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we want EQUAL rights, the same as you have, the right to marry and be divorced 6 times, the right to adopt children and the right to walk down the street without being beaten because we look gay or are even holding hands, the same rights straight people have, we are not asking for any SPECIAL considerations to be who we are.
I'm just asking here... humor me... what if being gay doesn't warrant being treated EQUAL to being straight? What if its... 'ok' to be gay but "better" to be straight? You get some protections if you're gay but you get the full package of incentives and discounts if you upgrade to being straight... ... I don't know... I'm black, quite so, some people think that makes me inferior. I obviously don't agree. So they had to enact laws to protect people like me from the inevitable discrimination that people like me receive. Those laws work about this well, because, laws can't ever govern the heart and mind. 200 years of laws haven't convinced a majority of people that black people are just like anyone else. Gay behavior is so obviously outside of what most people consider acceptable that here also, laws had to be enacted to protect gay people from discrimination. The main difference between blacks and gays: blackness is an is, it is not a behavior, it is an intrinsic, not an attribute. If the laws that protect black people were enacted so that black people could perform genital mutilations or have human sacrifices or practice polygamy or run around unclothed or any number of acceptable practices inside the continent of Africa there would be a whole lot of push-back against the black community for wanting civil society to grant them exceptions from behaving in accordance with societal norms.
Gays are NOT asking for EQUAL rights. Gays are asking for the right to engage in behaviors outside of societal norms and in large part our permissive society has granted most of the requests of the gay community. What if this is a mistake? Seriously, what if the wholesale acceptance and the granting of EQUAL status to gay lifestyle, relationships, sexuality, etc. is wrong. Worse than wrong, detrimental to the forward progress of the human species?? I like to think I am a progressive kind of guy, but there are limits. I reach mine when this one issue reaches well beyond should gays be allowed to exist, and starts to ponder whether to consider gay lifestyle as EQUAL in preference to the former gold standard of hetero-sexuality. So, sorry, I have to disagree, you are absolutely asking for SPECIAL considerations to be who you are. It is not who we are. There are dozens of alternative lifestyles that don't dare ask for any SPECIAL considerations, they are happy just to be left alone and not hunted down and dragged out into the cold light of day like some species of animal. When did we get to ranking ... erm... predilictions? Why do gays feel superior to bi-sexuals? Why? Because you are monogamous? Where is all this entitlement coming from??
Take a post that is extremely well written and thoughtful, which I believe is exactly the way 90% of the way "normal" people really feel about the gay issues, (but are probably to embarassed and polite to admit it) and treat it in this trivial way.
L should be congratulated on having the courage to say what everybody else really thinks, but can't or won't say.
So sorry if that's an eye-opener to anybody so naive as to think otherwise!
Let gays get married (civil union), who the hell cares really anymore??
Honestly, the gay agenda has been pushed in our face for so many years that the "intensity" is starting to backfire on them.
Back off a bit. Really. You've made a lot of progress. Not everywhere, but more people are being lost by the constant push push push than are being won over.
Sorry I'm blunt, but I'm speaking a truth that some people don't want to hear.
Last edited by pdxMIKEpdx; 07-16-2013 at 06:58 PM..
I haven't take L seriously since he posted that strange stuff about how the lady from Eastern Europe should get some guy to pay for her ticket to Boise or Portland or wherever she decided to go. I'm sure he sincerely believes in what he's saying, but he and I simply don't see the world the same way. It wasn't actually meant as a "trivial response," I just don't get what he means. Even though the majority of people practice heterosexuality, homosexuals have always been a part of our society. I also don't have much of an urban perspective.
I seriously don't understand what he means by this, either,
"Gays are asking for the right to engage in behaviors outside of societal norms and in large part our permissive society has granted most of the requests of the gay community."
I think that what they are asking for is the right to join in legal union with their loved ones, not be discriminated in housing or for jobs and not have to live in fear of being attacked simply because of who they choose to love. I'm not sure what "special rights" you think they're asking for.
Last edited by Metlakatla; 07-16-2013 at 07:54 PM..
So... what is "marriage"? Is it just the construct of legal committment without respect to the participants? If you argue yes, then you should not roll your eyes at the inevitable argument in the ridiculous: i.e. people marrying pets, inanimate objects, etc. I believe marriage is defined quite clearly as the legal committment between a man and a woman. Don't shoot the messenger. I didn't define marriage! Nor did you. Despite us, it has become the norm to apply the term married to men and women that have obtained a legal marriage license and then a marriage ceremony under either religious or civic auspices. If gay men want to marry gay women in sham marriages they are free to do so and many have indeed done so to obtain certain privileges or protections that a marriage confers. That kind of long standing tradition doesn't change overnight. Gay men want the right to marry each other... have straight men been marrying one another for 3,000 years? Are gay men being denied the right to a practice that is ongoing in the straight world? Is gender irrelevant? Are we just... humans? I don't think even gays want to argue this, probably the opposite, gays are obsessed with gender. They should want to make it clear that their unions are distinct from the ones that have been practiced for millennia and find some new proper noun to identify it. That way there won't be any confusion in discussions down the line. Maybe you don't mind the ??? when you are reading biographies or whatever and read about someone's wife, assume they are male, but later learn that they are in fact female. No biggie. Perhaps, but we did not get to the top of the food chain by being sloppy about the small details. Humans are meticulous organizers and classifiers. We have descriptive adjectives for everything that can be done and our imagination is so vast that we also have descriptive adjectives for many things that cannot be done... yet. And some, ever. That's how we roll. Gays want to get hitched, cool, it isn't and never will be a marriage. Call it something else so we can all know what time it is. Is that really so much to ask?
