Two teen homophobes tried to ruin Oregon City High School students’ participation in last week’s Day Of Silence by wearing antigay T-shirts.
We’re still trying to figure out if we’re more offended by the message of the T-shirts or the serious lack of design skills that went into them.
According to GayStarNews, school administration and other students clearly chose the former, as the students were forced to remove the shirts or turn them inside out.
Clearly raised on a homophobic diet of Sarah Palin and Fox News, one of the students somehow managed to make himself into the victim, then whined about his plight to local news station KATU.
How about we take this to the next level?
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“I’m not comfortable with you guys making a whole day about what you believe, so if you’re going to make a whole day out of it and not talk and a have a ‘moment of silence,’ then I can wear my t-shirt.”
Many students also spoke out to KATU in support of the Day Of Silence, which went on without further incident
No photos of the teens have been released to protect the young and stupid.
EdWoody
Let them wear the t-shirts. It makes it easier to pick out who the bigots are.
Billy Budd
I think it is OK to prohibit such demonstrations. Nobody would accept if they came up with racial slur on the T-shirts, such as using the N-word. There are things that are not acceptable anymore in a social environment.
LubbockGayMale
I would rather know who is against me, so let them wear the shirt. My friends and supporters will still be there!
RIGay
My tee-shirt reads “It’s not okay to be an ignorant douche bag”
Curtispsf
I have issues around the prohibition of free speech, BUT if some students wore shirts saying Jesus doesn’t love YOU without reference to any group, the school authorities would have found it equally reprehensible and shut it down.
And I say, these antigay folks should have the shirts taken off so they could be identifies publicly as the intolerant “skins”. And gay people could say things like Jesus likes bare chests or perky nipples, or off with your shirts for Jesus. Just a thought…. 😉
liandro
@Billy Budd: I agree with you in sentiment–it’s not acceptable to wear this crap at this event or any such event. But, BBudd, these jerks didn’t use a homophic slur, or the f-word (either one) so it’s not comparable to using the n-word.
But while I’d personally like to dope slap these schmucks upside the head, I am a little troubled over silencing speech. I’m not siding with conservative putz Andrew Sullivan who said we show intolerance for protesting the appt of Eich to Mozilla CEO because of his opinions–that’s just stupid, as Sullivan often is.
The school authorities have the right to do what they did, and I’m mostly OK with that, but the question of when we are trampeling free speech rights, especially repugnant but not hate speech (and those t-shirts were not hate speech), is problematic.
Curtispsf
One more thing…the back of each of their shirts pointed to the other and
said “I’m With Stupid”.
queenrosered
I personally believe they have a right to show their ignorance. Furthermore, it would have been much more truthful if the shirts had said “Scared I may be gay!” or “Beautiful men give me unwanted boners” etc….I mean, c’mon…we all know the odds of them either being gay themselves or at least, certainly not comfortable yet in whatever their own sexuality is. (If they only knew how this draws attention to that, lol)
Mr. E. Jones
And then they went home, skyped with a hot chick, and blew each other.
Desert Boy
It’s a shame to see bigotry in young people. I wonder where they will go next to express their hate? Maybe the KKK and shoot up a Jewish community center while screaming “Heil Hitler”?
Derek Williams
They’re not logical opposites. Being gay isn’t a “belief”, it is the way I was born. Hating that because of your religion may be a civil right as is the right to express religion based hatred, but you can’t change a white person into a black person or a gay person into a straight person, or a left handed person into a right person by looking down your nose on them.
NateOcean
The orange shirt caught my eye. It reads:
GAY
DAY
IS
NOT
OK
Reading down the center column, all I saw was this student’s ringing endorsement: ‘ASS OK’
Finally, something was can all agree on.
DuMaurier
@Derek Williams: Your post may point to why the appellate courts have issued what seem to be conflicting rulings in different jurisdictions on these anti-gay “free speech” cases. Taking off from your comment, if this HAD gone to court, a distinction might have been drawn between “gay” not being “OK”, and “gay DAY” being not OK.
Mezaien
Result of what I diagnose as mental illness call Christianity,
Thad1527
“I’m not comfortable with you guys making a whole day about what you believe, so if you’re going to make a whole day out of it and not talk and a have a ‘moment of silence,’ then I can wear my t-shirt.”
Isn’t EVERY OTHER DAY about what THEY believe?
Wolfwalk
As for the most offensive thing about these tee shirts, I have to go with totally awful colors and design. Even gay teens are used to bigotry and they probably know these two kids and expected this or worse anyway. But they also know they have more supporters now than the previous generation and that makes today’s gay teens stronger and more able to laugh off crap like this. As for the kids who wore the shirts, being raised to believe that you’re the victim of a society whose changing mores threaten your very existence is hard to overcome. I suppose on MLK’s birthday, they’ll try to wear white power tee-shirts to school. Typical right wing thinking (an oxymoron, I know.)
Dakotahgeo
Something tells me these “boyz” will be followed for life… someone is “taking notes” on audio/video tape somewhere. We’re entering a dangerous time where we need to watch and listen to the voices of dissent and expeditiously remove them from “our” harm!
Cam
Can we please get off the free speech argument?
1. Schools have been set aside over and over as able to pass regulations or rules that would not be allowed outside.
2. If the shirts had said “Being Black is not OK” or “Being a woman is not ok” I really don’t think anybody would argue that this is a direct attempt at bullying and intimidating. You aren’t going after anybody else’s beliefs with that shirt, you are directly going after who those students are.
The sad thing will be seeing how the guys and girls who wore that shirt will explain it in a few years to their same sex partners who find it in the back of their closets.
NateOcean
http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/3811/y9y.gif
gatrdave
@EdWoody: I agree.
gatrdave
@Mezaien: Being anti-Christian is not okay. Where does this end? We can parade around demanding tolerance and at the same time slam all Christians because of a few people like this. What happened to celebrating diversity?
gatrdave
@DuMaurier: I don’t see anything wrong with saying that a certain day is not okay. It might be offensive, but so what? We all offend someone at sometime. There is no law against that and there shouldn’t be.
masteradrian
Brainless nutcases.. that’s what these teens are…..
Probably unfit to be at any educational institution what so ever, as they have been indoctrinated already to such a degree that even a frontal lobe removal (that be a lobotomy I guess….) or even a skull removal wouldn’t cure anything!
Best thing probably would be to have them put in a rocket and be shot to the most distant son in the universe…………
Nope, I do not have any mercy for these creatures!
wtbranch
My belief in God’s word (The Bible), makes it impossible for me to condone behavior that God’s word prohibits. I HATE NO ONE & interact with gay people regularly. The kids were INNOCENTLY expressing their beliefs. If they speak out with Biblical convictions they’re called “douche bags”, “mentally ill”, “jerks”, “bigots” or “stupid”. Now that’s what I call tolerance….. The HATE replies will start in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…….Praying & loving you ALL!!!
