And the bigotry continues
- Thread starter Ragman
- Start date
It's buried with Stewart Hawk.
Tennesseahawk
Veteran Expediter
How'd he get it?
I recently watched a documentary on HBO about Larry Kramer [didn't plan to, was waiting for 'Ender's Game', the movie!] and I think I understand a bit more about the 'in your face' tactics now. Because when AIDS first appeared, and no one knew even that it was a virus, gay people died by the boatload, and no one [in any official capacity] cared at all. When they were finally forced to pay attention [maybe because some non gay & nun drug abusers were dying too?], they simply talked about it, while the medical researchers were more concerned over patent rights than patient survival, and the promising medicines were withheld for years.
Kramer says it took those 'in your face' tactics to get the politicians [like Ed Koch] to actually do something besides talk, while people were still dying left & right, and he has the statistics and facts to make that look true.
With that background, gays aren't so willing to be passive as they once were - and I can't blame them for it.
It's been pointed out numerous times that even putting aside the issue of reciprocity [which states will honor another state's licensing?], too many customers prohibit weapons on their property. If neither were a problem, I'd be trained, licensed, and armed, but I can't see it happening.
Don't you live in the land of pearls? And oil refineries?
As for gays suddenly becoming less willing to passive than they once were, that didn't happen in the 80s because of AIDS, that happened in 1969, and in the aftermath, as in noted in paragraph 4 of the Wiki page at the link, "Within six months, two gay activist organizations were formed in New York, concentrating on confrontational tactics, and three newspapers were established to promote rights for gays and lesbians. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world. On June 28, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were organized in other cities."
These were a bunch of really pissed off gays, and they were about as in-you-face annoying as it could get. (and every year the Gay Pride parades lather, rinse, repeat the in-your-face anger that largely causes the same reactions to surface in non-gays). You had an organized effort by a large number of gays angrily, confrontationally, and sometimes violently, demanding things that society wasn't quite ready to give them, and as a result, they pissed off a large segment of society. Then, AIDS appeared and the gays were dumbfounded and angry that all the people they had spent the previous 10 years pissing off didn't drop everything and come to their aid. That's the backlash of antipathy from the people at large and the politicians in particular (like Ed Koch and others) who really and truly couldn't care less about a group of incessantly annoying people who were getting sick, dying and going away. That's just the way it was. the reactions of straights to the problems of gays (civil and medical) was fairly heartless, but no matter how much gays want to blame everyone else, they are hardly blameless themselves. There's plenty of "what goes around comes around" to go around, all around.
There's another backlash coming. There always is.
If the bulk of your information is the Larry Kramer documentary, then you're woefully miseducated. While it's true that people were forced to pay attention when non-gays started coming down with AIDS, it is not true that no one in any official capacity cared at all. Also, medical researchers were most definitely not more concerned over patient's rights than patient survival. Medical researchers in particular wanted a hard quarantine for anyone with HIV or AIDS until they could get a handle on what was causing it. And if it had been the measles or chicken pox or TB that's precisely what would have happened. But the patients themselves were the ones who didn't want it to get out they had HIV/AIDS, because others would know or think they were gay.
As for gays suddenly becoming less willing to passive than they once were, that didn't happen in the 80s because of AIDS, that happened in 1969, and in the aftermath, as in noted in paragraph 4 of the Wiki page at the link, "Within six months, two gay activist organizations were formed in New York, concentrating on confrontational tactics, and three newspapers were established to promote rights for gays and lesbians. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world. On June 28, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were organized in other cities."
These were a bunch of really pissed off gays, and they were about as in-you-face annoying as it could get. (and every year the Gay Pride parades lather, rinse, repeat the in-your-face anger that largely causes the same reactions to surface in non-gays). You had an organized effort by a large number of gays angrily, confrontationally, and sometimes violently, demanding things that society wasn't quite ready to give them, and as a result, they pissed off a large segment of society. Then, AIDS appeared and the gays were dumbfounded and angry that all the people they had spent the previous 10 years pissing off didn't drop everything and come to their aid. That's the backlash of antipathy from the people at large and the politicians in particular (like Ed Koch and others) who really and truly couldn't care less about a group of incessantly annoying people who were getting sick, dying and going away. That's just the way it was. the reactions of straights to the problems of gays (civil and medical) was fairly heartless, but no matter how much gays want to blame everyone else, they are hardly blameless themselves. There's plenty of "what goes around comes around" to go around, all around.
