quote:Originally posted by GaalDornick: The bust that's still there was not the one that was loaned; PM Blair had loaned another to Bush after 9/11 and that one was indeed returned. It says so in the update to the link you posted. So it's not technically 100% false, just awfully misleading.
Nope,you misread what OSC wrote. He didn't say "the bust that was loaned to the Bush Administration", he specifically said "the bust that had been given as a gift to the White House many years ago." That one is very much still there.
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quote:Would you please explain what this means exactly? How does it practically work? If your goal is to be pro human, why add the "straight" at all?
Would you suspect a group that identifies as pro white as being a tad racist? If someone was wearing a "white power" t-shirt, for example, would you think that he meant power for everyone?
That is an interesting question...
"White Power" is associated with baaaad folk with worse ideals. How about...?
"White is beautiful too." (is the "too" truly nessecary? It helps to touch on the examples where racial pride is not seen as hurtful [Black is Beautiful]
Or even better "All colors are beautiful."
Or better still "Humans are beautiful."
Or "We are beautiful."
My daughter has tee shirts that say simply "Beautiful."
It's all good. As long as people can self identify as wonderful w/o stepping on someone else's shoes.
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Said absent of context, 'All colors are beautiful' can hardly be offensive. But we don't live in a world without context, and it only takes a casual glance around to see which color (and shape) is already beautiful.
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I asked a few interesting questions that you did not answer at all. What does "pro straight" mean?
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Rakeesh...hardly...eye of the beholder leaves world's of room...all is beautiful in one reguard or another. What makes makes things special is (in part but not whole) how we treat them...reinforce individual beauty not by society's myopic view.
Pro straight...aligned with the ansesteral life awareness of being a link in the chain which bonds modern man to the prehistoric ansersters of man, back indeed to the birth of life itself. Through the love a husband & wife share they can create the miracle of life...of them, by them, but not theirs. I'm pro being pro things.
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Pro straight...aligned with the ansesteral life awareness of being a link in the chain which bonds modern man to the prehistoric ansersters of man, back indeed to the birth of life itself. Through the love a husband & wife share they can create the miracle of life...of them, by them, but not theirs. I'm pro being pro things.
Hmmm, how would you say that alignment plays out in your day to day life? To reiterate Kate's question, what does that really look like in a practical sense?
Do you think, by that definition, there are people who are anti-straight?
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Living the "pro-straight" "lifestyle"...quality time w/ wife & kids...nest building...4x4x7x52 meals a year...dishes...laundry...trash...parental contols...vomit clean up...vacuuming...play dates...relating to other parents at kid parties...etc...
Anti Straight...hmmm...I'll bet you could find someone who has strong pro gay feelings & dislikes overpopulation & militantly tells you so? I don't kno...I just made that up.
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posted
Speaking of context, I forgot to include a qualifier: 'look around and see what our society deems is beautiful'.
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I'd post a pick of my Google image search of "beautiful" if this board wasn't running on older equipment than a 90 year old marathoner. My point is that there was only one scantily clad girl in the first page results...mostly nature scenes & sunsets.
I'm not getting it Rakeesh, every person chooses what they submit their eyes to (when seeking out beauty)...it's subjective...
Is the point that "mainstream media" supports, nay preys on & actively promotes racist, sexist, shapeist, ageist attatudes? Cause I get that. But that's not what I'm referring to.
More like team pride. I'm a MN Vikings fan...I cheer -for- them...not against the opponent (unless they are conference rivals than hate hate hate, j/k).
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That was my point, yes. Though your google search reference doesn't quite seem valid. 'Beautiful people' would be more appropriate for the purpose of this point, I think.
Anyway, my point was that being 'pro-straight' for example without context is fine-though the very labeling of something as pro or con defines a context. But in the context of our society, which is overwhelmingly pro-straight already, it's not quite the same statement as in a context-neutral environment.
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"Hi, my gender falls within current cultural masculine norms, but you can call me Mike." is a bit of a non starter.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Living the "pro-straight" "lifestyle"...quality time w/ wife & kids...nest building...4x4x7x52 meals a year...dishes...laundry...trash...parental contols...vomit clean up...vacuuming...play dates...relating to other parents at kid parties...etc...