TerrenM
I have at shirt that says ‘I don’t mind straight people as long as they act gay in public’. I love it…
wtbranch
@Derek Williams: I personally know many individuals who have been transformed from the gay lifestyle. It does happen & there was recently an article on this site about a former gay person who was converted.
dm10003
All the kids who support equality should also wear these shirts to take the claws out of the catty message. LOL.
dm10003
@wtbranch:
LOL.
dm10003
@NateOcean:
You mean “AAS OK”.
Ben
KATU does not list any names but KPTV does (Alex Borho). The one who wore the orange shirt with the words(Gay Day is not OK), and clearly has education issues that he even lists on his twitter account.
Derek Williams
@wtbranch: So you say. But unless you are gay yourself, you cannot know for sure whether I made that as a decision or not. You have no experience of being gay. The science out there says that your “people you know” are either delusional or frightened of being disenfranchised and simply pretend to be straight to gain your acceptance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDiYeJ_bsQo
Derek Williams
@wtbranch:
That’s according to your religion. But there is no “One God”, because the gods of 41,000 different Christian religions disagree with the other gods.
Each religion makes its own god. The Catholic God condemns birth control, women’s ordination and divorce, yet the Anglican God was no problem with family planning or female clergy, and was founded by divorcee King Henry VIII. There is no rational way that these two disagreeing gods can be one and the same entity. Moreover, I can name dozens of Christian religions which teach that homosexuality is a God-given trait, and which welcome LGBT with open arms, hearts and minds as parishioners with full sacraments, including communion, ordination to the clergy, and perform same sex marriage.
People generally shop for the designer religion that most closely fits their tastes, and their prejudices, so if your religion hates what you are, you don’t need to tolerate them for a second longer.
The following Christian religions welcome openly LGBT members to participate and receive sacraments:
Calvary Chapel
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Reformed Church in America
Oriental Orthodox
Community of Christ
Mennonite*
Moravian Church
National Baptist Convention*
New Apostolic
Unification Church
United Methodist Church*
The below also ordain, and bless same sex unions or marriage:
Anglican*
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)*
Church of Scotland*
Episcopal*
Community of Christ
Church of Denmark
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America*
German Lutheran & United Churches in Evangelical Church in Germany
Metropolitan Community Church
Church of Norway
Pentecostal*
Protestant Church in the Netherlands
Presbyterian Church (USA)*
Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)
Old Catholic
Swedenborgian*
Church of Sweden
Swiss Reformed Churches in Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches*
United Church of Canada
United Church of Christ*
Unity School of Christianity
Waldensian*
*varies
SOURCE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominational_positions_on_homosexuality
Derek Williams
@wtbranch: Moreover, since you believe The Holy Bible is literally “God’s Word” and written by none than god himself, you must justify why you don’t obey ALL his word, and just pick and choose:
OLD TESTAMENT
DEUTERONOMY 7:3 No marriage shall be sanctioned of people of different races.
DEUTERONOMY 13:13-17 A town that allows the practice of more than one religion must be burned to the ground and its citizens slaughtered.
DEUTERONOMY 21:18-21 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother… then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.”
DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21 A woman not a virgin on her wedding night must be executed.
DEUTERONOMY 22:22 If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, both adulterers be stoned to death.
DEUTERONOMY 22:28-29 A virgin who is raped must marry her rapist.
DEUTERONOMY
25:11-12 If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing the enemy’s genitals, her hand shall be cut off and no pity shall be shown her.
EXODUS 4:11 “The LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”
EZEKIEL 18:5-6 No marriage shall be sanctioned in which the wedding ceremony shall occur during the women’s menstrual cycle.
KINGS 11:2 No marriage shall be sanctioned of people of different races.
LEVITICUS 11:6-8 Outlaws the playing of football (touching the skin of a dead pig).
LEVITICUS 11:9-12 Eating shellfish or pork strictly forbidden.
LEVITICUS 18:19 A married couple who have sexual intercourse during a woman’s period shall both be executed.
LEVITICUS 19:19 May not wear polyester cotton shirts (wearing garments of mixed fabrics forbidden)
LEVITICUS 20:9 “Anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.”
LEVITICUS 20:18 No marriage shall be sanctioned in which the wedding ceremony shall occur during the women’s menstrual cycle.
LEVITICUS 21:17-21 “Speak to Aaron, saying, ‘No man of your offspring throughout their generations who has a defect shall approach to offer the food of his God. | ‘For no one who has a defect shall approach: a blind man, or a lame man, or he who has a disfigured face, or any deformed limb, | or a
man who has a broken foot or broken hand, | or a unchback or a dwarf, or one who has a defect in his eye or eczema or scabs or crushed testicles. | ‘No man among the descendants of Aaron the priest who has a defect is to come near to offer the LORD’S offerings by fire; since he has a defect, he shall not come near to offer the food of his God.”
LEVITICUS 25:45 Says it’s OK for a foreigner in your country to sell you their child, and equally OK for you to buy them and treat them as chattel.
LEVITICUS 26:14-30 “Then if you walk contrary to me …you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”
NUMBERS 15:32,35 Anyone who picks up sticks on the Sabbath must be killed.
NUMBERS 25:6-8 No marriage shall be sanctioned of people of different races.
PROVERBS 19:2 “…and he that hasteth with his feet sinneth.” (running and therefore all athletic sports are a sin)
NEW TESTAMENT
COLOSSIANS 3:22 “Slaves, obey your human masters in everything; don’t work only while being watched, in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.”
CORINTHIANS 6:14-17 No marriage shall be sanctioned between Christians & non-Christians.
CORINTHIANS 14:34 Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says.
JOHN 1:9-11 No marriage shall be sanctioned between Christians & non-Christians.
MARK 10:1-12 Divorce is strictly forbidden in both Testaments, as is remarriage of anyone who has been divorced
MARK 12:18-27 If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir.”
MATTHEW 5:28 No marriage shall be sanctioned for any man who has had sexual thoughts of any woman other than his intended.
MATTHEW 5:32 No marriage will be sanctioned between people who have been divorced.
TIMOTHY 2:12 “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence”
TIMOTHY 5:5-15 No marriage shall be sanctioned involving a widow (unless it is to her brother-in-law). All women whose husbands have passed away shall refrain from intimacy & pleasure for the remainder of their lives.
Cam
@wtbranch: said… “I personally know many individuals who have been transformed from the gay lifestyle. It does happen & there was recently an article on this site about a former gay person who was converted.”
____________________________
No you don’t. You’re just another sad bigot, desperately thinking that if you come on to this site and pretend you aren’t gay, that it means something.
Studies have shows that anti-gay bigots like yourself who hide behind religion are very often closeted homosexuals. WE all know this, so you aren’t fooling anybody.
