Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyApril 6th, 2011
Considering that BTB’s comments section has had recent discussion about who is, or isn’t, or should be, part of our community and what nomenclature should be considered, it is a fittingly timely announcement that the LGBTQQIA community has a new letter: X, as in Malcolm X.
According to a new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Columbia University historian Manning Marable, X had during his life been involved in a number of not-strictly-heterosexual encounters including hustling the streets and a relationship with a white businessman.
Of course, engaging in same-sex relations for money does not make one gay. Or even bisexual. Lord knows that there are more than a few gay-for-pay porn actors who regularly – and convincingly – utilize their assets in pursuit of a few bucks before going home to the wife. And every major city has a population of young men who will happily engage in whatever sexual act you desire if it will pay for their next meal, next room, next fix.
As Rev. Irene Monroe puts it,
I am not heterosexist apologist, but if we, as LGBTQ, use this era of Malcolm’s life to claim him as gay, we misunderstand the art and survival of street hustling culture.
Similarly, if we, as African-Americans, use this era of Malcolm’s life to dismiss that he engaged in same-sex relationships, many will miss the opportunity to purge ourselves of homophobic attitudes.
But, as Monroe’s comments acknowledge, for the young Malcolms out there today, those who dance on the line of sexuality, their orientation (should it be heterosexual) does not excuse their sexual transgression. They are not “the same as” those in their family, church, community, society who have not had such relations. Heroes simply can’t have done homo things, and vice versa.
So, as the greater community of The Respectable may often reject the membership of these not-gay-but-doing-it-anyway folk, let us open our community to include them. Of course I’m kidding about adding an X. I don’t even use the letters after T, and most of the time just go with “gay community.”
But the invitation is real. The gay community – that community of gay, lesbian, bisexual, two-spirited, same-gender loving, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, asexual, friendly heterosexual, political ally, and elderly Russian Jewish women who wander down to Santa Monica Boulevard to watch Gay Pride every year – certainly has room for any who want to belong.
Latest Posts
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
“Google” is a trademark of Google Inc.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
enough already
April 6th, 2011
I see considerable risk in embracing this nonsense that someone having consensual sex with another person of the same sex is not having gay sex.
Shofixti
April 6th, 2011
*gasp* EA, what about two bisexual men – can’t they have bisexual sex with each other? What if they watch lesbian porn while doing it?
The Rev. I Monroe is right. But if you can perceive risk, or threat – can you also experience delight at how much greater this horror is for heteros?
Thomas J. Coleman
April 6th, 2011
Having heard of Malcolm X’s street hustling in his early life, why am I not surprised? And the Rev. Irene Monroe has it exactly right. Speaking as a proud Kinsey 6, the discussion here must transcend a strictly behavioral analysis to include motivation, but without excluding the importance and significance of the activity itself. Sadly Mr. Marable, having recently passed, the author of what may be the definitive biography of Malcolm X, is no longer here to futher inform us. This on top of what we’ve recently been told about Mahatma Gandhi. What a week, what a week!
Jaft
April 6th, 2011
I honestly am totally in love with that last sentence, Timothy.
enough already – no one is contesting that it isn’t gay sex, enough. We’re simply refraining from refering to Malcolm as having a gay (or bi) orientation.
enough already
April 6th, 2011
Jaft,
Actually, some are contesting that – and I was referring to the physical aspect of the matter – which I hope pleasured them both.
As for the exact classification of Malcom X’ sexuality, I really am puzzled why people are so hung up about pretending that a man who repeatedly has sex with another man is not 100% straight.
If a young man is curious, tries sex with other men a few times then with women a few times and says, wow – with guys it’s mechanical and OK but with women it’s really my thing, then I don’t think anyone would demand we call him bisexual or gay. He’s straight and either lives in a healthy culture or is personally strong enough to think for himself – or both, of course.
I see, clearly, that our anatomies are far less black and white than people thought back in the dark ages of snip and declare gender. I don’t, however, see why there is this tremendous effort to erase gay sex from the vocabulary.
It reeks of the next stage in the double-plus politically correctness wars, directed against the one group in the queer community who are perceived as being “too powerful”.
Erin
April 7th, 2011
enough already said: “As for the exact classification of Malcom X’ sexuality, I really am puzzled why people are so hung up about pretending that a man who repeatedly has sex with another man is not 100% straight.” I think you missed the part about street hustling and gay for pay in the article. There are many very poor young men out there who prostitute themselves in the cities so as not to starve, or more often, to get their next fix. It doesn’t make them gay, just really desperate for money. Also, as Timothy pointed out, a very significant number of gay porn actors are straight. They’re simply whores for money. Straight porn does not pay half what gay porn does. It’s a very lucrative job. Now, I’m one of those who believes most people have some level of sexual flexablility, but just because you’re having gay sex for money doesn’t make you gay necessarily. It only makes you more tolerant of it than not having the money you get out of it.
Priya Lynn
April 7th, 2011
“Enough” said “Jaft,
Actually, some are contesting that…”.
Show us where anyone has constested that it was gay sex.
Jaft
April 7th, 2011
enough already – for the most part, I agree with you; as long as there are discernable biological male sexes (and assuming the individual does not feel they were born as the wrong sex), there will always be the act of gay sex.
However, as Priya said, there has been no contesting (at least here; maybe in other places there has been contesting).
Further, the situation that Malcolm was in could hardly be considered a fair place to judge sexuality. He was hustling. Anyone familiar with brief Malcolm biography knows that before he became a Muslim, he was involved in the crime scene and, likely, just worried about keeping himself fed day to day.
Saying that we can call him gay based off that is like trying to call men who marry and then later divorce and come out bisexual (an enforcing that many of us, I think, would be intimately or tangentally familiar with).
Yes, maybe he was bi. Hell, maybe he was closeted and got married out of convenience. But we don’t know. And the situation that we do know about his gay sex life doesn’t seem to be supportable to substantially think that he might have been not straight.
As I said before, yes, he had gay sex, but we could not possibly say that he himself was gay or bi (and the evidence towards such is rather weak).