What about that is particularly straight? I know plenty of SS parents who have lifestyles that could be described just like that.
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It's something that can't be explained...I hadn't experienced it til about six years back...the birth of our first born. Changed my life. A part of me & a part of my wife...but its own little lifeform. We knew a baby was in there...duh...but life altering when "it" becomes a real life baby.
Never having adopted w/ my gay husband, I can't imagine it...but I'd be shocked if its the same experience or connectivity with the infinite.
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Do you think that is true for straight parents that adopt? Do you think that all straight people have children? Are heterosexual people without children not straight?
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It's impossible for me to do anything but wildly speculate to answer that. Which doesn't sound useful. Can you bullet point it for me?
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You know, Stone_Wolf, you can complain that people like Dogbreath are being too much of a rules lawyer. You can also be very vague and unhelpful in replies to specific questions. But you can't really do both without looking pretty silly.
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As for your 'connection with the infinite' I can think of two questions. One, have you ever adopted and if not how can you effectively speculate as to what it might feel like to do so? Two, if we're going to posit a connection to the infinite-something spiritual, I mean-as a factor of procreation, doesn't one have to consider the question of if and to what extent millions of years of evolution have worked to ensure you feel such a connection?
Put another way, there may in reality very well be such a connection actually experienced with procreation. I certainly can't discount the possibility. But I think we can safely say it's definitely not something innate to the process of fathering or gestating a child. Furthermore, isn't it possible that a couple who strives for the same result-parenthood-and does so without the most direct path to it-heterosexual intercourse between two capable people-might it not be true that they are experiencing a connection to the infinite as powerful as yours?
Put another way, while it's certainly reasonable for you to feel that it was a cosmically important event in your life, a look at human history doesn't appear to point in the direction that this is true for everyone. It's clearly not a default given position.
Finally, and even if you didn't intend to you're still in fact doing it, you're suggesting that your status as a father and a parent is more special than that of adoptive parents. Perhaps that was an intentional claim, perhaps not. But I think that might be a part of some of the pushback you're getting here.
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Mostly I'm just positively identifing with groups I'm in. Which is my point. There is nothing wrong with saying good things about a group one belongs to...there is no impied slam to the "opposite" group.
Saying that "black is beautiful" is not saying that "not black is not beautiful".
Or at least -should be-.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You know, Stone_Wolf, you can complain that people like Dogbreath are being too much of a rules lawyer.
What's interesting to me about this is I strive very hard to be the opposite of that in my approach.
By which I mean, that term usually refers to someone who attempts to win a case based on the strict letter of the law while completely ignoring - or even often deliberately warping - the context. Whereas for me, in a discussion establishing context is absolutely crucial. And a big part of that is discussing and agreeing upon definitions.
(For example, look at the recent Eich discussion where I worked pretty hard to demonstrate the context of why employees resigning from their jobs in the tech sector doesn't constitute a witch hunt against their boss, or in this discussion talking about the context of an "unpaid volunteer" being given a standard of living generally earned by the top 1% (where the "he's technically not salaried" argument is decidedly the Rules Lawyer approach), or even in this discussion where I, and others, have tried to put the "I'm just in favor of defending traditional marriages"-esque statements into their proper context relative to society)
And I think you would agree with me that it's more or less impossible to have an earnest discussion without also defining and discussing the terms used in that discussion, as well as modifying those terms as necessary, and continually making sure you clearly understand what the other person is saying. It's certainly possible to have ineffective discussions without doing so - whether they're the sort of pointless bloviation of political pundits, or the meaningless, feel good "awww, we all really want the same thing after all" sort of mutual masturbation that happens when people use terms and statements that are too ambiguous to really mean anything - but in my experience, the sort of discussions that actually produce good, thought provoking conversation require integrity and precision.
