The tragedy of Tyler Clementi’s suicide has drawn much commentary. We are not surprised that Pam Spaulding seizes the opportunity to lecture us about “homophobia” — the scare-quotes necessitated, as I always note, by the pseudo-diagnostic nature of the term.
Stipulate that such a phenomenon as “homophobia” exists, that there are people who have an irrational and exaggerated fear of homosexuals, to such an extent that we might describe them as suffering from a mental illness. Absent a case-by-case examination of individuals, an analysis of the behaviors and attitudes that constitute “homophobia,” and evidence that this phenomenon causes harm to society, the term is merely an epithet, with no meaningful definition.
As an epithet, “homophobia” has become an all-purpose politicized slur wielded against anyone who disagrees with the Official Gay Rights Agenda. It has little meaning outside that context. If you don’t think public schools should be subjecting first-graders to discussions of masturbation, for example, you are liable to accusations of “homophobia” — the imputation that your beliefs are irrational, constitution evidence of a mental disorder.
Fuck you.
I just had to get that out of my system. That Pam Spaulding and others have been permitted to arrogate to themselves the pseudo-therapeutic license to diagnose people they’ve never met as suffering from “homophobia” — a loaded term the media never bothers to disassemble — is one of the many elephants in this particular room.
Conservatives ought to be embarrassed by how they have allowed the premises of such discussions — as logic and rhetoric — to go unexamined over the past three decades. The organized forces of sexual radicalism have striven with tremendous zeal to restrict these issues to an up-or-down referendum on “tolerance,” and to define these issues in terms of “rights,” all the while becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent and insensitive to the rights of those who disagree.
Why have conservatives failed to move the discussion away from the same weary arguments about slippery slopes and Heather Has Two Mommies? Why have conservatives failed to examine the ideological premises of sexual radicalism? For indeed, it is radicalism of which we speak.
The radical premise is that existing society is so unjust that it deserves to be destroyed, and replaced with a new society organized along those principles acceptable to the radicals.
Something quite like that has taken place in the United States since 1960. Everything that Americans believed about sexual behavior — the sanctity of marriage, the importance of such virtues as chastity and modesty, the necessity of suppressing such vices as pornography and prostitution — has been relentlessly assaulted by organized radicalism.
That America in 1960 was a “homophobic” place, we freely admit. It was also “phobic” toward divorce, adultery, bastardy, pornography and numerous other sexual behaviors that Americans did not believe worthy of inclusion as inalienable rights under the heading of “the pursuit of happiness.” You may criticize the America of 1960 as an intolerant and backward culture, but it was that America — derogated by radicals as hopelessly puritanical — which crushed Nazi totalitarianism and held at bay the totalitarian aggression of the Soviet Union.
Looking back over the distance of 50 years, and considering the direction that has brought us to the present day, are we expected to agree without hestitation that this is Progress? And is everyone who doubts that we can survive another 50 years of such Progress a reactionary bigot?
If you have the courage to withstand the epithet of “homophobe” or the suggestion that you are part of an anti-sex American Taliban, an examination of the premises of sexual radicalism can be quite fruitful. And speaking of fruits . . .
OK, that was a joke. Can we no longer be permitted to joke about sex? You can turn on Comedy Central and see hour after hour of stand-up comedians joking about sex. Why are conservatives not trying a little humor to leaven their arguments on this subject? Let’s face it: Heritage Foundation seminars might get more viewers on C-SPAN if some senior policy analyst would occasionally use the phrase “butt-fucking.”
But I digress.
Having ceded the culture to radicalism, conservatives are no longer capable of speaking in terms that the dominant culture can appeciate. (See? There was a point to that digression.) And conservatives do seem guilty of intolerance toward those voices who question sexual radicalism from the perspective of direct personal experience. Consider my blogger friend Sooper Trev who admits to having struggles with same-sex attraction:
Tyler Clementi obviously had some level of sexual attraction for men. In a sick way, his acting on it cost him his life. Dharun Ravi may have done exactly what someone would have to do to get Clementi to destroy himself, but Clementi was still the one who did it. Because I see my old self (and some of my yet-current self) in him, I believe that Tyler’s fundamental error here was in not accepting his own human dignity. . . .