Does that make sense? I feel I sometimes get incoherant when online.
enough already
April 7th, 2011
Priya Lynn,
I meant it – you ignore my comments, I ignore yours. Now that you’ve finally admitted that you dislike me as I dislike you, there is no point in continuing to inflect our mutual disdain on others here.
Jaft,
I don’t find you incoherent. No more so than most of us and a good deal less than me at times.
I really try hard only to focus on male sexual activities for the simple reason that I am a man. Nothing makes me more furious than for a woman to tell me “oh, if you met the right girl you’d leave your “friend” (who is my legal husband here in Europe and with whom I’ve been together in a monogamous, faithful, true and loyal partnership for over 28 years).
I think women and the intersexed have their own right to claim whatever labels and terms and identities they wish or don’t wish to have.
Regarding men, however, well – “gay for pay” is a nice term, but a guy who has sex with other men is having gay sex. A bisexual who is, for however short a time, having a romantic relationship with another man is having a gay romance.
We can honor their wish to pretend that they aren’t really having gay sex or aren’t really in a gay romantic relationship all we want, but the fact remains that their actions are gay.
I’ve never been poor, I’ve never needed to hustle so I don’t know what it would take to make me sell my body to a woman. The only thing I could imagine which would do it would be for a child for whom I’m the sole provider who would otherwise die of hunger.
Malcom X obviously had more than just quick and dirty “action” in a dark alley with this man. What would interest me is why there is this tremendous resistance to acknowledging that he was not 100% heterosexual?
Priya Lynn
April 7th, 2011
“Enough” said “Priya Lynn,
I meant it – you ignore my comments, I ignore yours.”.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. In any event I don’t take orders from you, you post something stupid, I may comment on it.
Priya Lynn
April 7th, 2011
“enough” said “a guy who has sex with other men is having gay sex”.
No one has disputed that.
enough already
April 7th, 2011
Priya Lynn, nobody said you took orders from me.
I don’t from you either and I sure am not going to let your anti-white-cis-gendered-male-gay bias determine my life.
I do, however, out of respect for those here (everybody except you and me) who are sick and tired of our fighting no longer engage your nonsense.
Shofixti, when two biologically male people are having sex with each other and nobody else, it is gay sex. The bisexual description is absurd in that case. They may self-identify as bisexual but their sexual activity in this case would be gay.
Priya Lynn
April 7th, 2011
“Enough”, again you confuse my disdain for you with disdain for white biological male gays. I get along fine with the vast majority of white biological male gays.
You keep saying you’re not going to engage me and yet continue to engage me – stop it.
enough already
April 7th, 2011
Priya Lynn,
I don’t take orders from you. You have no right to tell me what I may or may not do. Ever.
I suggested we leave off commenting on things which we have, respectively, posted. The last months have shown there is no possible meeting of minds between us.
Now that you, as a bisexual, are so arrogantly attempting to order me, a genuinely gay man, to stop commenting, I shall most definitely comment whenever I wish.
I will never permit a bisexual to silence me for being a gay man. The Christians could not break my will, you never.
Shofixti
April 7th, 2011
For the sake of argument, and with all due respect, I will contest it.
What is the difference between saying:
a) Malcolm X engaged in same-sex sex acts, &
b) Malcolm X engaged in gay sex acts?
If there is no difference between these statements, then what is gained or lost by not referring to them as gay?
I thought that the primary unit of ‘gay’ was ‘identity’, not a sex act – should not gay sex acts then only be used to infer that two people who have gay identities are having sex?
Let me put this another way, we could say that every sex act between a man and a woman is a feminist sex act, because one of the participants is a woman, but would this not seem like an unjustifiable political appropriation?
If we pay attention to what the Reverend Irene is saying, she indicates that the claim of ‘gay’ might limit our inquiry and close off discussion. Maybe sex itself is the site of contested identity, rather than the act that confirms identity unanimously.
Timothy Kincaid
April 7th, 2011
Priya Lynn and Enough Already
You’ve had your say. I’ll be deleting any more bickering between you.
enough already
April 7th, 2011
Shofixti,
You certainly can make that argument in English with some validity.
In some other European languages, and to many educated native English speakers, “gay” and “same sex” would be identical in meaning within this context.
The problem, to my mind, arises when one wishes to pretend that consensual sex between two men never has a homosexual personality index to reference. That is, I think, the goal here of many – erasure of male homosexuality.
I just don’t buy it. Consensual sex between two men is homosexual or gay or an aspect of identity or whatever the academic flavor of the week for having a gay element to your soul is.
It strikes me that the article also references more between them than just hustling. Is my marriage only then gay when my husband is buried in me to the hilt? Or does listening to his dad tell the same story for the 79th time at family dinners with a smile on me face and wishing I’d never learned a word of English count, too?
enough already
April 7th, 2011
Timothy,
That’s fine with me. I apologize for detracting from the project.
Shofixti
April 7th, 2011
Thanks EA, that is interesting that ‘same sex’ and ‘gay’ are interchangable words in foriegn languages.
What if an Asian has sex with a Black – should we call this sex asian sex, or black sex, or interracial sex. Is not race the model of immutability that sexuality prefers to follow?
If someone went around codifying sex by race, we’d have to ask “What’s this guy’s problem?”. Similarly, the act of codifying does not explain difference e.g. between a white slave owner having sex with a black slave and two college students (black and white) that have sex.
You are asking that ‘gay’ be both the category of sex and the explanatory device that tells us what this sex means. That is why I would contest it. Rev. Monroe wants a deeper and more exacting analysis.
Timothy Kincaid
April 7th, 2011
Shofixti,
If an Asian gay man makes borscht is it Asian food? Or Ukrainian food? Or male food? Or gay food?
The correct answer is “that question doesn’t make sense”.
You believe that ‘gay’ is an explanatory device that tells us what the sex means. I believe it is a tool by which to describe the event, the genders of the partners in this instance, but “what it means” is not dictated by the word.
Once one stops seeing language as dictatorial and instead as descriptive, then the purpose ceases to be about control and become about communication.
