As a H.S. teacher once said, “When you have no facts, use ad hominum attacks – that way you can still argue once you’ve implicitly conceeded the point”

They also said, “If you can’t beat their arguments, then beat them (or a pillow), that way you’ll feel like you have accomplished something when you’ve actually done nothing.”

One other note, when you attack as sophisticated speaker with sophisticated arguments, you have a chance that your side might be right, but if you have nothing to challenge the arguments, and only challenges to the person, then it’s pretty clear who has already won, and who hasn’t admitted it to themselves.

Thanks all for letting me see how personally wounded you are all from Benkof’s position. I’ve gone to his website and started reading. He’s got some interesting arguments.

He assumes that straight folks are predominantly monogamous, that virtually none of them are involved in open relationships. As a purveyor of the stigma against open relationships, he fails to see how that stigma might make someone less than honest about their open relationship.
The only data that proves any level of monogamy vs. open relationships in the straight community relies on self-reports — the least reliable of all reporting tools.
He makes a point, yet he fails to see the other side of that point. Marriage, to DB, is about monogamy. Many straight people, I’m sure, agree, as do many gays. Even straights who are in open relationships are aware of that expectation, and what it means to fall below that expectation. The Stigma against it. That is why they keep it quiet. They have much to lose by coming forward. And really, what business is it of the general public’s what, or who a married couple are doing behind closed doors?
Gays, on the other hand, are living, breathing stigma. After all, what’s a little open relationship when you’re already gay? See, we don’t have far to fall. Straight people do, and it is a very very bumpy road afterwards. So gays are actually much more likely to be open about their open relationships.
So DB’s argument is based not on reality, but perception.
Monogamy is the public expecation of a married couple. What they actually are doing is another matter. Some gays openly defy that expectation, that desired perception, and for that, DB holds the whole of homosexuality responsible. DB knows that a mass self-induced Outing of straight couples isn’t likely, so he can safely claim the perception is reality on both camps.

DB cares more about pointing out the supposed flaws of gays, than he cares about the actual flaws of straights. For someone who sometimes identifies as gay or bisexual, this is the manifest definition of self-loathing.

WRONG – You neither know my mind on open relationships nor do you know David Vitter’s or Bill Clinton’s. A google search shows nothing on Vitter and Open Relationships, and only a fictional conversation with Bill on the subject.

Circumstantial evidence does not prove that gay people have one solitary attitude on open relationships.

“I stated plainly I do not care at what rates straights and gays cheat. I care if they understand what marriage is, and most gays do not.”

First: I wasn’t aware there was a reliable gay poll asking “do you know what marriage is?” Please point me to this poll, because I’m gay, and I know a thing or two. I’d like to stand up and be counted.

Secondly: Your paragraph contradicts itself. Not surprising, but look at it. You say you don’t care at what rate gays (or straights) cheat yet you say that gays don’t know the definition of marriage. Your axe to grind on this has been open relationships, people who are not sexually exclusive, in other words, cheating. So, if you don’t care at what rate straights, or gays cheat, then how can you use that as evidence that they don’t know what marriage is? You would have to care to use it, your argument stands on nothing but that notion. If it doesn’t matter to you, then what exactly about gay folks leads you to believe they don’t know what marriage is?

“One of the men at the soiree is one of the most prominent gay-press journalists in the country. If you E-mail me, I can tell you his name. Please don’t force me to publicly reveal that he and his partner, even if they’re monogamous in the gay sense, are not sexually exclusive.”

No thanks. And nobody can force anybody to do anything unless that person allows them to have power over them. Free will still exists on the Blog, as far as I know.

Plus, I’m not interested in anyone else’s love life. I don’t even want to know the details about my FRIENDS’ love lives because it is none of my business.

What a desperate bid for attention.

you’re proud of this piece, though it displays an astounding amount dishonesty, hypocrisy, self hatred, and moral and intellectual ineptitude.

Some people would find that reprehensible. i merely find it sad.

What i find reprehensible is your willingness to trash the lives and aspirations of your gay brothers and sisters in service to your own greater glory, at least, the validation of your self-hatred. Their only crime is that their lives stand as living rebukes to the fears and choices that comprise yours.

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