Tyler sacrificed some of his dignity to give in to his curiosity at least a couple times. Yet when the bright light of public scrutiny shone down on what he had considered his own secret world, all Tyler could see was what he was ashamed of. All he could see was how broken he was. Maybe all he could see was that he might as well be a two-dimensional carnival character to people like Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei and their friends. I think maybe the worst Tyler saw in himself was all of a sudden just too close to how hundreds or thousands of others saw him. In the end, even on an iconic bridge, on a beautiful night with a spectacular view of Manhattan, the Palisades, and the shimmery water below, all Tyler Clementi could see was certain doom.
Like I said, I was there once. Actually a few times. In my case, when I broke down and told my straight college roommate that I was attracted to men, specifically him, and that I couldn’t take my infatuation with him anymore…he held me. It was something he’d never done before nor wanted to. He assured me of his steadfast friendship. He bought me lunch, listened to me, and prayed with me too. Our relationship was sometimes strained after that, though we were doing pretty well five years later when I served as best man at his wedding. But what I noticed most was that when my heart found genuine friendship with this guy, my sexual imagination didn’t fixate on him very much anymore.
In fact, I’ve been blessed to find that real friendships with other men give me in reality what my libido is looking for in fantasy. . .
Read the whole thing. Now, what would Pam Spaulding say to Sooper Trev? Sexual radical that she is, I believe she would insist that his sexual feelings toward other men are his “true” self, and that the Sooper Trev who struggles against those feeling is merely an accomplice of “homophobia.”
What Trev should do, according to radicals like Spaulding, is to celebrate his same-sex attractions without shame, just as Hollywood D-listers who sell their sex videos celebrate their own sexuality.
As might be expected, I disagree. For it seems to me that the radical insistence on sexual shamelessness is part of what led Dharun Ravi to think it would be cool to capture his roommate’s tryst on video. Every time Maury Povitch broadcasts one of his baby-daddy DNA tests, every time Britney flashes her crotch for the paparazzi, every time we learn that some famous person has been shtupping cocktail waitresses, it is the of shamelessness of our culture that shocks us.
Sooper Trev had the same sexual feelings that motivated Tyler Clementi’s tryst. Yet Sooper Trev believed in human dignity — his own, and his roommate’s.
America is steadily losing that old-fashioned sense of human dignity. And we ought to be ashamed.
This is not a gay thing. This is a privacy invasion thing. If someone illicitedly video taped me getting it on with Mrs. Joe and posted it on youtube and I knew who it was, I can tell you someone would be taking a dive off a bridge. And it would not involve suicide by either myself or my wife.
My heart goes out to Matthew Clementi’s family. I am so sorry for their loss. I am sorry Clementi felt no option but what he did. I wish I could have talked him out of it.
His roommate is a complete and utter scumbag. But this could have been a shy kid having his or her first heterosexual encounter and being equally devestated. Or some awkward teenager getting it on with himself and being humilated on youtube. The gay aspect is not the central issue.
Hey Joe, sorry to say this but this is about the death of a 18 year old gay man, and why do you want to make it about yourself and how tough a guy you are? Have you got no decency?
The trouble is liberals are generally all in favor of it when people do rotten things, unless it’s to some member of a group they like, so they have to invent new kinds of immorality. Black people hurting white people is a perfectly understandable response to centuries of oppression, and to the extent it promotes awareness of oppression and changes in society, not a completely regrettable thing.
Still even if you hold to a completely traditional view of homosexuality this was nothing but a grotesquely cruel thing to do. I hope Ravi and Wei suffer the full legal and social consequences, as should anybody who did something like this regardless of whether the target was gay or not.
Thank you for your kind words.