How embarrassing for you.
casey
Gay is not just OK, it’s AWESOME!
Matt G
the black one has a decent layout, the orange one has the spacing all off and I can hear my graphic design friends having an asthma attack about how horrible it looks.
Personally, I see why the shirts are offensive but I don’t think we should be so quick to nip dissent in the bud. There are actually people who change their minds on the issue and need some explanation (despite the fact that it’s been explained 4320950234 times before, and maybe quite a few times by yourself personally). “Gay DAY is not OK” is a different sentiment from “Gay is not OK.” I think even having some kind of talk with kids about the semantic differences is educational in teaching kids the meaning of words and essentials of communication (my best friend has a PhD in rhetoric and it’s seeping into my brain I think)
Dakotahgeo
@Derek Williams: These faux christian jackalopes wouldn’t know a Bible if they were hit over the head or slapped with one. First, one has to know HOW to read; Second, one has to take the time to discern what is said (Look it up if you don’t know what ‘discern’ means); Three, one has to have at least a “Howdy, Holy Spirit” relationship with the third part of the Holy Trinity (I call him my Spiritual Guidance Counselor); Fourth, it really takes a willingness to unlearn all the shit that you were spoon fed in a dysfunctional, fundamentalist church; If you can work on these steps, you may just “Pass Go” and collect some great knowledge. Not interested? Ferrgit it!”
Cam
@Matt G:
But again, these aren’t shirts arguing a political position, they are telling people born gay that they are not ok. If the shirts said “”Black is not OK” or “Latino is not ok” nobody would be saying “Oh gee, lets talk to them about their opinion” it would be classed as harassment and bullying those students. The gay community always seems so overly eager to pretend that attacks on us are ok because it’s just a disagreement.
Derek Williams
@Cam: Exactly – they are saying being gay is a sinful lifestyle choice, and that it is a fad based on a socio-political ideology, not an innate romantic and sexual orientation.
Rob
@Mezaien: “Result of what I diagnose as mental illness call Christianity,”
Does your hatred and bigotry apply to Christian gays as well or no?
Throbert McGee
@wtbranch:
I believe wtbranch is telling the truth here, since I have no reason to think otherwise.
I completely agree with wtbranch here.
I also partly agree with the kid in the orange T-shirt with retro Cooper Black letters (the fuzzy kind, I hope!).
And I think it’s demeaning, condescending, and infantilizing to LGBT teenagers to characterize these shirts as “harassment”, “bullying”, or “attacks”. It’s particularly important for LGBT teens to internalize the Truth that “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me”. Overreaction to mildly upsetting speech sends the message that it’s okay for LGBT teens to let every little thing get under their skin.
I realize some people will object that “OMG words can kill!!!!”, but UNLESS one of the kids in the photo (a) happens to be the Kwisatz Haderach from Dune, or (b) owns a magic wand and knows how to use the Avada Kedavra spell, I feel it a matter of scientific certainty that words do not, in fact, kill — and it’s a bad idea to go around filling the heads of teenagers with unscientific nonsense.
Throbert McGee
Also, wtbranch, I think that you and I probably disagree about the correct interpretation of certain Bible verses, but I gotta go now, so I’ll save it for tomorrow if you’re interested to know which specific verses I mean. (They’re all in the OT.)
God Bless.
Cam
@Throbert McGee:
What a shock, BJ McFrisky’s other screename comes in to defend right wing bigots.
Glad to see you’re consistent across all your screenames.
mezzacanadese
I want to know why it so upsets these boys for a day to be set aside for gays. And yes, these shirts are offensive. As the mother of a gay man, I think it is insulting to have your shirt state, “Gay is not okay”, as though there is something wrong with it. A statement does not necessarily have to have a swear word in it to be offensive.
DickieJohnson
@Cam: Free Speech is one of the things that makes us Americans, a right most people in the world do not have. Despite the fact that it can be very offensive, I’d hate to see it taken away. Antigay, and other kinds, of demonstrations, or speech, merely call attention to the the bigotry and ignorance of those taking part, even teens wearing badly designed t-shirts. To paraphrase Joan Rivers, “We’re all f*gs, or K*kes, or N*gg*rs, or Ch*nks, or something. We should be grateful to live in America, and Just. Calm. Down!” Haters are never going to go away, and I don’t care if they don’t want to bake me a cake, or whatever. Someone else will want my business!
Derek Williams
@DickieJohnson: Well I have to agree to some extent. Publicly displayed bigotry has worked against its own interests, and would only be given power by being driven underground where it could no longer be publicly challenged as it is being on this forum, and no doubt within the school itself.
A notorious example is Australia’s Reverend Fred Nile who used his freedom of speech to pray for God to rain on the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Funnily enough, there was a downpour, but it stopped at the start of the parade, and resumed when it finished. If there is a God, maybe he was trying to send Fred the message.
Same for when the Scottish Parliament passed same sex marriage law. The rain stopped almost to the hour, and a rainbow appeared that from some standpoints, arced right over to the top of the Scottish Parliament building.
However, while I support Freedom of Speech, I am not in favour of repealing libel laws, or making it ok to commit perjury, or to swear a false oath or document, or to incite racial hatred or to incite a riot or to incite someone to commit crime. These are all severely curtailed at law. In that sense, we’ve never really had unfettered “freedom of speech”.
Volvoguy
Stupid is as stupid does.
Assholes, really fucking really it’s 2014!!’
xzall
Schools have always had the right to dictate dress code so there’s nothing unusual in what these kids were told to wear it inside out. Many, many schools ban t-shirts with sayings on them anyways because they can be offensive or lead to school disruption. All you people going on about this and defending the kids so called free speech–maybe you’ve just been out of school too long. Schools code of conduct and dress code overrules any of that.
Mezaien
@gatrdave: Christianity, can change name, but not label!. Every night before bed I thank Christ, for let Christian murders millions and more to come..
BRENT
Everyone seems to have walked blindly into the trap and proved themselves even more puerile than the kids in the photograph.
There is so much prattle here about free speech but no-one seems to understand the concept, that is, that free speech is a two-way street.
Get a sense of perspective please. The kids are merely seeking attention and it would appear they have found it here by the bucketful.
Lighten up, people — this is not exactly the end of the world, after all.
Rob
@Mezaien: “Every night before bed I thank Christ, for let Christian murders millions and more to come..”
Boy you much am smurt for that uns.
Lamesy
I honestly like the goth black and orange DIY looks together; you designer queens critiquing the look are such snobs.
This is a pretty normal teen punk thing to do – the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Teens like to display contrarian views. I’m not mad at it unless they hold the same views in 5 years as adults.