After seeing the response here, unfortunately I think it might just be better if we looked at somewhere different. I wasn't really anticipating that the thread would turn out like this (or that it would devolve into arguments about LGBT rights), but it has definitely been very instructive! We will keep our options open, but I think that Oregon might not be the best fit for my girlfriend and I.
Most of the people who responded to you don't even live in Silverton, and please understand that this forum is NOT representative of most people in Oregon.
L, I'm not going to have this discussion with you. I read enough to realize that the discussion that you want to have involves a Biblical definition and then devolves into the straw argument about people marrying pets et al, and it's so badly written that trying to wade through it gave me a headache. I'm not trying to be mean, but I work with words all day and just now I'm tired of the tedium. Oh well; it wasn't all that long ago that it wasn't considered "acceptable" for people of your race to even know their ABCs. I wonder how you would have felt if you had ever been denied the "right" to learn how to read because society did not deem it "acceptable." That's another long-standing tradition that didn't change overnight, but it certainly did change.
You're obviously against gay marriage; I'm not, and you won't be changing my mind here. I doubt I'll even read your response. Have a nice evening, and perhaps you can find someone who wants to have this conversation with you in one of the more appropriate forums here.
Last edited by Metlakatla; 07-16-2013 at 09:09 PM..
Gays are NOT asking for EQUAL rights. Gays are asking for the right to engage in behaviors outside of societal norms and in large part our permissive society has granted most of the requests of the gay community. What if this is a mistake? Seriously, what if the wholesale acceptance and the granting of EQUAL status to gay lifestyle, relationships, sexuality, etc. is wrong. Worse than wrong, detrimental to the forward progress of the human species??
I'm frankly embarrassed to be reading something like this, especially from someone who claims to be African American.
Replace Gay with a certain six letter "N" word and you have the exact same arguments being rehashed, complete with Bible Verses to "prove" the point.
@Holly1989 - Please, do not put a few people's misguided opinions down as the opinions of most Oregonians. The fact is that most people, at least in Portland and suburbs, just don't care what your skin color/sexual orientation/gender identification is. How you import yourself as a person is more important.
Outside of Portland you'll get the occasional stink eye, there may be talking behind your back, but you are not going to be beaten up over your choices. Once again, certain parties on this site spouted off fact without backing it up with any links to back their statements up, and as as usual, my own followups to try to PROVE their point remain fruitless.
Of course, if you want to see an issue, you're going to see it. An ex-Roomate of mine was a post-OP TG and frankly was extremely hot. She could have easily had a career as a model, and on top of that was a pretty good artist. She had a waiting list of people who wanted her paintings at $1k a pop. But yet EVERYTHING was a slur against her and "meant to bug her." Birds tweeting outside her bedroom window? Next door neighbor kids imitating birds to annoy her. Me using the BBQ, "a recurring issue with the neighbors blowing smoke into her bedroom window." Car honking on the street, "her old neighbor found out where she lived now and was bugging her." Construction next door, "they didn't need to replace the roof, they're just doing that to annoy me." My brother and best friend both looking at her appreciatively, "Did you see that disgusted look on their faces?"
I firmly believe that Silverton will be fine for you.
I'm frankly embarrassed to be reading something like this, especially from someone who claims to be African American.
Replace Gay with a certain six letter "N" word and you have the exact same arguments being rehashed, complete with Bible Verses to "prove" the point.
@Holly1989 - Please, do not put a few people's misguided opinions down as the opinions of most Oregonians. The fact is that most people, at least in Portland and suburbs, just don't care what your skin color/sexual orientation/gender identification is. How you import yourself as a person is more important.
Outside of Portland you'll get the occasional stink eye, there may be talking behind your back, but you are not going to be beaten up over your choices. Once again, certain parties on this site spouted off fact without backing it up with any links to back their statements up, and as as usual, my own followups to try to PROVE their point remain fruitless.
Of course, if you want to see an issue, you're going to see it. An ex-Roomate of mine was a post-OP TG and frankly was extremely hot. She could have easily had a career as a model, and on top of that was a pretty good artist. She had a waiting list of people who wanted her paintings at $1k a pop. But yet EVERYTHING was a slur against her and "meant to bug her." Birds tweeting outside her bedroom window? Next door neighbor kids imitating birds to annoy her. Me using the BBQ, "a recurring issue with the neighbors blowing smoke into her bedroom window." Car honking on the street, "her old neighbor found out where she lived now and was bugging her." Construction next door, "they didn't need to replace the roof, they're just doing that to annoy me." My brother and best friend both looking at her appreciatively, "Did you see that disgusted look on their faces?"
I firmly believe that Silverton will be fine for you.
It's not really that those things are an issue for me. I try not to take innocuous things like that and extrapolate hateful meanings from them. I just want to try to stay away from people who will shout insults, refuse me service, etc. That's really all I care about.
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