Ravi is an Indian American (Hindu), Wei is an East Asian American (probably Buddhist). Clementi is a White (from a Catholic family?). There could (also) be a racial or religious prejudice angle to this when they played a cruel joke on him. Being an Indian myself, i suspect Ravi would not have done this (at least after he knew of the gay sex) if Clementi happened to be an Indian American like him. I suspect the same could be likely if Ravi happened to be a White American.
garden brinjal. You are disingenuous or have a serious learning disability problem. Actually it is probably both.
This is not me being a “tough guy.” Mrs. Joe would likely be violent one in such a circumstance. The point being I am absolutely horrified about what happened to Matthew Clementi. He is a young guy who was humiliated because his privacy was invaded. My heart goes out to him and his family. I wish I could have stopped him from killing himself.
I think Clementi’s roommate is a scumbag for doing such a despicable thing. I recognize this has to go to trial and he is presumed inocent at law, but if convicted, I hope Mr. Ravi gets the maximum penalty available at law.
And I think you are a lesser scumbag for being the way you are. You are dishonest and a perfect example of what Smitty is talking about.
garden brinjal that is all very revealing about you. I think it is pretty much speculation on the issue with Ravi, Wei and Clementi, but you are entitled to your theories.
I am going to let you in on a little secret. Not all teasing, hazing, or pranks are racially or religously motivated. Believe it or not, cruel jokes are played on people of the same racial and religous back ground.
I know that sounds crazy. But really. There are cruel jokes not motivated by race.
And I am going to engage in a little speculation. I bet Ravi is not terribly homophobic or a racist. I think Ravi is a fucking asshole coward who just wanted to play a cruel joke on a kid that he felt reasonably sure would not beat the living shit out of him afterwards.
This episode has an uncanny similarity with a sub-plot in the controversial, yet groundbreaking South Korean film Old Boy.
You would think, the “shame of gay sex” and the “shame of incestuous relationship” is a false equivalence. But mayn’t be so in this case. Just read this: Vox Popoli: Gay rights killed Clementi
Trev’s essay may be the best thing of all the reactions this tragedy has brought forth. Oh, and Pam is an absolute feckin’ eejit.
Part of the problem, I think, can be traced back to the Kinsley Reports, which as we know now were not proper studies and, in fact, represented the sick fantasies of Kinsley. Trouble is, the Left took his Reports and actively sought to mainstream the findings by slowly inoculating the American people to think that what was perverse was actually what is real/normal and what had for millennia been considered proper behavior was ‘unnatural’. The infamous phrase ‘let it all hang out’ turns out to have a much more sinister meaning.
Trev’s commentary is a very good one.
Unfortunately the worse years for suicide are males 18-30 years old. Obviously being outted so publically devestated Clementi. But he was pubically humiliated and control over his own private life was taken away. And Ravi thought he could get away with it.
@Joe
I agree race and religion are wild and incorrect barometers in this case, but your argument that this has “little to do with him being a gay” is equally if not more wrongheaded. Think about these two questions carefully (knowing what we now know): If Ravi was a homosexual (knowing what it means to be a closet gay and all), would he have streamed the video live? If Clementi was having sex with a girl when filmed, would he have jumped off a bridge?
The real homophobes are those who fear the GLBT lobby so much that they cater to all the movement’s demands. They are the ones with the irrational, paralyzing fear of doing or saying something politically incorrect. You see it in political, educational, media and church leaders who will do and say almost anything to appease. It is really quite pathetic.
Maybe Ravi and Wei are a part of the radical amoral society which the Leftist Utopians have been dreaming of….but then, Their Dream took a turn for the worse.
Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine ALL the people, ‘living for today’.
Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
This is the world Ravi, Wei, and Clementi were being inducted into. Clementi took his pleasures, and Ravi and Wei took theirs. In an amoral world, no wrong was done, because that would be judgemental.
Maybe Clementi was a closeted gay, and Ravi and Wei, being instructed in Leftism, just wanted to help Clementi ‘out’ of the closet. I agree that it was a cruel thing for them to do.
But then, maybe they thought that they were being cruel, only to be kind. What happened was a shame, but as Stacy pointed out, this is all a part of the Left’s Radical Sexualism.