There's another backlash coming. There always is.
well when DNA sequencing get much better in the future....they'll be able to detect the birth flaw in the gay make up ( where the wiring went bad ) and either be able to correct the problem or the parents wills be able to chose to abort the baby...that will really get to the gay group that they could be simply " eliminated"
Well "Gay" is a defect...a wring problem aka birth defect..aka NOT normal....gays could really be said to be born with a disability by that standard.....
Agreed, it is a defect. Yet, the prospect of another emerging eugenics movement is unsettling. A government-sanctioned eugenics policy would be a nightmare for any society. Advances in technology are way ahead of morality.
As some say>" Hate the sin, love the sinner", of course I am still pondering that one...
And maybe they'll be able to discover what makes a small percentage of people left handed, too, and eliminate them from a life of not fitting in.....The only difference is that homosexuality involves sex, and that's anathema in our Puritan influenced culture.
It's not my sole source, [I knew a bit about Stonewall], but it did clarify the background to the widespread anger that is different. Gay men died by the thousands, while no one in authority would even acknowledge there was a 'plague', much less do something to find out what it was and how to fight it. Medical researchers may have wanted to help, but the pharmaceutical companies that held title to the research engaged in lengthy patent squabbles that prevented those treatments from actually helping people - that is fact.
There have been confrontational Gay Rights groups around since the 80's, and Pride Parades, [and who really cared?] so what's changed in the last couple years to bring so many out of the woodwork and into your face?
The "war on Christianity", that led Christians to become aggressive about protecting their beliefs, [and being pretty blatantly insulting, in too many cases] that's what's changed in the past few years.
Maybe one day yes... Left handed masterbastion would be legalized....
If pedophiles started dying in large numbers due to some mysterious illness, do you really think society at large, much less politicians, would be falling over themselves to find a cause and a cure? Of course not. Pedophiles would make desperate pleas, and every one of them would fall on deaf ears. You (or someone) may say that pedophiles and homosexuals are not at all the same, but in the context of how society views them (or at least in the context of the 80s), you'd be dead wrong. They are exactly the same. There are many, many groups on the fringes of society or outside of society that society at large couldn't care less about. That's one of the things that helps keep a society viable and strong - they protect and nurture the core and ignore everything else as being the unimportant component that it is. You can be as outraged as you like about that, but the fact remains that's how every society that's ever survived and flourished have gone about their business. If pedophiles or homosexuals or any other abnormal subgroup of society just up and disappeared, society would be just fine (the odd exceptions notwithstanding, so there's no need to bring up an exception to try and disprove the rule, that's classic logical fallacy stuff).
Yeah, true. But I guess it depends on what kind of research you're talking about. If it's pharmaceutical, then yeah, but there was certainly far more research being done outside of pharma labs by people without patent envy.
The last couple of years? Nothing. It's been a more or less steady stream for more years than that. But there have been several things. One is the media, TV in particular. TV shows are making a considerable effort to show that abnormalcy is actually really and truly normal. Ever seen Glee? That's the gayest high school ever. But you can't hit a website of headline news without seeing at least 2 gay-related PR pieces (because it's important to keep it in the media, as per the stated agenda). In Web articles where comments are allowed, any comments that don't praise 'all things gay' are met with a seething. gut-wrenching hatred. The vitriolic responses in social media to someone who dares voice a dissenting opinion does not bode well for society. The comments and attitudes that people can hide behind on the Internet have become so commonplace and comfortable, they are now being displayed in real life in the sadistic and vengeful retaliations of trying to destroy the lives and livelihoods of people who don't embrace homosexuality as normal and wonderful.
It also doesn't help that Bruce Jenner's Wiki page now states that she is the first woman to win the men's Olympics Decathlon.
That's what happens when someone launches a war on you. Over the past 20 or 30 years Christians have become more meek and more complacent in protecting their beliefs. They have stood by and more or less silently watched their beliefs and traditions one by one get removed and eroded from society by those who disagree with them. When then do finally object, it's characterized as "becoming aggressive" and being blatantly insulting.
Christians, by and large, have become exceedingly passive on social and moral issues over the past 10 or 15 years. If the churches don't find their voices pretty quickly, they will be even more marginalized than is the case now.