IvanPH
Alex Borho is one of those degenerate bigoted fools. He has a twitter account: https://twitter.com/AlexBorho
Cam
@DickieJohnson: said…
“@Cam: Free Speech is one of the things that makes us Americans, a right most people in the world do not have. Despite the fact that it can be very offensive, I’d hate to see it taken away.
______________________________
All of you guys chanting “Free Speech” seem to miss two things.
1. Schools have been separated out in Speech cases over and over.
2. You can’t wear a shirt that says “John Doe is stupid”, that is seen as harassment or an attack. You can’t wear shirts in school that say “Black or Mexican or Asian is not ok” for the same reason.
It’s funny isn’t it, that when it’s about “Gay” we get all of the trolls on here screaming free speech. Something that is a direct harassment of a group of students is not allowed.
Please, nobody come on here and claim that this is a free speech issue without explaining then why it wouldn’t be allowed if the shirt said that “Women are bad” “Blacks are not ok” “Asians go home” etc…. and get us to see that you have actually thought about the actual legal issues here and aren’t just some Tea Partier chanting “Free Speech” without actually knowing what it means.
Billy Budd
I repeat: Children have not fully developed their brains and are at a stage of LEARNING how to behave, forming opinions about things. Prejudice and harassment and bullying MUST NOT be allowed in schools. It teaches kids to become socially inept adults or bigots. Schools have a responsibility to teach moral and ethical values and prevent harassement from occurring.
In my opinion, the school was RIGHT to prohibit the nasty t-shirts.
Texasteacher
@xzall, Cam and Billy Budd… Well said! I’m a teacher and after I let all 35 of the kids in each one of my classes have their “free speech,” there simply won’t be enough time for me to teach today’s lesson on forming the past tense subjunctive…and it’s nowhere as interesting. Distractions need to be minimized in school and there’s a difference between expressing support for others and expressing antipathy against others attending the same school. Students generally haven’t developed their own opinions fully until they’re in college anyway, so I don’t want to hear students’ second-hand verbalization of their parents’ personal prejudices. We don’t have time for it.
Rob
On a somewhat unrelated note, I wonder if it’s cool to “compare” gay marriage to beastiality if you’re all for it:
“Now, I’m for interracial marriage. I’m for same-sex marriage. I’m the one that introduced the bill to have same-sex marriage. I don’t care who marry who. If a man meet a little mule and he wanna get married to the little mule, as long as he and the little mule get along all right, that’s fine with me. It doesn’t bother me any kind of way.” -Rep. Alvin Holmes (D,AL)
Derek Williams
No it’s not “cool”. Marrying your horse requires its consent in a known language (other than “neigh”), ability to sign a marriage certificate and do the housework.
Throbert McGee
@Cam:
Cam, you anonymous-posting rascal, do you really find it so difficult to believe that out of all the gay men in the world, there might be as many as TWO DIFFERENT ONES who disagree with you?
Cam
@Throbert McGee:
Oh, I’m sorry, the fact that your names are structured the same, you always support right wing anti-gay folks, and dance around to excuse anything anti gay may have fooled me.
Can’t imagine why.
Throbert McGee
@Derek Williams:
I’d say there’s at least an 80% chance that you’re correct, Derek!
On the other hand, it’s theoretically possible that they’re aware homosexual orientation is innate and basically hard-wired, and when they say “gay,” they’re talking about the freely-made choice to act upon homosexual desires rather than choosing celibacy as some sort of “Cross” that Jesus wants Christian homosexuals to bear. Certainly, there are some Christian adults who understand the difference between unchosen orientation and chosen behavior — but probably these guys don’t make that distinction, because nearly all high-schoolers are immature idjits.
Also, it’s not really clear from the story whether this “Gay Day” or “Day of Silence” was entirely student-organized (by some Gay/Straight Alliance group, for instance), or if it was officially promoted by adult administrators and faculty. There are reasons for objecting to the latter even if it’s well intended — it treads close to indoctrination of a captive audience. (I think this is what MattG was getting at when he said that the two shirts expressed different sentiments.) And this is why I wrote that “I partly agree” with the orange T-shirt — though maybe I should’ve said “I’m provisionally willing to agree with and support the message” of the orange T-shirt.
Throbert McGee
Cam, I’ve been using the screen name “Throbert McGee” on ALL Web forums (except pr0n sites, where I log in with a different email account) since my days on Salon Table talk in the late 1990s.
I chose this as my screen name because it’s only two letters longer than my REAL LEGAL name (hint: my first name isn’t Throbe) and therefore is consistent with my belief in “transparency”, accountability, and generally being out of the closet.
Again, I use “Throbert McGee” on gay forums, on general political forums, on Russian language forums, on various hobby forums, on science forums, and so forth.
Also, using “Mc-” to form joke-surnames (e.g. Fatty McLardbutt) is an extremely common Web meme and has been for a long time, so unless you only discovered the Internet two months ago, it was (characteristically) silly of you to assume that posters using the names “McGee” and “McFrisky” must obviously be working in collusion.
Throbert McGee
@Derek Williams:
I beg to differ! It seems rationally possible to me that the Catholic God and the Anglican God are one and the same Being, but He, She, or It really and truly takes delight in diversity (unlike “fundies,” whether we’re talking about “Christian fundies” like Pat Robertson, or “LGBT fundies” like some of the posters on this thread.
Because the Creator wants the Garden to be abundantly diverse, He/She/It takes a laissez faire approach to human religions and allows them to develop in different ways. When a schism occurs in a religion (as happened recently in American Episcopalianism, mostly over LGBT-related issues), God most likely thinks that both sides make some good points and does not GREATLY favor one over the other, although perhaps He has some slight preference for one side.
It even seems rationally possible to me that this Creator Being might have told some people that He’s a He, others that She’s a She; that the Creator told some “I am One and Only One” and others “I am Three in One” and still others “I have an infinite number of avatars — or ‘sock puppets’, if you like — including some that have elephant heads or six arms or blue skin, but all of them are really just Me.”
Why would God present Theirself in different ways to different people? Possibly to encourage some “constructive philosophical disputes” among human beings. Yes, sometimes religious differences have led to horrifically bloody wars, but that can also be constructive in the long run — humanity as a whole must understand that some beliefs really are worth making bloody war over, but other beliefs fall into the category of “let’s agree to disagree.” And if humanity can’t come to a general consensus about which disagreements we’ll kill over and which disagreements can harmoniously co-exist, then we’re DEFINITELY not ready to meet the Klingons, or the Vulcans, or the ammonia-breathing Lobster-Jews from Tau Ceti 3.
By the way, to any traditionalist Christians or Jews reading this I would offer the enormous pseudo-penis of the female Spotted Hyena, and the sequential hermaphroditism of clownfish, as two small pieces of evidence that God takes delight in watching a great diversity of sexual behaviors in His Creation, and that the Biblical prohibition on homosexual activity are probably much more specific and narrow in their scope than you might think.