I also see that the OGRA card trumps the racial minority card.
garden brinjal, there was a very recent case of a young girl who went home and committed suicide because her “girlfriends” called her a slut (there was jealousy over the guy she was dating).
Yes of course Clementi’s personal motivation for committing suicide likely involved being outted as being gay. But my point is outrage over what Ravi did is not predicated on Clementi being gay, but Clementi being abused by a roommate.
And gb, my disgust and outrage would be the same if the perpetrator of the prank was some white kid and the victim was some indian student.
The only one who’s politicized this is you R.S. McCain.
Tyler Clementi was 18 years old. He was by all accounts a shy, sweet kid. He was a college freshman, away from home. Yeah, he was gay, and he arranged time alone so he could have a tryst with another gay male.
For that, his roommate and the roommate’s accomplice ruthlessly violated his privacy and exposed him to intense humiliation. School officials ignored it, and he did what some people do when pushed into a corner.
And what do you do? You haul out all the right-wing cliches in the book. The only thing Pam Spaulding is asking for is more tolerance. But that’s too much for you people. You want to preserve the climate that made it possible for Mr. Clementi’s humiliation to be so powerful.
You are that roommate’s ally, and so are your far-right wing friends.
Stacy wrote: The radical premise is that existing society is so unjust that it deserves to be destroyed, and replaced with a new society organized along those principles acceptable to the radicals.
Sounds like Nihilism to me.
You are right about the etymology of “homophobia”. While people who fear something often display hatred toward that thing, not all hatred is based on fear.
I propose that much more accurate term for when someone shows a strong animus towards homosexuals would be “homobigotry”.
@I Get It
And you want to ignore every other factor involve in this tragedy in order to hijack Tyler Clementi as a propaganda symbol for your political agenda.
Your attention is directed toward what are possibly the two most important words in this post: Fuck you.
If nothing else garden brinjal has shown us all his marvelous ability for projection.
I refuse to speculate as to the thoughts or motivations of Tyler Clementi. What I want to know is just what the perpetrators have to say for themselves.
It is a sad fact that the charges they face do not remotely match the severity of their offenses. If they have any shred of decency they will admit their guilt and accept whatever punishment the courts can provide. But, I doubt they will even do that, no doubt seeking to avoid or minimize any culpability, and that is ever more to their lasting shame.
@I Get It
Stacy’s just responding to the very predictable hijacking that’s well underway with this tragedy. The kids who tweeted Clementi to death were probably saturated with pro-gay propaganda for years before this.
A friend of Ravi’s said he was open-minded about gays. That’s just it – to him this wasn’t that big a deal, albeit something to laugh about.
The Vox Populi post quoted above is spot-on. The culture that encouraged Tyler to experiment with something didn’t prepare him for that it being *real*.
[…] I would urge you to read the whole thing before continuing on reading my thoughts. […]
Fuck you, the cowboy shouts, revealing more of his true self. You need to focus on something your “friend” wrote about seeing people as “two dimensional carnival characters.”
Ravi was playing a cruel joke on someone he did not perceive as being a threat. I am guessing his motivation was not malicious intent to do harm, but reckless and utterly uncaring of the potential consequences of his joke.
@Sooper Trev, is this a new defense? “The propaganda made me do it?”
Time to clean out the trolls again, I see.
We just need apply some Listerine on the blog. Bye-bye, Randy.
I thought it was full of sh*t. Just didn’t think anyone would buy into it.
In retrospect, i think Joe is spot-on.
Smitty, seriously? Clean out your trolls, they’re fucking annoying.
Lets see, the only commenter who posted off-topic-only comments on this thread is…Randy Rager.
This isn’t an exception, he has a habit of being an annoying troll who bullies other commenters with off-color language at ToM. Yes, clean him out.
Randy, now go cry to your mommy about people who annoy you, just don’t think about jumping bridges.
It is clear from the first set of tweets-for-twits that Ravi was surprised to learn his roomie was gay, so he obviously set up the spying webcam without that knowledge.
garden brinjal’s speculations, being without any basis in fact, are spurious.
By the way, do you see anything contradictory about decrying a “shameless culture” while saying “fuck you” to people who see it differently than you do?
Or have you decided that shamelessness becomes you?
You didn’t just “disagree” with Stacy. You suggested that he was an accomplice in a suicide:
“You are that roommate’s ally, and so are your far-right wing friends.”
And you posted at 4:30 AM. EST.
Sounds like shameless troll to me and probably a multi id’er.
@I Get It
Re: “is this a new defense? ‘The propaganda made me do it?’”
I wouldn’t say “defense” certainly. But I suspect the students thought what they were doing wasn’t anything more than practical joke. They clearly didn’t think what Clementi was doing was as shameful a thing as he came to feel it was.
We’ll probably find out what Ravi and Wei think of homosexuality. We likely won’t know what Clementi really thought in total. If he was ready to kill himself over its exposure, he apparently had mixed feelings over having experimented with it.
But I want to point out something that I think you may be missing about Stacy. He doesn’t hate people for being homosexual. He’s feeling the same grief millions of us feel over this story because Tyler Clementi was worth infinitely more to Stacy and me and you than his life was worth to himself.
======================
@garden brinjal
Re: “I thought [the Vox Populi post] was full of sh*t. Just didn’t think anyone would buy into it.”
Well I didn’t exactly “buy into it” as much as it matched my own experience dealing with both my own same-sex attractions and processing what the culture/school had to say about homosexuality as I grew up and became my own man.
A lot of people who don’t apparently have any idea what it’s like to both have homosexual desires *and* have mixed feelings about it are pretty eager to preach the virtues of “coming out” and indulging one’s fantasies. The reality for someone dabbling in this doesn’t always match the rosy narrative and equivalency with normal heterosexual expression a lot of folks promote.
@Sooper Trev, you wrote:
“I wouldn’t say “defense” certainly. But I suspect the students thought what they were doing wasn’t anything more than practical joke. They clearly didn’t think what Clementi was doing was as shameful a thing as he came to feel it was.”
In fact, Ravi wrote quite a bit of anti-gay stuff via Twitter. He’s on other sites using “gay” as an epithet, and making fun of transsexuals. It’s par for the course for kids, but you’re wrong about Ravi thinking homosexuality is okay.
In any case, Clementi acted in a way consistent with “conservaism.” He sought to conduct himself with circumspection, in private. When his privacy was invaded, he took his complaint to the proper channels. And what does he get from the right wing, here and elsewhere? Political diatribes.
“Tyler Clementi was worth infinitely more to Stacy and me and you than his life was worth to himself.”
Suicide is a tragedy, but so are throwaway lines like yours. People who attempt, and commit, suicide are human beings who still deserve more respect that you or this blog site have given them.
It’s just wild that this R.S. McCain would say what he did in a blog post complaining about a “culture of shamlessness,” in which his answer to those with whom he disagrees is “fuck you.”
@FenelonSpoke, the definition of “troll” for political ideologues, be they right-wing or left-wing, is someone who voices disagreement and won’t back down. It’s much easier to call someone a “troll” (or in R.S. McCain’s case, to snarl “fuck you”) than to engage his or her views.
I did not, and do not, accuse McCain of being an “accomplice” in anyone’s suicide. Even Ravi and his girlfriend are guilty at most of triggering one.
Being an “ally” is different than being an “accomplice.” The right wing wants to prevent any sort of discussion of homosexuality with young people, other than to condemn it or otherwise stigmatize it.
Then, once young people become adults, they seem to expect that homosexuals should somehow emerge from their caves with all questions answered and all contradictions resolved.
The bottom line, to me, is that the word “homophobia” accurately describes R.S. McCain’s view of homosexuality and gay people, and the right wing’s view in general. This is a matter of intense fear and loathing, and it’s unhealthy for everyone.
Now, I’m sure R.S. McCain will either come here with a third “fuck you,” or exclude me from his website. That tends to be how ideologues on the Internet handle things.
