A Voice in the Dark

Many times, people will quote statistics, and some clear pattern will emerge that they don’t identify.

Jesse Liberty notes that:

Since President Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, 800 specialists have been kicked out of the service, including 323 linguists of whom 55 specialized in Arabic.

I’m struck immediately that over 40% of the people kicked out of the service under DADT (a stupid rule, but I digress) are linguists.

It does not take a rocket scientist to advance the hypothesis that linguists are gay.

Looking at the number of linguistic specialties in the military, it also seems that Arabic linguists are quite probably less than 18% of the total. Which leads to the added hypothesis that Arabic linguists are even more gay.

But we’re not allowed to say things like that. Freedom of speech be damned.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy
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Every once in a while, I’m reminded that people get creeped out if someone can figure out where they were on a given date and time.

But why does that bother people? After all, if you go anywhere at all and encounter someone you know, that person knows where you were and can tell anyone he likes. Theoretically, you could tell this person not to tell anybody he saw you, but that would just make it worse. And if you didn’t see him, but he saw you, it’s every bit as bad.

I thought of this today because I turned on my Zune to squirt somebody a copy of Black Tide’s single “Black Abyss”, and there on my “Social” tab I saw a gamer tag I knew from XBox Live. Given the range of the Zune’s wireless receiver, that means I know this person (or at least, his Zune) was in building 34 on the Microsoft Redmond campus at 2:30 this afternoon, while he knows absolutely nothing of this.

My personal opinion is that if you’re not up to anything illicit, you shouldn’t care who knows where you were and when. So I should be able to walk up to him and say “hey, I saw you were in building 34 earlier” and he should say “yeah, I was”. But what really happens in these cases is that people act suspicious and say “who told you that, then?” while furtively glancing about. They want to know who told me they were there - because that will tell them who they can’t trust. If I say I saw the Zune listed as nearby, he’ll probably just turn off his Zune’s wireless and then I won’t see him next time.

I get really tired of people being so antisocial. I like to go out and see people I know. I like to run into them days later and say “hey, saw you at the concert last week”. And it really annoys me when they get cagey and say things like “what concert, I didn’t see any concert” and then you realise they blew off their SO to go see it. It’s like everybody I know is lying to the rest of the world about who they are and what they like and where they go. God forbid I see someone coming out of a gay bar.

“What? The uh, the Madison’s uh, a gay bar? Why, I uh, never knew.”

Well, gee, it sure looked like the guy hanging all over you knew. But I won’t say that, because I know what you really mean: “nobody knows I’m gay”. Everybody sort of grasps the idea that appearance is reality, but nobody wants to alter the reality to match their desired appearance. If you don’t want to be caught going out to gay bars - don’t go! Then you can’t be caught. If you want to go out to gay bars, then accept up front that you will be caught, and when you get caught… just draw yourself up and say “why, yes, I was out looking for hot young college dick last weekend; and I found it, too”.

Privacy is a polite fiction we maintain by mutual consensus. That’s all it is. It’s not a right. Expect that people will always know the truth if they care enough to look for it, and it just makes your life so much easier. You don’t have to hide or lie or make stuff up. Just tell the truth. Isn’t that easy?

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy, Security
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In response to my last post, I’ve received email taking issue with it.

Specifically, taking issue with how I had Bob and Joe “hump each other in the butt”.

See, whenever I talk about gay people, some gay person reads it and decides to complain that I’ve made an inaccurate portrayal of gay culture. (Because, you know, I’m not part of it.) And as I’ve been reminded many, many times over the years: gay guys mostly just blow each other. There’s not that much butt humping going on; sure, there’s some, but it’s not what gay men primarily do. I mean, once it’s been there, who wants to put it in his mouth? