posted
I'm not sure. Are we arguing over whether OSC is an anti-gay bigot or whether he is an anti-gay bigot who could be said to have an irrational fear of gays?
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posted
I think the argument is over whether we should call him an anti-gay bigot or not on the chance that if we beat around the bush, he might give up his opposition to it.
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posted
The argument as far as I can tell is that BB (and possibly others) feel that the word "homophobe" is a clinical word for someone with an irrational fear of homosexuality, and is fighting to keep the word from its more common use as a synonym for "anti-homosexuality".
Whether or not OSC has an irrational fear of homosexuality is a slightly different topic which has be suggested but not refuted.
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as in i am saying what I will not do on this forum.
there is zero deputy moderatordom in that statement. it means literally what it says. that i would not have that conversation on this forum, but would have it elsewhere.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: notice the power word "I"
as in "me"
as in i am saying what I will not do on this forum.
there is zero deputy moderatordom in that statement. it means literally what it says. that i would not have that conversation on this forum, but would have it elsewhere.
Exactly, you are codifying for yourself the essence of the TOS.
That is requirement #1 for deputy moderators. I think a plastic badge, cap gun, and Stetson hat are in order.
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posted
it has literally nothing to do with the terms of service. or rather, because the TOS is not actually the rules of this forum at all, i'm not bypassing that conversation here because I don't think I would be allowed to have that conversation here. I don't want to, because the community at large here would make that conversation excruciatingly dumb, really fast.
BUT I will take the stetson anyway, thank you.
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posted
we could for funsies go back to its nadpex where the most wrongo things ever said about the legitimacy of boycotts were being said, that sure sounds like fun
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posted
apply that to anyone we're talking about. does it fix anything that's being addressed here or just make the kvetching and blubbering about namecalling and blacklisting worse?
because it just means substituting "asshole" for homophobe.
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posted
Well, yeah, but I don't think "because I'm an asshole" is the legit justification for any known people's opposition to gay rights, whereas phobic/fearful thoughts of homosexuals actually legitimately provide for explanations of a lot of people's clinging to discrimination, anger, and intolerance against gays.
Gays legitimately in some way scare or creep the heck out of a great majority of people who oppose "their lifestyle," no matter how much they coach the reasons why.
I mean there is definitely something to be said of maybe morgan freeman's presumed quote: the people we call homophobes? Assholes, maybe. Toxic and terrible, no matter how good intentioned they think they are, no matter how much they try to derail or play the "no i am the persecuted one here" card. The "defense of traditional marriage" crowd are prejudice troglodytes akin to racists in the way that they employ the same vapid sorts of internalized justifications and convoluted scripture or "Social Science" to say that they aren't actually prejudiced, no, it's about God's love/plan/the way He designed marriage, and protecting us against 'threats to an ideal reproductive environment' — bonus points if they also (a) cling to the notion that homosexuality is a mental disease that can be cured, and or (b) are possessed of the desire to keep any talk/exposures about The Gay away from our children, because we can't have them being told that gay is okay.
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posted
I have to admit I frankly never understood the question. Is OSC a homophobe? No. I've never gotten the sense that he fears them at all.
It's obvious from his writings that he does not believe homosexual relationships are "real" relationships, but that they are more akin to teenage crushes or, possibly, to children playing House without any sense of the real responsibilities required. And for some reason, people are blind enough to accept such frivolous, childish fantasies as equal to the real and important task of adult man-and-woman marriage, the backbone of a strong society. This bewilders him, I feel, and frightens him, and the more it is accepted the more strident he is against it.
(These are not his words and may not reflect his opinions; this is the impression I get reading what he's written on the subject.)
I don't think he fears homosexuals per se. What I believe he fears is the breakdown of society and the trivialization of family, and the failure of people to do what society needs them to do for the greater good. I believe he fears that a lot, possibly to an irrational degree. Is there a word for that? Anarchaphobia?
Arguments about human rights, about dedicated gay people in decades-long relationships, about the need for social structure for a significant portion of the population which may, in fact, strengthen the institution of marriage rather than weaken it, all those fall on deaf and disbelieving ears because to him, I think, we're arguing, over and over, that because Billy and Susie held hands once in a cardboard house in the backyard then they should receive all the legal benefits and protections of the law.
Irrational fear of homosexuals: no. Irrational fear of the breakdown of society: arguable.