At some point, this all begins to take on a familiar theme
enough already
April 7th, 2011
Shofixti,
You are, I think, making a mistake in your assumptions.
Clearly, a word like “gay” or “same-sex” alone can not adequately express the entire sheaf of descriptors needed to fully reveal the context, actors and all characteristics involved.
No sensible person disputes this.
It is, however, by attempting to abstract the action from the biology of the actors, you are also either forced to use multiple words and phrases or to exaggerate or undervalue certain elements.
Geometrically, there is no difference between being inside of someone and them surrounding you. Logically expressed within this discipline, there is no definition needed for “top” and none for “bottom”.
You are simply going to have to more adequately delineate the exact nature of your objections to gayness if you want to have this argument with people who think in multiple languages. “Same-sex” and “gay sex”, when two men are consensually and exclusively involved are semantically equivalent.
Your agenda of denying biological reality isn’t helped by not sufficiently defining context and meaning of the words you use.
Shofixti
April 7th, 2011
Very good – if I am mistaken then please allow me to clarify my mistake. It is good to hear exactly what you mean, I admire that, and I hope to be able to offer the same in return.
So we have a man, Malcolm X, who may have engaged in sex acts with an unknown number of other men. The initiation, pursuasion, content, reward and climax of these acts is unknown (unless explained further in the biography).
You have told me:
These are relatively clear statements and what I take from this is that:
1) ‘gay identity’ is internal and is not explicitly validated or invalidated by gendered sex acts.
2) seperate to ‘gay identity’, there is a ‘gay community’, a broad milieu of sexualities. This typically includes non-heterosexual expressions.
3) sex acts peformed between two cis-males or two cis-females are to be codified as ‘gay’, which is a synonym for ‘same sex’, and is a descriptor given to a pair (or larger group) of same gendered people.
4) once a sex act has been codified as ‘gay sex’ it means absolutely nothing more than it did prior to codification.
5) neither the impetus nor action of codifying a sex act as ‘gay sex’ is political in any fashion and is not motivated by any force other than benign semantics.
Can you forgive me for accidentally joining-the-dots between three (or more) seperate and distinct uses of the word ‘gay’? I think I can argue just as much from the position of Alice, in communicating with people who make the same word “mean so many different things.†That ‘gay’ is an identity, a community and a sex act, which are all mutually exclusive from each other.
What I mean is, yes, obviously – we can and should interrogate the biography of Malcolm X, not as an exercise in semantics, but one that searches for the narratives of danger, the fear of survival, the opportunity, the capitalism, the confusion, the lack or over-abundance of words, the excitement and the deviancy.
But to narrow our gaze to “are we all clear that this was gay-sex?” – seems, just hints a teeny tiny bit, that there might be something more than semantics at stake.
And just to finish, I accept the biological reality of two people with penises engaging in acts to arouse or stimulate one or both parties to be a same-sex sex act, and if you want to say that that is always a gay-sex act, I will accept that too. I just find the quest for meaning within these acts to be far more enticing than their wording.
enough already
April 8th, 2011
Shofixti,
I think it is very important to point out that it is totally irrelevant whether a man is cis- or transgendered.
In both cases, he is male.
Or, put simply, “he” is “he”.
No comment on your other thoughts, especially “captialism”.
After all this time, I still don’t see what it is you are trying to achieve.
My personal choice of “queer community” to describe all those of us who seek to be left alone to love our partners and to be treated in law exactly as are cis-gendered heterosexuals in all matters which the law regulates in the US (marriage, adoption, inheritance to name but three) remains.
I seek freedom for all members of our community. Once we have achieved freedom, I expect many people who have fought for freedom will have nothing more to do with each other. That’s fine with me.
I don’t know the sexuality of Malcom X. I do know that it doesn’t matter what words I chose to describe his sexual actions, relationships, self- and socially perceived sexuality…or yet, don’t chose, you will find reason to deconstruct them and others will find reason to object to them.
Being contrary to highlight glib assumptions can be useful being contrary to the point that there is no communication possible may be terribly satisfying – but it is the same level of victory as hitting the mute button on the TV every time a politician speaks whom you dislike.
Shofixti
April 8th, 2011
EA – it was implied that I was using language to mean only what I wanted it to mean. So I asked for clarification whether gay identity, gay community and gay sex were instances of three different uses of the same word. I hope TK wakes up in a good enough mood to confirm or deny 1-5.
I know that I can only converse in one language and this might be limiting. I will concede the cis v. trans point, it was my error in even attempting to use those clunky words.
As for capitalism – there is nothing particularly deep here, but it would appear to be impossible to talk about hustling or prostitution if we ignored a system of currency exchange for services.
Deconstruction, I never mentioned, but people often undervalue how focused on construction the term is. It is possible to communicate with me because I have asked quite straight forward questions about information the two of you have typed. Instead of hitting mute, I’m upping the volume and straining to hear.
Now that’s out of the way I have a question for you. “Queer community” – why is this term valuable to you if you reject the queer theorists who took the word from the gutters as a slur and breathed potency into it? Since I have been asked to ‘give back’ gay and stop politicising it, is it fair that I ask that you ‘give back’ Queer and stop using it self-evidently? At least I know Timothy wants no part of this one.
enough already
April 8th, 2011
Shofixti,
I am an activist fighting for our full human status and full civil rights in the US. You, if I recall correctly, you live in a country which accords you full human status and full civil rights, no?
Perhaps I am wrong about that and confuse your country of residence with that of someone else here.
It does make a difference where on lives.
Because my focus is on having our rights restored, I am keenly aware of two conflicts.
First, many people outside of Academia find the LGBT2QA&xyz alphabet soup so off-putting that all discussion is shut down by the terminology.
Second, “queer community”, if not perfect, seems to upset the least number of people whose support is important to me while, at the same time, having a meaning which those not directly involved in my fight for full rights easily grasp.
It is a direct violation of the principles of queer theorists to “own” the term “queer”. You might want to consider that. To do so is to assign a fixed value and rigid definition to the word as well as to be exclusive and not inclusive while, at the same time, to make further growth of the term impossible.