Throbert McGee
Oh, dammit! Sorry about that typo with the hyperlink tags.
ShowMeGuy
Those two little bigoted shits get all 175 days of the school year to celebrate their Straight Pride. Fuck ’em to Hell.
Billy Budd
@Throbert McGee: LOL
Billy Budd
@Throbert McGee: Are you for real?
Spike
@Derek Williams: POWER BOTTOMS FOR JESUS !!!
Rob
@ShowMeGuy: Those two little bigoted shits get all 175 days of the school year to celebrate their Straight Pride.
Oh, was this a gay pride celebration at the school? I missed that. In what way do students celebrate “Straight Pride”? I’ve never seen it.
Derek Williams
@Throbert McGee: The Catholic God says “being gay is ok, having sex with your partner is NOT ok”, whereas the Quaker God says “being gay is ok, and if you are gay, you can marry your partner, and we will conduct the ceremony”, but the Westboro Baptist God says “I hate fags, both you and your partner will burn for all eternity in the sulphurous Lake of Fire”. Nowhere in the Bible does it say any such thing, certainly not in the Ten Commandments, nor Christ’s Two Commandments, not his Eight Beatitudes, nor his Seven Last Words. Moreover, there was no word in either the Ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament nor the Ancient Greek of the New for “a homosexual” nor for “homosexuality”. Like many things, this was not beginning to be properly understood as a class until the 19th Century when it was first codified by German psychiatrist Krafft-Ebbing.
Clearly religion is a designer product from the megastore of wishful thinking, but if you’re a kid born into any one of these religions, you are encouraged to believe your family chose the right god and all the others are apostate. If you’re gay kid, it matters a lot for your own sense of being a valid human being.
Since this “creator” in the universe of your construction can’t be bothered to clear up once and for all whether divorce, birth control, women’s ordination, or homosexuality are perfectly OK, or leading you to eternal damnation, that places the whole religious paradigm into the dustbin of apocryphalness.
As for what else the Bible is “specific and narrow” about, who gets to pick and choose which of the following biblical laws are “obsolete”?
Alcohol absolutely forbidden:
Ephesians 5:18. Proverbs 20:1, Proverbs 23:20-21, Isaiah 5:11, Leviticus 10:9, Romans 14:21, Galatians 5: 21, 1 Corinthians 6:10
Women inferior to men:
CORINTHIANS 14:34 Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says.
TIMOTHY 2:12 “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence”
Killing ok:
DEUTERONOMY 13:13-17 A town that allows the practice of more than one religion must be burned to the ground and its citizens slaughtered.
DEUTERONOMY 21:18-21 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother… then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.”
DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21 A woman not a virgin on her wedding night must be executed.
DEUTERONOMY 22:22 If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, both adulterers be stoned to death.
DEUTERONOMY 22:28-29 A virgin who is raped must marry her rapist.
DEUTERONOMY 25:11-12 If a man gets into a fight with another man and his wife seeks to rescue her husband by grabbing the enemy’s genitals, her hand shall be cut off and no pity shall be shown her.
LEVITICUS 18:19 A married couple who have sexual intercourse during a woman’s period shall both be executed.
LEVITICUS 20:9 “Anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.”
NUMBERS 15:32,35 Anyone who picks up sticks on the Sabbath must be killed.
Marriage:
• No marriage will be sanctioned between people who have been divorced. (Matthew 5:32)
• No marriage shall be sanctioned between Christians & non-Christians. (2 John 1:9-11, 2 Corinthians 6:14-17)
• No marriage shall be sanctioned in which the wedding ceremony shall occur during the women’s menstrual cycle (Leviticus 18:19, 20:18, & Ezekiel 18:5-6)
• No marriage shall be sanctioned of people of different races. (Deuteronomy 7:3, Numbers 25:6-8, 36:6-8, 1 Kings 11:2)
• No marriage shall be sanctioned involving a widow (unless it is to her brother-in-law). All women whose husbands have passwed away shall refrain from intimacy & pleasure for the remainder of their lives. (1 Timothy 5:5-15)
• No marriage shall be sanctioned for any man who has had sexual thoughts of any woman other than his intended (Matthew 5:28)
• A woman not a virgin on her wedding night must be executed. (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
• If a married person has sex with someone else’s husband or wife, both adulterers be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 22:22)
• A virgin who is raped must marry her rapist. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
• If a man dies childless, his widow is ordered to have intercourse with each of his brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband a male heir. (Mark 12:18-2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw
BUT Polygamy OK:
• Solomon … had 700 wives … and 300 concubines. (1 Kings 11:2-3)
• Rehoboam … took 18 wives, and 60 concubines. (2 Chronicles 11:21)
• But Abijah waxed mighty, and married 14 wives…. (2 Chronicles 13:21)
And Slavery definitely very OK:
COLOSSIANS 3:22 “Slaves, obey your human masters in everything; don’t work only while being watched, in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.”
Kill your naughty children:
DEUTERONOMY 21:18-21 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother… then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.”
LEVITICUS 20:9 “Anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.”
Rob
@Billy Budd: I can vouche that Throbert is for real and that is the name he uses on other sites.
Rob
@Derek Williams: It would be helpful if you’d read the verses you copy & paste as many don’t say what you think they say.
Billy Budd
@Rob: Then he must really be insane. I don’t know why Derek W. is wasting his time and intelligence with this ****.
Rob
@Billy Budd: All’s I know is that I’ve seen him elsewhere before. Can’t really remember that much about what he’s posted. A perfectly intelligent friend thinks highly of him. Further, I don’t get the sense that Derek is expending that much time with copy & paste nor does it take a whole helluva lot of intelligence to claim Scripture says what it clearly doesn’t. Add to that the fact that his posts are based on old, tired, worn out arguments for hating Christianity and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of original thought either. Rehashing ancient bullshit doesn’t take time nor intelligence.
Derek Williams
@Rob: Something doesn’t become true merely because it has been copied and pasted from another thread. If anything is “tired and worn out” it is the Bible itself, but which version?
There is no such thing as “Christianity”. There are over 41,000 Christian denominations that cannot even agree on the rightness of wrongness of birth control, women’s ordination and divorce, let alone homosexuality, regardless of what a particular translation of the Bible says or doesn’t say. Moreover there are over 450 translations in English alone to choose between, not to mention 518 in other languages, many conflicting with others.
“The” Bible anything but clear on quite a number of points, including homosexuality, because a great deal depends upon which translation you decide is the one for you.
Looking at Leviticus 19:19:
New International Version: “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.”
English Standard Version: “nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.”
American Standard Version: “neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together.”
King James Version: “neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee”
Under King James or English Standard Version it is ok to wear a polyester/cotton shirt since it is neither linen nor wool, nor woven, but New International Version forbids such shirts. Which is one to believe? And what about a garment that is woven of two different fabrics of which only one is either linen or wool? And what of one that isn’t ‘woven’? Is woven OK or isn’t it?
