with. If they learn from you, however, that you “disapprove” of homosexuals in any way, they will be afraid to ask your support.
Which would you prefer?
Any person can be gay if they choose that lifestyle. No one is born with a sexual identity, it is a learned behavior with the predeposition of heterosexuality, because hetrosexuality is natural and homosexuality is not.