I’ve had the (dubious) pleasure of extensive travel in both the Mid-East, Northern Africa and, many decades ago, ‘non-capitalist’ Europe behind the Iron Curtain. I didn’t imbibe, but in every single one of those countries/cultures, men made very clear to me their availability to me for a financial or other material consideration.
In fact, by the late 1980s, Soviet soldiers stationed in the GDR were so hungry many were directly offering their services to tourists, male and female in the camping places throughout Mac-Pom.
Let’s try again. Why do you dislike the term “gay”. I was tortured for being gay. What is the value in stripping me of being gay?
enough already
April 8th, 2011
Shofixti,
Let me ask you a question – I’ve permitted you to play interlocutor so far as it amuses me.
Do you expressly, specifically, without playing word games support full legal human status for gays, lesbians, transexuals, intersexed people, bisexuals?
Do you support full legal civil rights, including non-discrimination in all aspects of public life (housing, work, etc.) marriage, adoption, inheritance for the above listed group of people?
I yes, fine. If not, why not?
Timothy Kincaid
April 8th, 2011
Nope. TK is choosing to step out of this exercise in futility.
Del
April 8th, 2011
Without getting into the Malcolm X issue, I’d like to express my hope that BTB will bring its usual sharp analysis to the issue of how the gay civil rights movement came to be redefined into, depending on the day of the week, an army in the war on gender or a movement of every sexual and gender manifestation on the planet that isn’t “cis” and heterosexual.
When “LGBT” was first invented and foisted upon us in the 1990s – without any discussion or debate – I didn’t give it much thought. I rolled my eyes at the awkwardness of having to recite a bunch of letters, but beyond that, it didn’t seem like anything more than a bit of 1990s PC. No big deal.
But it is a big deal on a number of levels. First, “transgender” and “transsexual” are not sexual orientations, so adding “T” to LGB represents a fundamental and illogical alteration of the LGB community. Second, because one of the main justifications for adding the “T” is that many homophobes conflate homosexuality with gender confusion and transvestitism, we are now in the position of adopting and identifying with the very stereotypes that we spent most the 20th century opposing.
Third, by defining ourselves as part of a singular community with mostly heterosexual trans people, we have allowed trans activists to demand that we subordinate our goals to theirs. If trans people were our allies in the way that feminists or labor rights activists are our allies, they could request our help, and we would be free to consider whether and to what extent to respond.
But “LGBT” means they don’t have to request anything; they demand. And those demands have catastrophically led to the death of ENDA, a stripped down version of legislation that we have been trying to pass for nearly 40 years. Something like 5 million gay, lesbian and bisexual workers in American will now remain vulnerable to workplace discrimination for many years to come, because our movement somehow came to be coerced to believe that its top priority was showing “solidarity” over transsexual bathroom issues.
We were never allowed to have this debate in the mid-1990s. But the internet means that no one can stop it from taking place now. I hope BTB will give some voice to the growing opposition to this egregious 15-year old mistake.
Shofixti
April 8th, 2011
TK – disappointed that you would write off someone’s attempt to understand you or your uses of the word ‘gay’ as futile.
EA
It’s a nice try – and I like to see those words in a sentence, just perhaps not in that order. Would you argue that Queer means heteronormative, or needs to be preserved for future use as a tool of heteronormativity? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, no, just like you won’t argue that ‘gay’ should be able to mean ‘straight’.
Then maybe the suggestion that Queer not mean HOMOnormative isn’t so radical and limiting an idea.
With respect to your experience in Europe, does the readiness of men to prostitute themselves give weight to the idea that the economic and political regimes of these countries created a utopia or a crisis for their citizens?
I support full legal human status for all humans. I support full legal civil rights, including non-discrimination in all aspects of public life (housing, work, etc.) marriage, adoption, inheritance for everyone regardless of the determinacy or indeterminacy of their identities. I probably support greater rights than you as I oppose any use of language, desire, identity or economics to validate the destruction of humans either unborn, not-normal-enough, collateral damage or elderly.
And as for the word ‘gay’. I find Timothy’s approach to be far more severe to mine. He says that ‘gay’ is a word you can only use to describe an event, it does not give it meaning. But I see for you that there is an incredible amount of meaning.
Rather than strip your identity of being able to explain the wickedness done to you, Queer wants to leave no stone unturned. These torturers – can their actions really be completely explained by just describing them as ‘Christian’ or describing them as ‘hateful’? I think not, I think you can know more, maybe even heal more, by queering these attackers. It is not simply dogma that motivates them, but it is the tragedy that identity cannot cope with incoherence. The forces of naturalisation can be violent.
Your identity tells you to see me as a threat, as a stripper of identity – but I think that it is the crisis of the act of naming that is essential to the project of explaining. Even the by-line of this blog tells us that its authors are focused on the ‘anti-gay’, the threats to identity. Yet when asked, the topic of what ‘gay’ actually is gets closed down. Much love.
enough already
April 8th, 2011
Del,
I absolutely agree with you that the alphabet soup, together with all the other double-plus regimentation imposed on us by the political correctness police is an abomination.
That said, I have to take issue with a few points you raised.
First, I’ve been active in the gay rights movement since the mid-1970s. In the last 35 some years, I’ve worked with people in several different countries. We have, at times, had different problems which drew our entire attention – AIDs was one and I am thankful to the ACT up! pioneers for their brave commitment to saving lives.
One of the hardest negotiations I ever participated in, if only at a very minor level, was in Germany in the late ’80s, when the lesbian separatists decided to set aside their leaders’ demands that they use the Aids crisis to achieve equality for themselves by sharpening the distinction between ‘homos’ and ‘Frauenpower” in the public eye. Those women fought to save lives. And, let’s be honest here: Aids would have not reached epidemic levels in Europe had we gay men been willing to accept reality. We made a conscious decision to ignore what was happening in the US. Indeed, even serious media like the Süddeutschezeitung as late as 1990 were printing nonsense on the transmission of HIV. The onus lay on us, though.
