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Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
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Originally Posted by ozzie679
I really wish CD would add a "sexual orientation and race" forums...possibly up by "elections and immigration". Get that bologna out of the political forum.
Blacks do not force everyone to accept their lifestyle like the gays do. And it is the gay people doing the comparisons, not blacks. Have you ever heard a black or black politician even remotely compare themselves to gays? Do gays wish to be their own ethnic group?
Sure you do...
Some gays choose to be that way, I guess it is some type of fad. If you doubt this, you have not met a lot of gay people. There are no clear statistics proving how many gay people are in this country.
A gay person could get away just fine if they did not mention their lifestyles to avoid this "mistreatment". Blacks however, due to their skin color, were openly discriminated against. It is not like gay people are carrying a big sign stating their sexual orientations.
Segregation? I bet in every town and city there are gay people, even if it is just a smudge of the population. We all live and work together with gay people. How is this segregation?
Gays were never slaves, profiled by the police, hanged on a tree, had state laws that did not allow them to even LIVE in certain states, were chained up on a boat, attacked by dogs, etc.
Gays have rights, the blacks back then had very limited rights.
Gays were treated better than black people then. They have very few similarities, and comparing the two is beyond ridiculous.
Most of us don't give a crap about gay insults... I think about these issues maybe once every 3 months.
Could this be because you aren't gay, and so you don't get them yelled at you on a weekly basis?
For my part I'm against the banning of words, and I have very mixed feelings about censoring them. I'm not so strongly against is that I'm going to get up in arms, but hey.
I do think the comparison is a fair one, though. Both words have been used to taunt and degrade their targets, and both have been reclaimed by the people they target.
And in both cases, I don't think this is a great reason to use them without thought. They are still offensive to many and there is a difference between someone in that group using the word vs. someone outside of the group using it, and I think claiming otherwise is pretty ignorant.
Second, I strongly disagree with equivocating "the fa- word" with "the n- word". Forbidding the use of a word actually gives it more power. If someone is truly a gay hater, why give that person an even greater ability to cause trouble simply by uttering one silly word?
So, in conclusion, if I had a vote on this subject, I would vote "no".
I am curious. Why would someone hate gay people -- as a group? I mean, I can understand hating a cheating gay real estate dealer, or used car salesman. But hating gay people one has never met makes about as much sense as hating Ukrainians one hasn't met.
I guess I am also confused about how words come into and go out of fashion. Gay, f@g, kweyr, swish, nance, homo, etc., are just words. Some are used by gay people themselves, aren't they? I would imagine that in many cases straight people use such terms less out of "hate" than out of habit.
After all -- one person's hate speech is often another person's outrageousness...
I once went on a blind date with a girl who described herself as "zaftig". When we met I saw she was just a really fat chick in whom I could have no interest.
Words are words. The only ones getting upset are those who are being described, yet they often use those same words amongst themselves. Go figure... .
As a gay person in a multiracial family, I'd say I think f*g and n*gg*r are comparable in intent but n*gg*r is much more loaded because of its history of systematic usage. F*g is used in a lot of the same ways n*gg*r is used today, but we never had a time when gays had to "yes sir" and "yes ma'am" straights systematically while they called us all "f*gs" and our straight allies "f*g lovers" etc. And while on a global level, the civil rights movement and gay rights movement compare, the comparison doesn't hold within the U.S. Gays have been through the Holocaust and are held up to the death penalty in other countries, but in the U.S., we're pretty much just dealing with not being able to get married or risking losing our jobs. That doesn't compare to having to drink at the colored water fountains or being lynched for looking at a white woman the wrong way.
I don't know what you are ranting about? I never said this? All I said was gays can avoid this "discrimination" they are complaining about if they did not blabber on and on about who they are sleeping with.
Last time I checked, most gays don't do this.
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What about the black people who cannot even get a job because of their skin color? What about the blacks who homes were burned down just because of their skin color? I suppose you forget about all the black slaves being torn apart from their families, forced feed, treated like cattle, and forced to live in crime infested ghettos? I suppose you forgot about busing when black students were beaten and further humiliated by white students and their parents?
I agree, and it's truly awful. I have to agree that the U.S. gay rights movement isn't comparable to the U.S. civil rights movement. But I do think the global gay rights movement is comparable. Gays were gassed in the chambers along with Jews, Gypsies, and Jehovah's Witnesses in the Holocaust, and several countries put their citizens to death for homosexual acts. In some countries, police systematically raid gay people's houses and then beat and rape them. So I do agree that the gay rights movement by no means matches the atrocities blacks within the U.S. have gone through, but I do think the comparison is more valid on a global scale.
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Even in my conservative town, we have been nothing but welcoming to a gay family that has moved in and they are outstanding neighbors. Same could have not been said if a black person moved into a white part of Chicago during the great migration- as we all know Chicago had some serious race issues.
I do have to admit you can't assume from your side how easy or hard it is to be gay. I was closeted in my old conservative town. I met three openly gay people and I am sure the town would have talked about how they are open and accepting, but they don't know how many gay people were closeted. I was closeted because every time I told people I was gay, they made some connection to my deaf-blindness being some sort of punishment for homosexuality. With that kind of ignorance, I simply didn't feel comfortable being openly gay. On top of that, I had a job and one of the people working there who was openly gay constantly had people trying to find reasons to fire him and making it really uncomfortable for him in hopes that he would quit. With deaf-blindness already working against me, I didn't want to add any more reasons to get fired or "made extremely uncomfortable until I gave in and quit."
In others words what I'm saying is you can't really know the whole story unless you're living it. Perhaps your town seems accepting of gays but the gays in your town may be singing a different tune. I'm not saying for certain, but you just never know.
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They still are not comparable,once gays go through slavery then get back to me. Gays can easily blend into society, while blacks can be easily discriminated aganist just based on skin color - that is why they picked African slaves in 1st place because of their skin color, it was not easy for them to just "blend in" society. Gay is not a race after all.
That's true as well, though there is a segment of the black and mixed population that can and has passed as white. You can check out the novel by Nella Larsen called Passing. In addition to that, it is impossible for some gays to pass as straight. For example, in Iran many gays have a hard time because they try to act straight but they still get read and harassed by the morality police. Some of these gays go to the point of seeking a sex change just so they can find an accepted role in society.
For the most part you do have a point, though. I'm gay and I successfully passed as straight in an intolerant part of the country for about 2 years. My wife, on the other hand, couldn't hide her blackness.
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