@Sooper Trev, you also wrote:
“A lot of people who don’t apparently have any idea what it’s like to both have homosexual desires *and* have mixed feelings about it are pretty eager to preach the virtues of “coming out” and indulging one’s fantasies. The reality for someone dabbling in this doesn’t always match the rosy narrative and equivalency with normal heterosexual expression a lot of folks promote.”
Son, you’ve been fed a lifetime’s worth of messages that what you feel is wrong at a bunch of levels, and that the only legitimate and “normal” expression of erotic impulses is heterosexual.
If you DIDN’T have “mixed feelings” at the outset, I think that would be pretty remarkable. I think a fair number of homosexuals somehow believe that heterosexuality is smooth sailing, and that there are no “mixed feelings” or awkwardness there, either.
Trust me, that’s not the case. The difference is that, for heterosexuals, those mixed feelings are tolerated, accepted, and usually greeted with compassion, both on an individual level and by the culture. Homosexuals and their mixed feelings are more likely to be greeted with scorn and derision by those who fear and loathe them to begin with.
In the final analysis, what you do is up to you and not anyone else. No one can force you to accept your homosexuality, but also remember something else: You aren’t going to talk yourself into becoming anything but what you really are. So you really are better off in the long run getting used to it.
@I get it
Excuse me – but do you fucking know me? How the fuck do you know what I’m “used to”?
Guess you’ve wallowed so long in your own presumptions you’re like a fish that doesn’t notice the water it’s swimming, breathing, and shitting in.
I can’t believe I was actually interested to engage you.
@Sooper Trev, I can see that you and your friend McCain share something important in common: the need to tell people to “fuck off,” or the equivalent, when they write something you don’t want to read.
By the way, when you refer to a group of people as “the gaystapo,” are you not casting them as “two dimensional cartoon characters?” Maybe this is perfectly fine when you do it, but objectionable when people who “don’t fucking know you” do it.
Do not feed the troll, who doesn’t “get it.”
Wonderful post, Stacy.
What the liberals want Americans to miss is that our sexual morality was very much a cultural thing, i.e. prosecutions or any legal force were rare. (In fact, the only time that your sex life would run you afoul of the law is when you aren’t doing it consensually or when it produces babies out of wedlock.)
I know you don’t have that many years on me, but… I’m thankful that someone of your generation “gets it”. My generation lives, every day, with the results of this madness. It is our parents who are divorced, our parents who never married, the men we date who expect to live with us for years before maybe considering an engagement ring if they feel like it, us (especially women) who are expected to perform deeply unnatural sexual acts, our generation that deals with STDs, our generation that is encouraged (by the morons in yours) to stave off childbearing until middle age, women of my generation who are expected to put out on the third date, our generation that had sex ed shoved at us, our generation that was told we were messed up if we weren’t having sex in college (or high school, or whatever).
Yeah, I second the “fuck you” to those people, for they have indeed screwed up quite a few lives with their ideology.
It is utterly mind boggling how gay rights and liberal “propaganda” are blamed by some on the right for the death of Clementi. Nice “Rovian” spin there. Its the years of conservative propaganda that homosexuality is evil, “abnormal” (the disgusting Vox Popoli article linked above throws in pedophilia reference as well) that needs to be shamed and blamed.
Sooper Terv writes:
Consider a hypothetical situation in which a catholic homeschooled 18 year old straight girl was at the receiving end in place of a Clementi and commits suicide.
Who would you be blaming? The years of conservative propaganda, church and her parents or the liberals and their modern culture of sex?
After all premarital (heterosexual)sex is a sin! It is so shameful if you happen to be a catholic. But the years of liberal propaganda has convinced you that it is normal and when you were away from your parents that’s the first thing you do?! But you are conflicted, you can’t bear the shame of committing what you know is an evil, abnormal thing that was made public.
Whatever your ideological bent, at least be consistent when you choose to blame someone/something. And this i say to RSM et al.
@Fenelon Spoke, “the troll” is “anyone who doesn’t share your point of view.”
@garden brinjal, yeah, the Vox Populi posting was pretty bad. It mocked gays as “orientationally challenged,” minimized the offense, projected the writer’s prejudiced views about homosexuality onto the suicide victim, and transferred responsibility from the perpetrators of the crime to those who have adjusted to their own homosexuality.