Once the worst was past and we began achieving equality at a very rapid pace, the question of transgender and intersexed equality began to arise. Now, most of civilized Europe already was far advanced in protecting the rights of these people, but there was still a lot to be done, especially in Germany where rights in the law books did not necessarily translate to rights in life.
It was exactly this group – the transgender and transexuals who fought alongside us to achieve marriage rights (so am not going to have a fight here over Partnerschaften).
There is, indeed, a firm connection between the three groups of gays, lesbians and the transgender-intersexed. All of us are immutably the way we are. Not even torture by Christians could shift my homosexuality. I know many gay and lesbian people of my age upon whom even worse things were practiced by Christians. None were changed.
And the transgender and intersexed? One need only google to see what has been and still is done to their bodies in the name of “curing” them of their real selves.
This is why they are a part of us. They have stood with us and fought for us. In fact, a large number of them are being persecuted (sic) by the US government right now, with a hardness not seen since the 1960’s for daring to chain themselves to the White House fence for your and my equality as well as their own.
I understand your objections to being overrun by the PC-Police. I can’t stand them and push the very limits, whenever and where ever possible to shove their double-plus sugar-coated hate speech down their throats. They want to stifle every aspect of creativity in the name of turning us into automatons echoing their own narrow perspectives.
This is, however, not about them. It is about gay rights. Freedom for gays. Equality for gays. Full civil rights for gays. The right for us to marry or not as we chose (I was fortunate to find my husband and to marry!). It is about our right to exercise all the rights as well as the honor of sharing the duties of our country, our world.
Anyone who will stand with me to achieve that goal is my ally and I will work with them.
None of us are free until all of us are free. If that doesn’t butter your muffin, consider, please:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
– Pastor Martin Niemoller
There is not a hairsbreadth of difference between the Nazis of Germany and those Christians of the US who hate us. Not in their plans for the Endlösung.
Priya Lynn
April 8th, 2011
Del, the “T” stands for transgender. Transvestite is not the same thing as transgender or transexual. That transgender is not an orientation is irrelevant, LGBT is simply a community of sexual minorities who are oppressed by an ignorant society.
enough already
April 9th, 2011
Shofixti,
It’s hard to reply to all you write, I’ll used () again and hope for the best.
EA
To do so is to assign a fixed value and rigid definition to the word as well as to be exclusive and not inclusive while, at the same time, to make further growth of the term impossible.
It’s a nice try – and I like to see those words in a sentence, just perhaps not in that order.
(Honey, if you can’t even manage that much sense of humor over your own rigidity, then you’re not going to win anybody over to your ideas. Or do you want to? Is this all theoretical for you?)
Would you argue that Queer means heteronormative, or needs to be preserved for future use as a tool of heteronormativity? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, no, just like you won’t argue that ‘gay’ should be able to mean ‘straight’.
(I argue that “queer community” is the first term I’ve seen many non-armchair-activists fighting for full human status and civil rights in the US accept. If a better compound noun or word comes along tomorrow, I’ll go for it).
Then maybe the suggestion that Queer not mean HOMOnormative isn’t so radical and limiting an idea.
(I have never argued for homonormative anything.)
With respect to your experience in Europe, does the readiness of men to prostitute themselves give weight to the idea that the economic and political regimes of these countries created a utopia or a crisis for their citizens?
(Hmm, do you really want to argue economics on the backs of people who were so hungry they were willing to have people use them for sex? I’m not. There is nothing I can say about those economic systems which would satisfy you at all.)
I support full legal human status for all humans. I support full legal civil rights, including non-discrimination in all aspects of public life (housing, work, etc.) marriage, adoption, inheritance for everyone regardless of the determinacy or indeterminacy of their identities. I probably support greater rights than you as I oppose any use of language, desire, identity or economics to validate the destruction of humans either unborn, not-normal-enough, collateral damage or elderly.
(I really don’t see rights as a game of “mine is bigger than yours”. It is a relief, however, to see that you support equality for all queers. Whether your opinions on language use actually further equality is another matter, entirely. Oh, and, please, define “not-normal-enough”. You’re talking to a man who volunteered to work with refugees two years long. People with fingers broken off. People with tongues cut out. I know what not-normal-enough means in the real world. Do you?)
And as for the word ‘gay’. I find Timothy’s approach to be far more severe to mine. He says that ‘gay’ is a word you can only use to describe an event, it does not give it meaning. But I see for you that there is an incredible amount of meaning.
(I can’t speak for Timothy. I don’t recall his making such use of the term.)
Rather than strip your identity of being able to explain the wickedness done to you, Queer wants to leave no stone unturned. These torturers – can their actions really be completely explained by just describing them as ‘Christian’ or describing them as ‘hateful’? I think not, I think you can know more, maybe even heal more, by queering these attackers. It is not simply dogma that motivates them, but it is the tragedy that identity cannot cope with incoherence. The forces of naturalisation can be violent.
(They did it because those Christians who hate us enjoy torturing people. Period. The healing comes through the logistical and, limited, financial support I am able to provide to our freedom movement.)
Your identity tells you to see me as a threat, as a stripper of identity – but I think that it is the crisis of the act of naming that is essential to the project of explaining. Even the by-line of this blog tells us that its authors are focused on the ‘anti-gay’, the threats to identity. Yet when asked, the topic of what ‘gay’ actually is gets closed down. Much love.
(You really should be careful about projecting “identity” onto other people. That’s only possible when one is operating on the basis of a X-normative behavior.)
I’m going to be honest here. I’ve met a few people who reason as you do in my life. There is no answer I can ever give, no analysis I can ever provide which would satisfy you. You are like the Borg – resistance is futile, it is your way or not at all.
Again, to be honest, the more you attempt to force me into a corner, the more I find myself ranking queer theory with nihilism.
enough already
April 9th, 2011
Shofixti,
I think I’ll try it from another approach – it might help, though I suspect nothing I can say or do would ever satisfy you – your goal up until now has been to reject any statement.
I was tortured and the best psychological instruments available to those Christians who hate us at that time were applied to force me to abandon my identity.
The failed. I know who I am.