‘While the people of Israel found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.”‘ (Numbers 15:32,35) but when did we last stone anyone for anything at all? It’s mandatory in the Bible. Do we sacrifice animals? Do we treat our slaves well? Do we prohibit women from being teachers? These are all to be readily found in the Bible.
Alleged references to homosexual conduct in the Bible are not taken up in any ‘motherhood’ statements, such as the Ten Commandments, Christ’s Two Commandments, the Eight Beatitudes, The Seven Last Words, and so forth, nor in any of the recorded statements of Jesus Christ.
Returning to Leviticus for a moment, here are two translations of the Leviticus passage that some claim condemn me because I happen to be a homosexual:
King James, Leviticus 18:22: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”
Living Bible: “Homosexuality is absolutely forbidden, for it is an enormous sin”
The second translation is unsubstantiatable, because neither the word ‘homosexual’ nor the word ‘homosexuality’ have any equivalence in Ancient Hebrew or Ancient Greek. No reference, stated or implied includes female homosexuals, nor is there ever a biological specificity in regards to any type of intercourse, to say nothing of committed, monogamous same gender relationships.
In transliterated Hebrew, the verse is written: “V’et zachar lo tishkav mishk’vey eeshah toeyvah hee,” meaning:
“And with a male you shall not lay lyings of a woman”
Its precise meaning is ambiguous. The phrase “lay lyings” has no obvious interpretation.
For a heterogeneous anthology that is supposed to be the literal Word of God, it’s a wonder that it was not all simply handed down by God himself, yet it is not written in the 1st person singular. Nor is it provided to every living being on Earth in a single version in their own language, which an all-powerful God would surely have not only the capacity to accomplish in a heartbeat, but an unquestionable duty to do so, given the dire consequences some threaten will result from not heeding its admonitions.
If there is a god, who knows everything and created everything, and is all-powerful, then he knew in advance that he was going to create gays. For him to have created upwards of 350 million gays alive today (5% of 7 billion) for Christians to persecute and judge our relationships as “ordered towards evil”, is counter-intuitive. He certainly would put a stop to all the disagreements mentioned above and in earlier posts, given the alleged consequences are eternal damnation.
There again, this doesn’t wash for me. When you listen to the sanctimonious religious folk going on about how we should live in celibacy or gay men should marry a straight woman – so we can get the “eternal reward”. This supposed reward consists of living eternity not with all our gay brethren, all 350 million of us and then some, who are all in this place called “hell” because they love someone of the same sex, but with god bothering bigots who cannot stand homosexuality. Their own words say it “hate the sin”. They the very thing that defines my romantic orientation, that I cannot change.
If “heaven” is full of people who believe the Bible, I choose “hell” – where all my mates are.
Derek Williams
@Rob: Correction: “Something doesn’t become UNtrue merely because it has been copied and pasted from another thread.”
Throbert McGee
@Derek Williams:
Derek, there’s a point that you’re not quite understanding. Let me tell you something about myself.
As a 7-year-old child, I was diagnosed with a brain abnormality. Specifically, my abnormality was that the Stanford-Binet assessment used at the time, I scored about four standard deviations above the mean. Or in plain English, if you believe the psychologists, I have about the same IQ as Jayne Mansfield allegedly did. I have never believed that this makes me better than other people, although I could give you endless examples of how it makes me somewhat abnormal.
On the other hand, my Uncle Tony was born with a different abnormality — an extra chromosome that resulted in Down Syndrome. As a result, my uncle never learned to read above a “Dick and Jane” level (though he knows how to copy the letters in printed material, and has relatively good handwriting). And, verbally, he understands things in a very literal-minded way, so we have to be careful about making certain jokes in front of him. Still, he’s lovable and outgoing, as most Down Syndrome individuals are.
And now here’s the point I wanted to make for you, Derek: from God’s point-of-view, I am just as “ree-TAH-did” as my Uncle Tony is — which is to say that the IQ difference between me and Uncle Tony must seem vanishingly small to a Being capable of inventing a Universe in which cells that reproduce using DNA as a means to store information would eventually appear on a planet revolving around a second-generation star like the Sun.
From God’s point-of-view, all humans must seem like adorably precocious monkeys who got bald over most of their bodies, figured out how to walk upright, and eventually mastered tool-making and language.
So in order to communicate with creatures so much more feeble-minded than Himself, God invented fairy tales, such as the one about a man and a woman and a talking snake in a garden somewhere; and the one about God’s son taking human form, getting himself killed, and then popping back to life; and so forth. Sometimes there was logical inconsistency between one fairy tale and another, but God did this on purpose, so that by their very misunderstandings of the fairy tales, humans would gradually learn the skills of logical debate and literary analysis and rational skepticism.
P.S. There is an old proverb from Russia that goes:
“A fairy-tale is a pile of lies,
But with hints of Truth for discerning eyes!”
And this, I believe, is the spirit in which non-believers like me ought to approach the Bible.
Throbert McGee
Reading upward in the thread, I suddenly got a massive hard-on for Rob. I haven’t clicked yet on the link to his FB page, but I instinctively know that he’s very sexy…
Throbert McGee
@Derek Williams:
No, it isn’t.
Let me admit up front that I don’t understand Hebrew grammar at all and I only know a few Hebrew words. (I was raised Catholic, but left the church when I was, um… well, I can’t say exact age, because I sort of very gradually self-excommunicated somewhere between puberty and college.)
But I absolutely promise you that the precise and unambiguous meaning of Leviticus 18:22 is agreed upon by ALL JEWISH RABBIS, from the most liberal to the most Orthodox.
In a nutshell, this verse absolutely prohibits anal sex between two Jewish men — and the similarly worded Lev. 20:13 permits the death penalty for Jewish men (both the “top” and the “bottom”) who engage in anal sex with each other.
Now let’s walk through this. The key term in English is “as with a woman” — Hebrew mishk’vey eeshah, which could be also be translated as something like “the copulations of women”. Although mishk’vey is related to tishkav, “to lie down” (the common root is Sh-K-V, “to lie, lay”), mishk’vey more directly derives from a word that implies “the honeymoon bed”, and thus it’s a euphemism for “sexual copulation,” and does not mean merely “the act of lying down”. Add eeshah, “women,” and you get “the copulations of women.”
So, what were these “copulations of women”? Jewish scholars are unanimous on this: the phrase is really a shorthand euphemism that means “in a manner that unnaturally imitates natural vaginal intercourse” — which is to say, doin’ it in the butt.
Therefore, from a Jewish perspective, the Hebrew verse could be rendered in normal modern English as:
A male must not have anal sex with another male — it is an abomination.
