New Schoolyard Bullies?

[ToraToraTora]

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140331/cleisure/cleisure2.html
Interesting article here from someone who supports same sex marriage.

[jackthehat]

///Well said mikey. some otherwise persuaded folk will not rest until it is compulsory///

It must have been....erm....literally days since someone last posted that....LoL

[sp1814]

vetuste_ennemi

It should be easy to hold views that run counter to your life experiences, but it isn't.

It's just a human condition.

The more you get to know someone, especially when they are friends, the more you begin to think about subjects (eg. abortion, equal marriage, care for the elderly, farming subsidies) on a human level, rather than as an abstract.

[sp1814]

Togo is correct.

The aim of the gay lobby is to make everyone in the world gay.

There would be no more babies, and the human race would disappear within a generation, but we would go out in fabulous style.

[youngmafbog]

Well it would solve the population problem SP !

[vetuste_ennemi]

I didn't make myself clear, SP. I'm challenging the assumption in your post - that being against gay marriage is being opposed to gays. The two things are not equivalent. There is nothing inconsistent in having gay friends while at the same time opposing gay marriage. Or having other views which you and your fellow gay evangelists would consider irrational attitudes motivated by hate, such as gay adoption.

[Togo]

sp @ 18:42 Welll Elton John will be furious.

[bazwillrun]

"Yep it is always wise to cover your ass "

brilliant...intended or otherwise !

[sp1814]

vetuste_ennemi

I hear what you're saying, and I will counter with this - it's like holding the vote that the government should not fund any research into sickle anaemia even though you have black friends.

Perhaps (as I suspect), that's not the best analogy.

What I mean by 'anti-gay' is 'attitudes which run counter to making lives easier and/or better for gay people', rather than 'being opposed to gays'.

Incidentally, I'm not sure what being 'opposed to gays' actually means.

That's like being opposed to cantilever bridges or opposed to onions.

[Mosaic]

No, people who are pleased to see others happy in love are not schoolyard bullies.
Schoolyard bullies are people who will happily whip up mobs to enforce their prejudices.
Professional-looking web design does not confer moral or intellectual correctness.

[andy-hughes]

sp1814 - "I'm wondering whether the dearth of responses might be something to do with the fact that regular AB contributors suspect that you've posted this thread because you painted yourself into a corner on mummy's thread:"That was absolutely my first thought as well.

Searching the web and finding an article that is eighteen months old to back up your position is not really making your point any more valid Tora – what did you do, put the words ‘gay’ and ‘bully’ into your search engine and then trawl through the results?

The points made in your link are not in the least comparable with the story we debated previously about gay couples being denied marriage licences, and I am sure you actually know that. There was no bullying in involved there, except by the clerk involved with her subordinates.

The point is, strident gay activists who give the impression that they think everyone should think like they do, do no-one any favours, especially the gay community, who have enough grief, without it being manufactured for them by people who think that hostility and hysteria are the ways to change peoples’ minds.

But gay activists like this do not represent gays as a whole, any more than the EDL represents conservative politics in the UK.

You are clutching at straws with your ‘gay bullying’ crusade – best let it drop, you are not going to win this one.

[Zacs-Master]

I think he lost it a looooong time ago.

[Togo]

//Searching the web and finding an article that is eighteen months old to back up your position is not really making your point any more valid Tora //

To quote a paragon of peace and diversity.'' They haven't gone away you know''. Gerry Adams

[andy-hughes]

Togo - "//Searching the web and finding an article that is eighteen months old to back up your position is not really making your point any more valid Tora //

To quote a paragon of peace and diversity.'' They haven't gone away you know''. Gerry Adams"

I'm not sure how that links into this debate Togo - care to elaborate?

[Togo]

You seemed sure that because TTT used an 18 month old article that it was now not relevant. My point is that leopards tend not to lose their spots. Even after less than 2 years.

[andy-hughes]

Togo - "You seemed sure that because TTT used an 18 month old article that it was now not relevant. My point is that leopards tend not to lose their spots. Even after less than 2 years."

Thanks for clarifying your point – appreciated.

I see what you are saying, but my point was that publishing a piece about strident gay activists published an a well-known homophobic country that was written a long time ago does smack of an element of desperation from Tora in his attempts to keep his ‘gays are intolerant bullies’ position from sinking without trace.

As I said – it’ not helping, and in the apparent absence of anything relevant to back up his argument, it is perhaps better to concede defeat and move on.

[Togo]

Silly me. Fancy thinking we are on here to debate. I hadn't realized that it was a game of winner takes all. Perhaps it may have been more accurate to wonder if the gay activists had exhausted their perpetual victim cards.

[vetuste_ennemi]

"What I mean by 'anti-gay' is 'attitudes which run counter to making lives easier and/or better for gay people', rather than 'being opposed to gays'.
Understood. I should have used a word like antipathetic.
However, your phrase "...run counter to making lives easier and/or better for gay people" makes any opposition to any demand by any gay in pursuit of an "easier, better life" homophobic, doesn't it, SP? Basically your definition of homophobia is "disagreeing with SP".
The view that the world is, or ought to be arranged exclusively for one's own gratification is a childish conceit. When disabused of his illusion the thwarted child who can't get everything he wants when he wants it reacts by throwing a tantrum. Accepting that we can't have all wishes granted and all prayers answered is part of growing up. The child who refuses to grow up becomes a narcissist. Some of them become a noisy and irritating lobby.
I might want to marry my mother or my daughter (or both). But I don't demand that the rest of the world indulge my whims.

[Togo]

What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name.'

Written by Lord Alfred Douglas 1894. Has it now become the love that will not shut up.

[Svejk]

I always thought that was Oscar, Togo. Thanks for that little bit of education, today. (you're never too old to learn something new)
Good post, again, by vestuti? (wish you had an easier name, like, er, mine.)

[sp1814]

Togo

Thanks for the post - I had no idea that was a line from a poem.

Yes, I think it may be irritating that gay people now have a voice and aren't afraid to use it, but think of it this way - we're living in a massive transitional period.

In 50 years time, calls for equality will be a thing of the past (in the same way that feminism is now an anachronism).

I'm sure that in the same way that you wish gay people to shut up, you equally wish that religious fundamentalists and right wingers would also be quiet with their anti-gay rhetoric, right?

I mean, if you want one section of the population to shush about sexuality, surely the same must be true of others?