Why you want to strip me of that that I am is beyond my ability to grasp, but there are no circumstances under which you can succeed. I am homosexual.
Period.
Why do you not accept this? Are you a Christian trying to attack and destroy someone whom you perceive as a threat to your Christian goals?
If you want to continue this discussion with me, you’re going to have to be more forthright than you have been.
Shofixti
April 9th, 2011
Del – thanks for your thoughts on this issue. Would you say that those of the heterosexual majority think about themselves as having both a gendered and then a seperate sexual identity?
Doesn’t ‘man’ contain the meaning ‘he who beds a woman’, and ‘woman’ respectively ‘she who is taken to bed by a man’? I think that for the average person man/woman, male/female are the shorthand of gender and sexuality combined (that is gender binarism and heteronormative behaviour as a single unit). Consider the language of anti-marriage equality, marriage is one man and one woman, not merely two heterosexuals.
If this in anyway depicts the hetero mindset, then perhaps LGB sex is actually trans-ish because we disrupt gendered norms and expectations. LGB people are “those in which the practices of desire do not follow from either sex or gender” (Butler, 1990), but from a seperate entity we have called orientation.
I don’t say this to “conflate homosexuality with gender confusion” but because heterosexuality is completed by the repitition of a two-gender narrative.
I guess this is the long way of saying I don’t exactly agree with the statement:
When LGBT moves politically it does so against a narrative of gender. Those who withhold equality don’t point at the ‘gays’ and say “They’re doing sexual identity wrong” and then point at the ‘trans’ people and say “They’re doing gender identity wrong.” They think we’re all doing ‘man’ and ‘woman’ wrong.
My other point of contention is that if any people with different or differing genders: transgender, trans, transsexual, intersex, androgynous, agender, cross dresser, drag king, drag queen, genderfluid, genderqueer, intergender, neutrois, pansexual, pan-gendered, third gender, third sex, sistergirl and brotherboy, has an abiding attraction to persons of a differing gender – is this not then an example of a new category of sexuality (e.g. a trans-man with a specific attraction to trans-women, or a pansexual going after the intersexed)?
The toilets thing – this is a topic I would like to hear more voices about.
Shofixti
April 9th, 2011
Hi EA,
You can use this HTML command BLOCKQUOTE if you put the triangle brackets (they look like a V on its side) around the word, to indicate you’re quoting someone. Then you simply put /BLOCKQUOTE with brackets to finish it off. You can see the result by clicking “preview”.
Such as:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
I thought I might reply to you paragraph by paragraph, but I think every point has the same meaning. There is some information or sign that you are getting from me that I don’t think I am sending. Somewhere, we crossed a point, and it now seems that anything I write is received with an element of hostility – that I am trying to strip or destroy or force – I don’t want that. I don’t think I can answer you in a way that will dispell this idea.
enough already
April 9th, 2011
Shofixti,
You crossed that point. I will tell you where, exactly.
There is no use of any word, phrase, referent or symbol I can make that you do not insist on deconstructing or bending to mean something else.
Nothing I say will ever satisfy you until I agree 100% with every single aspect of your belief system.
I don’t agree with Timothy or Jim on their positions about Christians. I do, however, make an honest effort to adhere to their rules on the matter because it is their blog and I can’t communicate with them on my terms, I have to communicate with them on mutually satisfactory terms.
There are no mutually satisfactory terms for you. You are 100% contrary in all aspects. You won’t permit me to be gay. You refuse to recognize my essential, immutable sexuality. You deny that my romantic relationship is reality and not just something I have dreamt up or was too weak to resist having imposed on me through language.
I was tied up and beaten and the Christians who did it still couldn’t change the fact that I am gay.
Gay. Trés gay. In a gay way. Not bisexual. Not “6” on the Kinsey scale but “6” raised to the power of 1,000,000 and again. At least.
If you want a discourse with me then you must first stop denying my biological reality.
Shofixti
April 9th, 2011
I think that you are committed to the idea that I am 100% contrary, when in fact – every time you have overstated my thoughts or my use of Queer, I have patiently reined in the extreme/ totalising/ predatory/ destructive/ binary/ oppositional/ and historicising/ elements that you have attributed to me in the act of interpreting me.
Additionally, whenever you or Timothy have asked me for a direct answer (his was about belief, yours about rights), I have rendered one.
It does not surprise me as I see the same pattern in many other spheres whether it’s sci-fi fanboys, or pro-choice vs pro-life, or creation vs. evolution, or sex education, or left vs. right politics. Once a person occupies a identificatory position something happens to all debate from that point on.
If you look above, at Del‘s post you will see how a narrative of sexuality creates justifications – to exclude others – by de-legitimising some subset of GLBTI through a narrative of gender.
Considering the assertion that ‘transgender is fundamentally and illogically aligned with LGB’ – do you think that this line of thinking comes out of a desire to keep gay identity centred and cohesive – or does it come from somewhere else?
(I don’t think this question ‘strips’ you, but allows you to decide all the terms of an answer)
enough already
April 9th, 2011
Shofixti,
There has to be a reason why I – and by concatenation, obviously many others, find communicating with you on these topics difficult.
You find that you have to modify my exaggerations of your positions. Am I the only person with whom you have experienced this? I am consciously leaving Timothy out of this, by the way.
Now, I am not entirely sure what you mean by “identificatory position”. I assume you mean, “one sees a statement as a self-evident truth, not subject to question or doubt”. Is that correct?
As best I can ascertain, you reject identification with anything, at all. I am gay, therefore I must abandon this to…to what, exactly? What possible value is there in pretending I am not gay?
None.
It’s a biological fact. An immutable characteristic. My cat has reflexes seven times faster than I had as a young man – and I was fast. Still faster than usual for humans, according to our dear psych. lab and their eternal drive for volunteers to practice on. Does that make me “slow” relative to the cat?
Yes.
There’s just no way around it. I may be “fast” for my species, even in my fifties, but in the real world, I can count two times in my entire life that I beat a cat at a game involving reaction speed. And boy did I pay for it….
So, come. What is your goal here? I weary of the hidden agenda.
