You should be proud of yourself. Throw yourself a parade. Celebrate the fantasy that your rights are denied based on who you sleep with.

• Civil unions (aka “marriage”), in many states and everything that comes with that from parental rights to next-of-kin rights etc.
• Federal recognition of a same-sex civil union
• Openly serve in the military (openly doesn’t mean “throwing a gay pride parade,” it means not having to lie)

Do you deny that the government discriminates against homosexuals in these areas? To be clear, I have no legal issue with private discrimination (a moral issue, yes). The issue here is systematic governmental discrimination against a certain segments of its citizens, based on who they like to sleep with.

Actually you needed to be blunt with these people. The words normal and abnormal (at least to me) have a mathematical connotation. If only 2-4% of a population engage in a behavior while the rest doesn’t, the behavior of the majority is the norm. There is nothing bigoted, biased or phobic about norms. Homosexuality is primarily about sex, yet the gay activists would have you believe that it is something other than that. At least gays were far more honest back in the 70s and early 80s when there was rampant sexual activity in all kinds of places that went underground because of AIDS (notice I did say stop.)
Maybe because of the sympathy the AIDS epidemic caused, so many younger people dying etc, I feel a politically calculated moved occurred among activists. It was to repackage gay society into something different, something more innocuous. In a way they were trying to be faux-norm—hey we are just like you. OK, you are like me insofar as you are a human being, but your sexual proclivities are not the norm (notice I am not saying evil)
So I believe being gay became (at least outwardly) much more about having a political ideology, having a gym body, and Hollywood (it always had a big element of that). It became about celebrating those who were OUT Ellen, Rosie, Barney Frank (cough cough). And its martyrs like Harvey Milk and Matthew Shepard. All the overt sexuality and sex went underground because it was too repulsive a large part of society. Many political gays see themselves as an aggrieved minority like blacks and have taken on victimhood with a passion. There is a tension between wanting to be embraced and accepted by society as a whole yet abrasively overreacting when that acceptance is not forthcoming and seeing bogeymen many times where none exist.

my hope would be that we (as a people who share a language) would use words correctly

Unfortunately most people will not accept that there is an organized, focused intention in this postmodern world of changing the meaning of words. People go along in life and suddenly are told that a seemingly innocuous word is offensive and they accept that like sheep. It is mind boggling to see a news organization referring to a man who has had himself surgically castrated as “she”. At best such people should be referred to as eunuchs.

the little girl kept calling both of them “Mommy.” Each man was “Mommy” to her.

It’s not enlightened, it’s not tolerance, it’s not even political correctness. It’s just sick.

peacenprosperity on June 30, 2009 at 9:25 AM

And by the way, I have seen no evidence that biology determines behavior. We are in agreement.

peacenprosperity on June 30, 2009 at 9:19 AM

I agree with you except for your initial point: It isn’t ‘my’ definition, and I can’t see how using the original, correct definition waters the word down. Although it’s perhaps a hope based on optimism, my hope would be that we (as a people who share a language) would use words correctly, and hash out who we are as a society based on correct language usage. If we’re all using different definitions, we’ll never get anywhere, so it seems to me we should use words according to their traditional meanings so we can at least have a genuine discussion.

Of course, now someone on the board will point out an original definition that has long since been abandoned and I’ll be forced to agree that we should use the newer one. :)

I may have mentioned this on HA before, but I was amazed on a plane trip a few years ago to see a black girl of about four years old traveling with two white guys in about their late 20s. Not amazed at the skin colors involved, but amazed at the fact that the little girl kept calling both of them “Mommy.” Each man was “Mommy” to her. A lot of passengers around them kept giving sideways glances to try to figure the situation out. (Yes, I was too.)

What are we doing to our children? What are we doing to our society?

DrMagnolias on June 30, 2009 at 9:00 AM

I’ll accept that but what I don’t like about your definition is that it waters down the issue and makes the question a matter of percentages. Perhaps the word shouldn’t even be used in the discussion because it blurs the lines between numbers and determination/intent/purpose? Normal, by a mathematical sense, is not pertinent to the issue. I use all three words because I’m not sure of the exact word, but homosexuality, if it were a state and not a behavior, is not viable, cannot reproduce itself biologically. Strand 1000 homosexual men on a desserted island and when you go back in 75 years you will once again have a desserted island. If it is a state, it is at best a mutation, which in nature are almost 100% fatal. Using the leftist tactic of evolving or mutating words to fit a position, the fact that the life span of homosexual men is almost 20 years shorter then that of normal men could be considered proof it is a mutation and fatal.