That is what the verse ACTUALLY means, at least if you believe countless generations of Jewish rabbis trained to read Biblical Hebrew.
Of course, rabbis who are more liberal or more conservative may disagree with each other on the implications of Lev. 18:22 for gay Jewish men in modern times. Some very liberal ones might argue that the ban on anal sex was applicable in ancient times, but gay Jewish men nowadays do not necessarily have to observe this prohibition if they’re in a committed relationship. On the other hand, some highly traditionalist rabbis would argue that fellatio, by implication, is also prohibited by Lev. 18:22, because it also involves one man penetrating another man’s “orifice” — although it’s a different orifice in the case of BJs.
But what they all agree on, I assure you, is that the verse refers to ANAL SEX BETWEEN MEN, and not necessarily about other homosexual practices between two men (and the verse has no bearing whatsoever on lesbian practices).
Derek Williams
@Throbert McGee: I don’t see the word “anus” mentioned there at all, whatever the “All Jewish Rabbis” you’ve somehow managed to consult in this life say. Nor am I aware of anything particularly sexually explicit in the bible in terms of literal descriptions of the sexual organs and their “proper use” (most of which is for urination, and hardly any of which is for procreation).
There is certainly massive disagreement amongst Christian theologians on this, and a gay perspective:
http://www.gaychristian101.com/how-do-you-interpret-leviticus-1822-and-2013-man-should-not-lay-with-man.html
Throbert McGee
And just so there’s no misunderstanding, traditional Jewish law also prohibits Jewish men from engaging in NON-ANAL homosexual acts, such as fellatio or mutual handjobs or “frot”, or even first-base stuff like French kissing and heavy petting through the clothes. Jewish women are also expected to avoid any kind of lesbian shenanigans with another woman.
HOWEVER, a couple thousand years of Jewish rabbinical consensus place anal sex between men in its own special category of abominable awfulness, apart from all the other sorts of same-sex frolics. One BIG difference: Anally penetrating another man could qualify both guys for stoning back in the old days, while non-anal offenses weren’t subject to the death penalty — though such behavior was thought to be extremely shameful and there could be lesser penalties for it.
Also, in explaining why things like oral sex and mutual masturbation are prohibited for friends of the same sex (even though these same acts are completely permissible for a Jewish husband and wife!), the more conservative rabbis do not generally rely on the Leviticus verses for Scriptural support — as in, “Oh, men mustn’t give each other handjobs because it might eventually tempt them to break Lev. 18:22!”
Instead, they tend to argue that non-anal homosexual acts are basically akin to masturbation, which is considered a sin for straight Jewish guys as well. (Though, mind you, jacking off was never a sin punishable by stoning.) So, the story of Onan spilling his seed without reproductive purpose, and the commands in Leviticus that a Jewish man must ritually wash himself after an emission of semen, are invoked to justify the blanket prohibition on all man-to-man sexual play, even when there’s no anal penetration involved.
There’s a more than a little bit of “When a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate!!” in the Orthodox Jewish arguments against non-anal gay male acts, while their arguments against lesbian acts can be distilled down to “Jews shouldn’t imitate the shameful customs of the pagan Gentiles.”
But while most people nowadays (including large numbers of Christians and Jews) consider this “every sperm is sacred” reasoning to be quite silly, it is nonetheless entirely separate from the Leviticus verses pertaining to anal sex.
Rob
@Derek Williams: Correction: “Something doesn’t become UNtrue merely because it has been copied and pasted from another thread.”
I think it would have been more concise and accurate if you’d just written “neener, neener, neener!”. The rest is just vapid, superfluous flummery. I get it. You want to wave your copy & paste job around, showing everyone how brilliant you think you are. When somebody calls bullshit, you wave around even more. Fairly tedious. You are correct, though.
Something doesn’t become untrue merely because it has been copied and pasted,it was untrue to begin with. Nor does it become true when you repeat the same thing over and over. Josef Goebbles might be impressed but that’s about it.
Throbert McGee
Derek, do you actually BELIEVE that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who became human and somehow popped back to life after being executed…
…or does it just bother you, for some bizarre reason, that people whose beliefs you don’t even share consider you to be a sinner?
I mean, I can well understand why a gay Christian who has accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior would be upset that other Christians are badly misinterpreting certain verses in the infallible Scriptures given to mankind by God.
That’s why I thought it worth posting the Jewish analysis of Leviticus 18:22 — to give some intellectual ammo to actual gay Christians (should there happen to be any of them here), so they’ll have a better answer to anti-gay Christians. (I would add that a lot of anti-gay Christians have almost certainly encountered your arguments about cotton/poly blends before — but I daresay most of them would be caught quite off guard by the Jewish argument about the distinction between anal and non-anal homosexual conducts.)
But you, Derek, increasingly strike me as someone who gets needlessly agitated just because people that you consider to be silly and superstitious think that your homosexuality makes you inferior to them.
Why on Earth do you PAY ATTENTION to their silly opinions?
P.S. And what do you think you achieve by cutting-and-pasting stuff that you quite obviously didn’t write yourself?
Derek Williams
@Rob: You attribute your own motivation of “wanting others to see how brilliant you think you are” to me and this became clear in your earlier self description. I have no interest in what people think of me, only in erasing religious and other persecution of gay people from the planet.
I copy and paste material because it is tedious to write it all out again and there is no shortage of opportunity to re-use material I’ve spent a while gathering.
Derek Williams
“Why on Earth do you PAY ATTENTION to their silly opinions?”
Here’s why: http://www.worldstaruncut.com/uncut/38302
“And what do you think you achieve by cutting-and-pasting stuff that you quite obviously didn’t write yourself?”
Obviously I didn’t write the Bible. Why shouldn’t I quote from it? And why should I type it all out again? Anything not in quotation marks I wrote myself, or condensed from other research. I refuse to type it all out again just to stop you finding fault. If I did type it all out again, how would you know? What difference would it make to the finished result?
Rob
@Derek Williams: You attribute your own motivation of “wanting others to see how brilliant you think you are…
You seem to have me confused with a smug, elitist schmuck who has nothing better to do than fire of a list of Bible verses that don’t say what they’re described as saying.
Derek Williams
@Rob: Argumentum ad hominem is not rebuttal.
Rob
@Derek Williams: only in erasing religious and other persecution of gay people from the planet.
How’s that “Final Solution” coming?
Derek Williams
@Rob: The “Final Solution” erased people. I never said nor do I believe that I believe people should be erased, only that persecution against LGBT minorities must be erased.
If there is any “final solution” going on, it is against gay people in Africa, the Middle East and Russia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPg86sp4o3M
Throbert McGee
There was an excellent quote that I’ve always remembered from some old gay coming-of-age novel, even though I don’t recall the name of the novel, or the novelist.