I refuse, under all circumstances – I refused even under torture by Christians to deny my identity. I am gay.
It is a fact. Today is Sunday (at least here where I am dictating this). I breath a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. I am gay. Immutable. Fact.
You will not change this. You can not change this. All you accomplish is to make me more and more determined to reject any idea you advance as an attempt to deny reality.
I don’t give a fig what other people “identify” as, as long as they leave me alone. If it makes you happy to believe your sexuality shifts with the phases of the moon, fine by me. If you personally want to chop off 0,1,2 and 4,5,6 from the Kinsey scale – well, I don’t place much value on it to begin with so go right ahead. Do not, however, dare to demand that I do so simply because you identify yourself with non-identification.
To your question:
Considering the assertion that ‘transgender is fundamentally and illogically aligned with LGB’ – do you think that this line of thinking comes out of a desire to keep gay identity centred and cohesive – or does it come from somewhere else?
(I don’t think this question ‘strips’ you, but allows you to decide all the terms of an answer)
Since you’ll reject any assertion I make on the matter, what difference does it make? Here, so you can now de-construct it and pretend I don’t understand the semantic value of the words I use in their real context:
“Gay identity” can only have objectively defined meaning within the context of a discussion of the biological state of being male and homosexual. Since, by definition, only men (cis- or transgender) can be gay, then any other use of the term is subject to contextual meaning and there is no possible means for us to agree on subjective context, now is there?
Thus, any attempt to juxtaposition GLB as incompatible with transgender is, of necessity a non-objective pursuit.
My personal analysis of the matter is above, I repeat: Being gay or lesbian or transgender (or intersexed) are immutable aspects of reality. Not even under torture was it possible to make me heterosexual. We have reports of the Nazis attempting and failing again and again at this, too. There is clear evidence that some people are born in a body, the anatomy of which is not correct to their true biological identity. In other cases, our science is inadequate to establish the fact, it is enough that a person knows for themselves that they are in the wrong gendered body for this to be so.
Because all three states are aspects of reality, immutable and subject to the most hateful handling by those Christians who hate us, obviously their mutual goals of achieving full human status and civil rights gives them common ground to work together.
OK, that’s it. I’ve been patient, I’ve tried my very best, but until you lay your cards on the table, that’s it: We’re done. To abuse popular culture; your invisibility robe is fraying at the edges and your hidden agenda is showing.
Jay King of Gay
April 10th, 2011
The “T” in LGBT has been with us always. It didn’t suddenly show up in the 90’s.
As someone else put it, heterosexists don’t make a huge distinction between gay and trans. They have little to no understanding of the differences, thus we are all considered to be doing the “man” or “woman” thing wrong.
LGB people defy both gender and sexuality, both in who we love/lust for and how that relates to our gender expession. Feminine Gay Men, Masculine Lesbians. Is the person you’re looking at a butch straight male, a butch transman, a butch lesbian? You won’t know, and most heterosexists won’t care.
We’re together because we’re “sexual misfits” –and I don’t mean that in a negative sense.
Many straight men define masculinity, manliness in how it is NOT feminine and many still regard being the passive partner in homosexual relations as being “the woman’s role”–in a derogatory sense. Have you not heard them say “A man who has sex with another man is not a REAL man” –because I have.
We have a mutual enemy, who does not differentiate us. The goals of LGB people generally can be applied to T people as well. When same sex marriage, for example, becomes universal then it won’t matter if Shane was born Shelia, he can still marry whoever will love him. He won’t have to quibble with judges about whether he is legally a man or legally a woman, and whether a ban on same-sex marriage applies to his situation or not.
This isn’t new. Periodically we hear grumblings, seperatists who want to pull over and toss the Transfolks out of the car. Periodically some of the same folks want to toss the lesbians, bisexuals, conservatives, and even the effeminate gay men out the door too.
There is strength in numbers, and it’s entirely justified for Transfolk to get upset when we try to leave them in the dirt with an non-inclusive ENDA.
Contrary to convenient blame-throwing, this wasn’t forced on us. There was no hearing, no committee meeting. This was a recognition of the reality of our situation. We are all in this together, and it would be detrimental to split hairs at this point. Whether you want to admit it or not, T activists have been fighting for your rights, too. They deserve some fucking respect for it.
To those folks I give a big middle finger and say “you’re not in charge of this party, if you don’t want to be associated with the L or the B or the T or the G, why don’t YOU LEAVE. Infighting is one of our biggest issues, and we’d certainly be better off without you and your distractions.”
enough already
April 10th, 2011
Jay, King of Gay wrote:
To those folks I give a big middle finger and say “you’re not in charge of this party, if you don’t want to be associated with the L or the B or the T or the G, why don’t YOU LEAVE. Infighting is one of our biggest issues, and we’d certainly be better off without you and your distractions.â€
endquote
Jay, I certainly agree with you.
There are two aspects which I would add. Please bear with me.
My experience of transgender people has been more or less universally positive.
No, I am not saying being transgender makes you automatically “nice”, I am only saying that in my professional life, I’ve only had positive experiences with transgender. I also note that the people being persecuted (sic) by the Justice department right now for chaining themselves to the White House Fence to defend our rights were vilely abused, both in first custody and then at every single possible opportunity, with the government exploiting current laws to make them suffer for being transgender.
They’re doing enormous good in our mutual cause for equality.
Second note – and I beg not to be thrown off the blog or immediately torn to shreds for this. My personal experience with bisexual men through the years has been nearly universally negative. Before I met my husband, I had two really bad experiences and have seen quite a few gay friends hurt and hurt badly in relationships with bisexual men. Now that gay marriage and raising kids together has become common here (let’s not fight over “common”), I’ve seen to sets of children end up in a nasty custody situation when the “bisexual” partner to the “lifelong partnership” changed his mind.
I still support their right to equality and full human status. Even though I have nothing good to say about my experiences with them, that doesn’t change the fact that they are a part of our queer community and we must fight just as hard for their rights as for those of the lesbians, gays, transgender and the intersexed.