Then again, I don't mind it when someone asks me what I mean. Or how I define something. It makes me happy, actually, because it means they are being respectful enough to give me a chance to expound upon and clarify my position rather than making false assumptions. Or, more frankly, it means they are being reasonable. It reminds me a lot of how my father would discuss things with me when I was a kid (usually about what I learned in school), and how much I learned and expanded my own understanding of subjects by trying to give him clear and logical explanations. So I don't necessarily empathize with or really understand the perspective of people who respond to questions with outrage. (That is more or less the opposite of what you do, which is why you're one of my favorite people to discuss things with, actually. The fact I don't really understand that outrage is one of my greatest weaknesses, and something that has caused me a lot of anxiety)
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I said you made me speak in lawyer talk...I was just joshing that you made me pick my words carefully. Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Complaining that others are demanding too much precision and that it's annoying while steadfastly refusing to be precise yourself is surely also a pretty poor way of starting a discussion too.
And you're welcome to point to where someone said you're wrong and offered no explanation. Of course you're entirely within your rights to instruct-some might even say 'lecture' others on the proper way to disagree with you, while continuously refusing to engage them on their own terms as well, which is I guess one way of addressing multiple specific and relevant questions.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: And you're welcome to point to where someone said you're wrong and offered no explanation.
If I had to guess he's referring to this post, where he asked a pretty straightforward question and I gave him a straightforward, factual answer.
After which, of course, he specifically asked me to explain and provide sources, so I gave him a reasonably exhaustive explanation (and several more to his follow-on questions) and provided sources.
Which is somehow now inflammatory behavior?
I'll be honest, Stone_Wolf_, I'm having a hard time understanding why you consider being told you are wrong about something offensive when you explicitly ask if you are right or wrong about something. Likewise, it seems strange to complain about being "lectured" when you explicitly ask someone to explain something to you in depth. Or am I misunderstanding what you meant by "enlighten me"?
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Ugh, don't get me started on Ender in Exile. It was all lecturing and nagging about marriage and babies, racial stereotypes and characters that just existed to lecture about marriage and babies instead of being believable people and Ender's mother and father didn't even bother visiting him for the LAST TIME. Why not? There's no excuse for that! He was going to fly out in the space and they have to make some silly speech so Valentine has to be Ender's nagging mother/wife talking about how well she knows him when she didn't and those scientists just existed to make ANOTHER speech about heterosexual marriage and babies and it's creepy as hell for women to be in a marriage lottery like property ugh. that book ruined every Ender book for me and now I can't even enjoy those anymore because of the subtext. No, there is nothing wrong with the nuclear family except the people who have been let down by the so-called traditional family and end up rejected, but that is become rarer as more people accept their (except?) their gay or trans children instead of kicking them out but really that concept of family is fairly new historically. It is NOT under threat just because two men or two women want to get married and have the same rights and can only be made stronger.
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zlogdanbr
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:From my part I was not and I am not trying to say traditional families are under threat...
Who, then, is considering them an "evil and old-fashioned way of having children," per your earlier observation, in Brazil?
I don't think "traditional families" are threatened in any way, either. But you explicitly called out a contrast -- that you hold "conservative" values that do NOT consider "traditional families" to be "evil."
And this is where the self-examination bit comes in. Because in my experience, most people who dig in their heels and proclaim their "conservative values" in opposition to some (presumably) newfangled cultural bugbear have not actually paused to identify whether that bugbear EXISTS or is in fact a threat to their society that exceeds the danger posed by overreacting to the change.
We have many self proclaimed socialist parties here in Brazil and in theory the government is ruled by a socialist party. Many of them radically endorse Marxist and Gramscian ideals.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Probably not "pro straight" like me...I got a cool badge & a secret decoder ring.
Not actually an answer. Again, you haven't identified anything you are "pro" that applies specifically and exclusively to straight people. From your frankly somewhat flaky descriptions, you seem to be pro being a parent but that is not something that all straight people do (or are good at if they end up doing it accidentally) and that many SS couple do really well.
When this is pointed out to you, rather than reconsider your position or support it, you retreat into annoying lala juvenile crap.
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Parents that disown their own children is one of the most loathsome things I know. Here in Brazil, it used to be more common to have parents doing that for gay sons and daughters but this has been changed radically.