[ March 23, 2013, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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posted
Irrational fear of the breakdown of civilization due to the threat posed by the acceptance of homosexuality as a valid relationship option? Definitely arguable, I'd say.
It's also why I'm not uncomfortable seeing the label homophobe applied to him.
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posted
I don't have arachnophobia, because I'm not afraid of spiders, it's their bite I'm afraid of.
I don't have acrophobia, because I'm not afraid of being in high places, it's falling from a high place I'm afraid of.
I don't have homophobia, because I'm not afraid of gay people, it's civilization breaking down because of accepting gays that I'm afraid of.
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posted
Stone--there is actually a difference. I have an irrational fear of heights--mild Acrophobia. I fly in a plane just fine, and looked over the edge of the Grand Canyon without a problem, but put me on a roller coaster only 200 feet of the ground and I get nervous. Climbing a ladder makes my pulse pound and nausea form. I can not walk across a 18" wide plank over an open pit. I've tried and couldn't.
Of course I rationalized it with fears of falling or landing or what have you--but it was this irrational fear that short circuited my brain that makes it acrophobia.
So too, would a fear of the touch, sound, or presence of a gay person be Homophobia.
Mr. Card seems to present more a case of Heteronormative. That means he believes that Heterosexuality is normal, and being normal, is better.
Which is sad, when you read some of his work. I forget which book has a wonderful passage about "The Other". He describes in detail the fear everyone has of "The Other", its irrationality, and the wrongness of despising others because they are "other."
His view of Homosexuality places 4-5% of all humanity in a tight box of "Otherness" that he will not tolerate.
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posted
Again, these are my words, not OSC's, but...
Imagine if someone suggested blind people should be permitted to be airline pilots. You have no terror of blind people, you admire many of them. You have no phobias about the blind. But otherwise sane people are voting for blind people to be able to pilot airplanes without any thought to the consequences, and the closer they get to achieving their goal the more desperate you get, trying to head off the disaster they somehow don't see coming.
Society is moving toward granting legal recognition of something, to OSC, simply isn't an option.
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posted
I get that to him, there is an actual threat to the fabric of civilization posed by the weakening of the family unit that would take place if homosexual marriage were to be popularly and legally considered a viable option. I even get that he feels there are very real risks involved to everyone if this were to come to pass, too.
But where the 'irrational fear' comes in is in a few places. One, his evidence is shall we say shoddy. Two, it's not like blind airline pilots for whom the direct physical safety of hundreds and thousands of other people is inextricably linked. It would be more as though he were to say public dancing poses a grave threat to the social fabric of society, and we are all at risk if people are allowed to do so, etc.
We wouldn't say he sat at home nights thinking about all the ways dancers were scary and how much he hated them, but we would certainly say that his fear of dancers was irrational, however rational it might seem to him. And we'd be right.
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posted
Well, that's it, isn't it. I do think he considers acceptance of gay marriage to be just as dire a threat as blind airline pilots.
Not saying he's right. But when I think of homophobe I think of someone with a shuddering, visceral hatred/fear of homosexuals and I just don't think that's the case. And I think that when you label OSC a homophobe it means you've stopped tried to see his view or reason with him.
Just as how I think when he starts talking about the Liberal Left he's plainly gives up on trying to see their view or reason with them.
Pasting someone with a label destroys discussion and eliminates any chance of compromise.
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posted
Open discussion is helpful and valued, but when have someone who is dead set in their beliefs, to the point that they threaten to overthrow the government or suggest that gay marriage is the death of democracy then discussion is not really going to be effective. I was curious about NOM, so I looked up their site. Wow...they basically are giving people short cuts to derail conversation with emotional rhetoric! There comes a point when one must recognize when a group or person is an enemy to liberty, and then publicly ostracizing them with such labels is nearly the only way to mitigate the damage they do.
Samp has been saying things like this, and I mostly disagree, but because I feel his aim is too wide, and he ends up polarizing opposition by including those whose opinions are not as ardent as OSC's seems to be. But I do agree with this tactic when it comes to the fringe. And OSC is fringe.
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posted
Phobia, as applied to groups of people such as in homophobia, islamaphobia, etc., connotes not only a fear of the specific type of person. For example, we don't expect an islamaphobe to react with the sort of unreasoning fear to an Islamic person that say an arachnophobe would to a spider. Rather, it describes a range of irrational anitpathy to the members of that group.
That is not to say that irrational fears don't play a part in this. OSC has said, for example, that allowing gay people to marry will make it so many people will stop marrying people of the opposite sex because a partner of the same sex is so much more comfortable and less scary than that of the opposite sex. That is a pretty clearly an irrational fear. To Chris's point, I think it is much closer to someone saying that we shouldn't let any Islamic people become airline pilots because they will obviously just crash them into buildings.
Yeah, if the irrational, malicious things that the bigots believe were true, than they would be justified in their fears. If, for example, gay people were largely that way because they are the victims of sexual abuse who find themselves trapped in their lifestyle that brings them nothing but shame, but who won't be recognized as such or treated by psychologist because of political reasons, and who don't really stand anything to gain from getting the right to marriage, but are instead pawns or members of a cabal determined to bring down the family, religion, and traditional values, as OSC has written, then yeah, we probably should rethink same sex marriage. But those beliefs are absurd. The rest on absurd boogeymen concocted from false information, dishonesty, and probably a big heap of irrational fear.
And I don't know, I think this has maybe gotten lost, but OSC doesn't just have a problem with same sex marriage. As he said:
quote:Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those whoflagrantly[sic] violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.
He is against homosexuals as being regarded as full members of society.
I'm going to follow up this post with another long one going into this, but I'm still not sure where the issue here lies. To me, it seems like several people are claiming that OSC's writings and actions don't justify thinking he has an irrational antipathy to gay people, but this is maybe tangled up in talking about whether homophobe is the right word for this.
If it's the latter, I mean, that ship has pretty much sailed, that's what the word means now, but I'm certainly not going to fight you if you say that construing it as equivalent to the psychologically defined specific phobias and we can talk about the word and it's ramifications, etc.
However, if it is the former, then this is a very different type of discussion.
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posted
It's been difficult for me to follow the center of contention here, probably because I'm a sleep-deprived parent who does things like shows up for a dinner party a week after it took place. Here's my understanding (and keep in mind, nowhere near at my best right now).
From what I can see, we started out with people are boycotting OSC because of what he believes, coupled with it is, as a matter of principle, wrong to boycott artists for anything other than the quality of their art. The first part was addressed by pointing out that OSC, besides publicly spreading false and malicious information about gay people and advocating, again publicly, against their rights, also belongs and financially supports NOM, the organization that was largely behind the bigoted, dishonest, fear mongering campaign for Prop 8 as does things like calls for boycotts equivalent to the one we're talking about here. (Although, honestly, I'm not sure, BB do you now accept that people aren't just boycotting OSC for having beliefs they disagree with?)
The second bit, about the principle of not boycotting artists, didn't last long either. Neither actually said it, but I think it is fair to say that both Scott and BB don't believe this principle applies if we're talking about someone from the KKK*. So, it's more like it is wrong to boycott an artist, unless what that artist is doing is wrong enough to justify boycotting them.
So, yeah, pretty much a tautology, and it's kind of odd for Scott and BB to think that gay people and their supporters will accept what they think is wrong enough to justify a boycott. Scott, if I recall correctly, supports NOM both in their purpose and financially and BB (and I'm probably being too blunt here) seems to have them and OSC tied up in apologetics for the LDS leader and memberships' awful behavior in pursuing Prop 8.
But, even though this wasn't acknowledged, the conversation did move sort of to the question of how bad OSC's writings and behavior have been and whther he deserves to be called a homophobe or an anti-gay bigot or whether he holds rational, non-prejudicial opinions that people just disagree with. Is that a valid summation of where we are and how we got here?
* - On the KKK bit, I chose them in large part because they are the prototypical bigoted organization, but also I liked to symmetry. The KKK has officially stated they are no longer an "anti-gay" group, they are "pro-traditional marriage". Wait I mean that they are no longer "anti-black" and are instead "pro-white". They have also officially renounced violence, which coincided nicely to me with OSC's past advocacy (in the part of his Hypocrites of Homosexuality piece I quoted above) of using violence to keep gay people in their place.
posted
As to whether or not calling bigots bigots is a useful tactic, I'm surprised we even need to have that conversation, especially with LDS. Of course it is. I mean, forgot the vast strides made by both the racial civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement in making bigotry aimed against them unacceptable to say in public, your church is in the process of changing their approach to gays specifically because of their bigoted and dishonest behavior in pursuing Prop 8 has hurt them.
edit: Yeah, it hard to point to a specific person who has had a genuine change of heart (organizations like the LDS church or the KKK changing their official face is a lot easier), it has a very real effect, especially when coupled with the gentler persuasive side that is also very important.
Plus, gay people deserve this defense. They deserve public support and to have the bigots and bullies that have been attacking them for centuries to be called such and to be shunned from decent society when they engage in bigotry against gays. I think gay people deserve a safe space a lot more than the bigots do.
edit 2:
As does the other groups that they are bigoted towards. Bigots, by and large, don't confine themselves to one group (I belong to at three groups OSC is bigoted against). That's definitely one of the distressing things about discussing this with Mormons. They'll go from "How dare you say that these people are anti-gay bigots?" and then turn around and say that the same exact people are anti-Mormon bigots because they won't vote for Mitt Romney. When you weaken anti-gay bigotry and groups that practice it, you also weaken anti-black bigotry and anti-islamic bigotry and anti-atheist bigotry and anti-woman bigotry and even anti-Mormon bigotry, etc. etc.
The gay rights fight has pretty much already been won. Right now, we are trying to speed it up as much as possible and to stamp the "BIGOT" mark hard enough into the (often religious) groups and people that practice it that it sticks around so that it stays with them as a large part of the concept that people have of them, reducing their power to hurt other groups and poison public discourse going forward.
posted
[quote]That's definitely one of the distressing things about discussing this with Mormons. They'll go from "How dare you say that these people are anti-gay bigots?" and then turn around and say that the same exact people are anti-Mormon bigots because they won't vote for Mitt Romney. [\quote]
Huh?
I think if you're discussing SSM with a Mormon who claims people who didn't vote for Romney are anti-Mormon, you're dealing with someone who would be a nutcase regardless of their religion. Saying that's an argument Mormons in general are inclined to make is a biiiiiig stretch, don't you think? Come up with something a little more believable to make your case.
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posted
afr, Maybe what I intended with that statement didn't come across, but, yeah, that's come up multiple times on Hatrack. BB wrote about that on this very thread. OSC has written that very thing (Mormons have no chance in American politics, etc.)
I see it coming up a lot. And, to a large extent, I agree with it (although the "the only reason any person/Republican would not vote for Mitt Romney is because they are anti-Mormon takes it way too far). From what I've seen, a big section of the Republican base are bigoted against Mormons.
I'm not sure what you read in my comment that makes that a nutcase statement.
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posted
I can't get into the nitty gritty of your posts yet MrSquicky, but I don't think I ever argued that anti-gay bigot should not be used to describe opponents of same-sex marriage, only argued against homophobe becoming synonymous with opposing it.
I've never argued that those who won't vote for Romney are even likely anti-mormons. I didn't vote for Romney. I certainly don't hate his Mormonism.
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quote:Samp has been saying things like this, and I mostly disagree, but because I feel his aim is too wide, and he ends up polarizing opposition by including those whose opinions are not as ardent as OSC's seems to be.
Do you think that I shouldn't shame people who have good intentions?
More importantly: do you think that the "polarizing opposition" is something that I should care about in any way, shape, or form? By being anti-racist, I certainly polarize opposition amongst racist groups, especially considering the extent to which I continue the process of socially ostracizing them for their revolting views. At what point am I supposed to consider "polarizing opposition" to be something I have to care about?
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posted
"Whoa, maybe I was going to stop discriminating against black people. But then you called me a racist. My response is to remain a racist forever."
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posted
BB, For the first part, I wasn't trying to say that you did. Other LDS on this site however have (kat comes to mind). And OSC definitely has done both.
For the second part, here's what I was talking about:
quote:Let's not remember that four years ago it was precisely Romney's Mormoness that lost him the Republican nomination to McCain.
As I said, I agree that many Republicans didn't vote for Mitt Romney in part because they are bigoted against Mormons. It's that calling these same people bigoted against gay people (usually for much stronger reasons) is often strongly attacked by the LDS who claim the first.