I agree that, if the victim in the case had been someone who Vox Populi found more sympathetic, the responsibility would have been assigned in a different way — but I suspect always to evil liberals, who as we all know, cause every personal and social problem under the sun.
@Sooper Trev, I do know a few things about you, because you’ve written here and elsewhere.
– You are homosexual, but apparently don’t act on it (?) because you’ve embraced Catholic doctrine on that issue.
– You think that to be uncloseted, i.e., to acknowledge your homosexuality in a non-anonymous way, would be “surrendering (your) individual identity to a collective identity dictated by the ‘out’ gay community.”
This is a free country, and you are free to reject your sexual orientation and live a celibate life. You’re even free to be a hypocrite, i.e., to practice your homosexuality in secret and then denounce it in public, like so many conservative politicians have religious figures have done.
I hope, for your sake, that your actions match your words. I won’t quote the Bible here; suffice to say that Jesus Christ might have been silent about homosexuality, but he was outspoken about hypocrisy.
You wrote eloquently about Tyler Clementi on your blog, but in the comment section here you have come close to blaming gay people for his death, and have responded with a snarl to a suggestion that you’d be better off getting used to your homosexuality.
Well, okay. Then don’t get used to it. No one can compel you to do that, nor would I (for one) want to. My basic message to you is that, in the end, we are free agents whose choices are our own. I regard your view that to acknowledge outwardly what is true inwardly would be to surrender to someone else’s concept of homosexuality, as a bit of sophistry that you’ve used to dodge the central issue, which is that your homosexuality disturbs and repulses you.
It’s sad to see someone despise their sexual orientation, and even sadder to watch as they project that self-disgust onto others who have accepted themselves for who they are. Good luck, son. You’ll need it.
@I Get It
Indeed. I have seen scores of articles on the mainstream right that put the blame on gays and liberals for the crimes of pedophile priests in the catholic church.
It is also interesting to note that many Buddhist/Hindu saints and Catholic priests and nuns choose a life of celibacy for religious/spiritual reasons. But they don’t expect others of their religion to follow suit.
So if a person with gay, bisexual or a lesbian sexual tendecies chooses to be a celibate (on at least the homosex part) due to catholic/relgious/spiirtual teachings/guidance/awakening, there is absolutely no issue with that but to believe that it (refraining form homosex) is the only right thing to do for everyone else, is bigotry if not immature faith.
@garden brinjal, the Vox Populi article reminds me of one of the really noxious arguments I’d hear against civil rights marchers when I was young. The racists of the South would actually blame them for the upsurge of lynchings of blacks, saying that if the civil rights advocates hadn’t “stirred things up,” no one would have been killed.
The Vox Populi argument isn’t precisely the same, but it’s close. Blaming the young man’s suicide on gays who want to live without discrimination is obnoxious. Some of Sooper Trev’s arguments, particularly the one about “propaganda” having been the culprit, were questionable, to put it mildly.
I Get It:
In the country where i live, if a college girl is secretly filmed
having sexkissing, naked while changing clothes in her room and the pics circulated on MMS, that would be one of most shameful things that could happen to a woman. Does this mean that changing clothes in your private space is considered sinful in our society? Of course not. (Pre-marital sex still is). This won’t be so much of an issue if it were a boy.Whatever the underlying reasons our society tends to blame the girl (victim). In cases of rape/molestation, the girl is seen as a provocator or one with bad character, even though that laws in our society punish the rapist.
My country is as backward on woman’s issues (forget about gay rights!) as your country is on gay rights.
Our society is progressing though. At least we don’ have an active anti-woman propaganda machine like the robust anti-gay propaganda you have in the US. The propaganda seems to have spread its influence even amongst the gay community!
How the times have changed….
I must be an incredible ride for you to see ll the social changes through the decades.
But then not much has changed in some fundamental ways, isn’t it?
Racial and sexual prejudices, anti-gay agenda and religious fundamentalism are all alive and well in slightly different avatars.