However, one thing that the gay community refuses to see is that Obama sat in the pews of a racist and anti-gay church for 20 years and bobbed his head obediently at everything Rev. Wright bellowed from the pulpit. Obama also knows that the gay community will continue to worship him simply because he as a D behind his name, despite his lack of action on behalf of the gay community.

peacenprosperity on June 30, 2009 at 8:22 AM

I’m not offended, and I hope you’re not offended, as well. Normal is a mathematical term, coming from Latin (long and interesting etymology). It does not apply to events such as you mentioned, but to an overall general pattern. So, although bubonic plague may have been a normal (if we are talking mathematics) occurrence at that particular point time, it is not a normal human condition. Within the context of what CapedConservative was discussing (homosexuality), anything that occurs in only 3-4% of the population (or even 10%, to use the incorrect figure sometimes cited) can never be considered normal, by definition.

Normal is anything that is within one standard deviation of the mean (68% of us share this trait).

So in certain areas of europe during the dark ages when more people had bubonic plague then didn’t, it was normal to have bubonic plague? No offense, but I think your definition is from the postmodern period and not a classical definition of normal. And that is the first battle front for our civilization and where normality and reason are taking a beating. We are losing the battle for control of language.

Gays — working professional (and especially COUPLED) gays — are ripe for the conservative movement. Work on strengthening America. If you’re scared as shit about the climb to socialism and nanny-statism as many claim to be, then gays shouldn’t even be on the radar.

delusional…as we’ve seen in CA gays are a bunch of fascists who want to silence, itimidate, and harass all who dare disagree with their hellish agenda…they want to create a ‘gay sharia’ where any criticism of them is a HATE CRIME..

CapedConservative on June 30, 2009 at 6:52 AM

This is one of the points I make when I teach research to students. Normal is anything that is within one standard deviation of the mean (68% of us share this trait). It’s a simple matter of understanding the definitions of words, not the feelings they evoke. Those who do not fall within that range are not normal, by definition. Of course, everyone wants to think they are in the half above the mean (Isn’t it the Lake Wobegon line that says “All the children are above average”?)–then knowing “normal” isn’t so bad.

Exit question: How come a guy with huge majorities in both houses of Congress can’t get any of this stuff done now?

Very simple. Homosexuality is “abnormal” behavior. While it has become more socially acceptable over the years, it will remain abnormal until such time that it becomes the dominant behavior… not a very likely event. It has been and probably always will be considered abnormal.

While having dinner with several enlightened relatives one evening, I made the same comment as above. I was attacked as a homophobe. I said that I meant abnormal in the strictest statistical sense. The approach was then to turn it on me by asking “Well, what is normal anyway?”. I said that could be nothing more than all the possible human traits on a list for the expectant mother and father to choose from. Different couples would choose many different traits… left handed, red headed, different skin colors, etc. But, I doubt that any couple would choose homosexuality as a desired trait for there baby.

Still, I was out of touch for stating the probable facts. I then asked about one man inserting his erect penis into the rectum of another man. You would have thought that I has tossed a bag of maggots on the table. I then told them that as long as they think of the physical act and have such a visceral reaction, it will continue to be abnormal. I didn’t make them find the act disgusting… something in their brain did.

CC

ThackerAgency on June 29, 2009 at 11:26 PM

Relax, AP is a socially-liberal New York libertarian. But as for the ads, that is how google works. Different ads appear depending on key words on web pages. That is not under the conscious control of anyone. An algorithm does that.

Question for my LGBTQ friends who keep voting for Democratic candidates and writing checks to the Democratic Party and waiting/hoping for the payoff: How’s that working out for you?…

Exit question: How come a guy with huge majorities in both houses of Congress can’t get any of this stuff done now

muslims don’t like pole smokers….

SHARPTOOTH on June 29, 2009 at 9:03 PM

Somewhere there is a nail. You hit it square on the head.