The LDS church's problems with bigotry against them comes largely from conservative Christians, the very same people they ally with and defend in other matters, especially pushing bigotry against gays. Weaken the groups that push anti-gay bigotry and you'll also be weakening the groups that push anti-LDS bigotry. I may have been reading you incorrectly, but this seemed to me to be missing from your discussion of anti-LDS bigotry.
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posted
I see what you are saying I think. But I don't think LDS bigotry is limited to the Christian Right. I have experienced a good deal of it from the Liberal Left who in the same breath clap themselves on the back for being tolerant of everybody.
But I do think LDS folks have taken too many of their queues from evangelicals on topics like evolution, homosexuality, secularism, etc. At the same time, it has started making broad steps towards becoming an international organization. So the insular culture of Utah and the regions around it, are clashing into Mormons from outside who don't take those same queues.
But within the US, LDS folks are still largely looked at as polygamists living in Utah.
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posted
Discussion and gentle persuasion versus bigot-shaming seems like a poor way to frame it. This is not a binary choice situation, even with the same person.
Again, the LDS church leaders and a large section of their membership engaged in a campaign of bigotry, dishonesty, and fear mongering in regards to Prop 8. How effective do you think discussion is going to be with an LDS bigot whose leadership was actively encouraging that bigotry?
Due to outside pressure, the leadership is changing their stance, although by no mean repudiating or acknowledging the immorality of their Prop 8 campaign. If outside pressure gets strong enough, perhaps they will admit to this, which then sets the stage for possible productive conversation.
With OSC, many of us (I believe I am probably the most prominent) have engaged his writings on a productive conversational level, pointing out where he's gotten things wrong. He's been a party to some of these conversations and has definitely read some of them (for example, the discussion of the 1972-73 APA's shift on homosexuality) but has never, that I've seen, either genuinely taken part in these conversations or considered what was said in them. Several times, he has responded with insults.
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quote:I see what you are saying I think. But I don't think LDS bigotry is limited to the Christian Right. I have experienced a good deal of it from the Liberal Left who in the same breath clap themselves on the back for being tolerant of everybody.
Obviously I don't have your experiences, so I can't really say, but I don't know. The stuff you brought up before seemed to me to boil down to "People don't believe in the LDS religion."
Yeah, people (and the vast amount of the "Liberal Left" know next to nothing about LDS - although more do now after your not exactly great example Mitt Romney and Prop 8) think that your religion is silly, obviously false and was started by a con man or delusional cult leader. Because, if you don't believe in it, that's how it comes across. That doesn't sound like bigotry to me.
From my perspective, I'm sure there is some, but mostly people don't care or know much of anything about you. So yeah, they may vaguely believe that you are polygamists in sort of the same way they vaguely believe that Australian bushmen go around mostly naked with white paint markings.
Again, this is just my perspective as an east coast outsider, but from what I see, nearly all of the people who really hate you and think about you are conservative christians (and the gay rights people after you, you know, committed egregious acts of bigotry against them). During the Presidential campaigns, the anti-Mormon stuff came up a lot during the primary and was nearly completely absent during the general.
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quote:I have experienced a good deal of it from the Liberal Left who in the same breath clap themselves on the back for being tolerant of everybody.
I am curious if you are attributing any of your experiences on sakeriver to this. I'd be fairly disappointed if you were.
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quote:Yeah, people (and the vast amount of the "Liberal Left" know next to nothing about LDS - although more do now after your not exactly great example Mitt Romney and Prop 8) think that your religion is silly, obviously false and was started by a con man or delusional cult leader. Because, if you don't believe in it, that's how it comes across. That doesn't sound like bigotry to me.
Those beliefs certainly aren't bigotry in of themselves. So long as you can wrap your head around my believing the church was started by a prophet of God, and that I believe that after much time reflecting on it, and considering alternative explanations such as the one you posited. And that I hold those beliefs to be sacred.
Bigotry is when you can't tolerate me or my beliefs co-existing along with you and yours.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: "Whoa, maybe I was going to stop discriminating against black people. But then you called me a racist. My response is to remain a racist forever."
More like, "I'm -not- a racist, or hate monger, that guy is off his high horsed gourd and I don't have to listen to a thing he has to say or even slightly consider my own culpability for deep seated views inside myself which might have upon further introspection and open discussion lead me to change my mind."
But hey, as long as you can be a jerk for the "right reasons" then it isn't all that important if you are really helping or not.
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