Anyway, a gay teenage boy (the narrator) has admitted his homosexual feelings and behaviors in confession to a Catholic priest, and the shocked priest admonishes him with standard Catholic boilerplate that “Homosexuality is a Most Grievous Sin, a Violation of Natural Law, Intrinsically Evil and Objectively Disordered, blah-de-blah-blah.”
And the teenage narrator then says to the reader something like:
“Inwardly, I wanted to laugh; the man might as well have told me that Homosexuality is Bad Juju!“
Throbert McGee
Derek, thanks for that video link. It’s a good reminder of what unchecked ignorance can lead to in very backward parts of the world, and I agree that some American Christians very definitely have the blood of Third World gays on their hands because of their thoughtless promotion of anti-gay rhetoric — even if this rhetoric is well within the limits of free-speech protection here in the States, and even if this “God Hates teh Faygelehs” speech almost never leads to violence against gays here in the States.
(It’s not just the right-wingers who need to reign in their foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric — I can recall, during the Iraq War, when some American left-wingers very irresponsibly talked about “U.S. occupiers raping Arab Muslim lands.” They meant “rape” in a purely metaphoric way, but evidently some of the more easily excitable and literal-minded Arabs reported on their own section of the Internet: “Americans openly admit that their soldiers are coming to sexually violate Arab women!!!!!!”)
On that note, good evening, gentlemen!
Rob
@Derek Williams: If there is any “final solution” going on, it is against gay people in Africa, the Middle East and Russia:
Too bad you won’t find any gays in the US who give a rat’s ass. They’re too concerned with their imagined persecution by the T-shirts two high school kids wear. In general, it seems that US gays are colossal pussies more concerned with manufacturing an evil, white Christian bogeyman who will enslave them. They’re also too busy punishing thought crimes they don’t like.
In other words, they only give a damn about themselves.
Derek Williams
@Rob: Assuming, for the sake of progressing the discussion, that what you say is true, what is your solution to this problem as you perceive it?
Rob
@Derek Williams: Duh and/or hola!
Derek Williams
@Rob: Let’s see what happens when all the preachers stop calling ua ‘Children of Satan’, telling kids they can “pray away the gay”, or that it can be beaten out of us, and when we have marriage equality, and are included in anti-discrimination provisions everywhere. If we keep complaining after that, and no heterosexuals are behaving in any comparable fashion, then I will happily concede your point.
Spike
Curious that no one has commented on just how plain ugly those t.shirts are.
Throbert McGee
@Spike: Ugly is in the eye of the beholder.
The black one is somewhat boring, but it’s uncluttered and visually “clean” — hardly what I’d call bad design.
The orange T-shirt has a retro and/or “Napoleon Dynamite” aesthetic that some folks find quite cool. (And if it said HOW DARE YOU PRESUME I’M STR8 instead of GAY DAY IS NOT OKAY, but otherwise looked identical, plenty of gay people would pay money for this “hideous shirt” because they thought it was hilarious and campy and clever.)
P.S. Nice wax job!
Throbert McGee
Oh, lord — did Queerty change the settings on their paragraph breaks AGAIN?
Throbert McGee
@Derek Williams:
That’s a perfectly good point, but maybe you should consider TRIMMING the pasted material down to the relevant sections after you’ve pasted it.
For example, if you’re arguing against anti-gay Christians (like the guy in the black T-shirt), cutting-and-pasting the Leviticus verses about pork and shellfish or mixed-fiber fabrics is A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME and OFF TOPIC because 100% of Christians agree that under the “New Covenant” of Jesus, they are exempted from these ritual restrictions that applied to Jews.
If you wish to argue that “Judeo-Christian religion” is stupid in general and rational modern people should therefore reject liberal, gay-friendly “Judeo-Christianity” just as much as they reject traditionalist, anti-gay “Judeo-Christianity”, then I suppose the stuff about pork, shellfish, and poly/cotton blends has some relevance. However, saying that the Bible contains a lot of silly and superstitious jive is no way to make friends with liberal, gay-friendly religious believers.
Throbert McGee
@Derek Williams:
Also, Derek, I’m reminded of that incident when Dan Savage, speaking to a group of high-school student journalists, said: “We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.”
A few conservatives complained about his use of the “S-word” in front of impressionable teenagers; lots and lots of silly religious conservatives were apoplectic about Savage’s opinion that there is BS in the Holy Writ; and many people on both sides of the political fence were offended that Mr. Lets-Stop-the-Bullying derided some teenage kids as “crybaby pansies” (or whatever his exact words were) because they quietly walked out of the room.
To me, however, the truly outrageous and offensive part was this:
“We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things.”
Whaddaya mean “we,” white man?
Dan Savage is not a liberal Episcopalian Christian or a Reform Jew; I’m pretty sure he was raised Roman Catholic (like me), but he has always been admirably candid and public about his atheism.
This makes his use of “we” here rather dishonest, or at least problematic, because Dan Savage does not consider the Bible’s anti-gay passages to be “bullshit” in the same sense that a liberal Christian or Jew might consider these passages to be “bullshit.”
Presumably, Savage doesn’t regard a single word in the Bible as “divinely inspired” in any sense — because he doesn’t believe in the existence of any deity that could have inspired the Bible.
On the other hand, Christians and Jews consider the Bible to be “divinely inspired,” though traditionalists and reformists may disagree about exactly what “inspired” means, and theologically liberal believers may hold the opinion that there are false human interpolations stuck in among the genuinely God-given and reliable passages of the Bible. Yet even if they conclude that the Levitical bans on eating pork or two men ass-porking are in some way “bullshit”, no believing Christian or Jew who calls these verses “BS” means it in the same way that an overt atheist means it.
By way of analogy, I think it would sound disingenuous and maybe offensive to most people if a liberal, gay-friendly Conservative Jew said to an audience of LGBT Christians: “We ignore Paul’s bullshit about homosexuality in 1st Corinthians 6:9…”
Because, obviously, Jews do not regard ANY portion of the Christian NT, including the letters of Paul, as “God-given Scripture”, while LGBT Christians believe that a few verses within the otherwise inspired NT were either personal opinions of Paul that did not come from God, or that these verses came from God but were badly misinterpreted by later Christians. So, again, it would be inappropriate (or at least, very sloppy) for a Jew to say “WE believe so-and-so” when addressing a Christian audience about the correct interpretation of the NT. And it was inappropriate (or at least sloppy) for an out-of-the-closet atheist like Dan Savage to say “WE ignore bullshit in the Bible…” when speaking to a mixed audience of teenagers who came from various faith backgrounds.
I hope all of this makes sense to you, Derek! (And I hope you understood why I addressed this comment to you in particular.)
DickieJohnson
@Rob: That’s so perfectly true…bitchin’ & whinin’, whinin’ & bickerin’ by a small percentage, overly-vocal and opinionated bunch of pussies.