What we need, however, is an open forum, one in which cis-gendered people and transgendered people can exchange information and create a sense of common community. Pam’s House Blend does it for me, but, as I’ve said – I’ve good positive feelings towards our “T” comrads.
On the “B” side, however, any discussion or discourse is immediately shut down, one is called the most hideous names, moderators are called in to attack under the guise of political correctness. Sure, one must keep a discussion fair. By choking off what is obviously a very broad spectrum of discontent between many of the the “G” and the “B” in our queer community, things do not get better.
Nor can this be excused as merely generational.
And now I get torn to shreds in 3…2…1 for daring to be un-PC.
Shofixti
April 11th, 2011
EA said:
Of primary concern to me, more than the content of my thoughts or writing, is its effect on others. If you could quote the things I’ve said that were aggressive or abusive then that gives me the opportunity to learn.
My completely unhidden agenda is to stimulate thought about identity, especially when, in your own words:
I really like the terminology you have used in non-objective pursuit. Unfortunately I only had room in my undergrad for one philosophy paper. Could you give me a link to something that explains this further? Google sends me to a summary of Ayn Rand when I look this up :O
This is a great question, and it is why I have had to ask so many questions about what ‘gay’ is so that I can answer it for you.
When I use the word gay, I use it in a localised sense. Gay is a tool that helps me to navigate a modern social landscape and indicate to my peers my availability as a potential partner in romantic pursuits.
The term “gay caveman” is as non-sensical as the term “metrosexual caveman” is for a man burried with a comb next to his spear, they are both anachronisms. But in this anachronism you might be able to see what I’m meaning when I say “I am gay”, that I cannot stop the truckload of inaccurate baggage that comes along with those three little letters.
I really do like tying “gay identity” solely to the objective task of: a subject placing a name on the pattern of involuntary sexual arousal they experience. This achieves two things for us:
1) It means that we don’t have to be afraid of critical thought on every other operation, permutation and incidence of ‘gay’ within a cultural and political framework. Nothing gets destroyed by looking deeper at gay sex, gay politics, gay communities, gay power, gay pleasure, gay knowledge or gay consumerism, media & blogs etc.
2) It makes the [objective task] a seperate entity from the [interpretation of the task], especially when it is a third party commenting on or naming the sexuality of another. Naming sexuality becomes a discrete topic of study, firmly located within a philosophical tradition. It’s not one that I fully understand, but I think it is probably one that the orthodoxy understands.
Question: Is it possible to say that “Marriage is objectively the union of one man and one woman”?
Or is the discordant? I am a little unsure of what does and doesn’t count as objective in this sense.
enough already
April 12th, 2011
Shofixti,
This link to Ryan Sorba explains your tactics.
joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/04/virginia-anti-gay-christianists-hold.html
The jig is up, the game is over, I’m done with you.
Shofixti
April 12th, 2011
EA – I answered your question.
Given my profession of belief on the topic of rights and non-discrimination, the fact that you would say I share tactics with Ryan Sorba is disingenuous.
Sorba, uses the term “self-evident design”, how can you compare me to him when it is you that enshrines self-evident reasoning?
In the video below, if you watch until the end, you will see that Sorba is more terrified of Queer than he is of gay. How then could I be his befellow? Only an anti-intellectual gay inquisition could make such an assertion.
http://youtu.be/5704NCBpflA
I tired to share with you the reasons why Christianity is more threatened by Queer notions than by gay liberationist ideals, and for someone who is so intent on dismantling their vehicles of abuse, I’m am surprised you would rather turn me into an enemy instead of listen.
If painting the world gay is how you find peace and happiness then I don’t begrudge you at all, do it, do it, do it. Paint it, sing it, dance it.
enough already
April 12th, 2011
Shofixti,
For a moment there, you almost sounded as if you were actually using reason.
It is not the fallacy of “self-evident” reasoning when I demand that you respect the fact that I am gay.
I gay. Why you refuse to acknowledge this is beyond me. Presumably, you are a one of those Christians who oppose us who is so caught up in his blind beliefs that he can’t see the errors of his own logic.
I am gay. I am married to my husband, legally.
Fortunately, nothing you or any of the other people who oppose us can attempt will ever change that – even when we are in a country which is ruled by those who oppose us, the legal fact of our marriage remains.
I will kill anyone who tries to take our marriage away from us.
I am not gay because I absorbed some silly cultural convention of letting people know I am sexually available. I am not, I am monogamous and have been “off the market” for nearly 30 years.
I don’t give a fig for what other people think, as long as they do not attempt to attack my husband or me. Your goal is to take every single word which has a meaning and to pretend that it does not have meaning in order to force other people to believe that only heterosexual Christians have a right to marriage.
Why you demand that my monogamous, loyal, true, faithful, loving marriage should somehow not be valid because my husband and I are both gay is beyond me.
It is not, however, because of the fallacy of “self-evidence” that we say there are 60 seconds in a minute. There are. It is not an error in syllogistic logic when we say that male homosexuals are gay.
You’ve not made an enemy of me, you have simply failed, utterly failed to cause me to abandon truth in order to be inculcated with the lies you want me to hold to be truth.
You may or may not be out of the same exact group as Sorba, but your goals are obviously akin to his – to destroy homosexual marriage.
And those goals are my enemies.
enough already
April 12th, 2011
Or, Shofixti, to put it in simple terms.
Every statement I have made you have rejected on the basis that I have made it.
Nothing I know to be true can be true because I am incapable of understanding that everything I know to be true cannot be so because I do not grasp that my understanding of all language is based on false beliefs.
That is your argument, regardless of whether we pretend you aren’t attacking gay marriage or not.
Shofixti
April 12th, 2011
Bro, just quote me once as trying to invalidate marriage or marriages.
enough already
April 12th, 2011
Then try, just once, Shofixti to state, in plain and simple English just why you attack every aspect of my existence as a gay man?
Why you demand I stop calling things what they are?
You are subtle enough to avoid the direct attack that doe snot mean your goals are not total destruction of gay marriage.
Timothy Kincaid
April 12th, 2011
I think it’s time to call an end to this thread