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i confess i too am not exactly real sure what your position is anymore s_w
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zlogdanbr
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I actually never said I was against gay marriage or gay rights, I believe you have assumed that incorrectly. Please do not take this harshly, but it seems that you assumed it because I said I bear some conservative principles and because I said OSC has never meant any hatred against gay people.
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And what has that to do with being pro straight? And we are typing. No one is talking any louder than anyone else.
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quote:I can be proud of being a husband & father without shitting on ANYONE.
But what is the point of stating that as a POSITION?
When people like zlog say "I'm pro traditional family values" I hear "I like families & children & marrages that last a lifetime & the idea of true love".
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Stone_Wolf_, honey, are you new to this planet? Are you somehow unaware that the phrase "traditional family" is used to mean one man-one woman (preferably with the woman not working outside the home) families? Specifically, not SS families.
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My point is that it isn't always the case & y'all jumped on zlog pretty hard w/o even asking..."what did you mean -exactly- by that? Because most people take it -this- way here."
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quote:I can be proud of being a husband & father without shitting on ANYONE.
But what is the point of stating that as a POSITION?
When people like zlog say "I'm pro traditional family values" I hear "I like families & children & marriages that last a lifetime & the idea of true love".
You hear "I'm against gays."
It's a problem.
Because the sad truth is that is the rallying cry of people who are against gays. I'm for all the families that are healthy and happy and full of love even if they are not nuclear.
Also traditional family is an odd term anyway. What tradition is that? Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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zlogdanbr
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Km, you mean for example, my neighbor whose gay daughter lives with her partner in the same place along with their adopted daughter?
Or do you mean like my gay uncle who is my godfather and really loved his father and mother's family and still loves everybody in the family ( like we all love him ) even those on traditional marriages?
Or a good friend of my father who is divorced from his first wife, and has married again and is raising a step daughter and one of the daughters from first marriage is gay?
Yes they are all real good examples of families.
Please km, please do not take this offensively but you are really judging my opinions based upon your preconceptions.
The fact I don't hate OSC or even think he is a person that addresses hatred against gays or because I like the idea of a family with a father and mother makes me anti gay?
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Yes. I mean those examples. Particularly the first where two women are raising their daughter. Do you include those in the kind of traditional families that you like the idea of and think should be given proper value and importance?
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What a weird phrase. As if being gay is a new thing? I like families to be happy and free of abuse myself. Regardless of what shape they take.
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So what do you mean by traditional families. Why "traditional"? What would a non-traditional family be?
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When they go on about that it just makes me want to marry a woman and a man and be polyamorous JUST to annoy them despite being afraid of weddings and liking solitude too much.
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As for Card, zlog, that is a discussion that's been had already but I'll reiterate: people suggesting Card does or might hate/ fear homosexuals have considerably more to go on than a disapproval of gay marriage.
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A statement I've made that you've yet to address, SW, is that of context and language. Alright, let's take it as a given that when you say 'pro-straight' you mean no criticism* of any other sexuality or child-rearing family unit. That's fine. But the very structure of the term you're using has an implicit criticism of something else. Pros and Cons. Pluses and minuses. Who says for instance 'I am pro-hydration.'? It's a given, a necessity, there can't possibly be a contrary position and so people don't use the language of plus/minus to describe it. So all else aside, given that, people misinterpreting your meaning has as much or more to do with your choice of words than anything else.
*Except that there isn't really an absence of criticism, is there? You're on record as claiming a 'connection to the infinite' for monogamous heterosexual married child-rearing, and expressing skepticism that other couples can attain that much meaning.
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: Also traditional family is an odd term anyway. What tradition is that?
I tried to make that exact point earlier.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: So all else aside, given that, people misinterpreting your meaning has as much or more to do with your choice of words than anything else.
Fair cop. For me...I'm pro human...so my message doesn't get muddled.
However when BB or Lyr or zlog use the phrase "family values" I also know what they are talking about and it ain't "anti-gay".
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I also kno that when Clive says it it means -exactly- all the bad stuff y'all are talking bout.
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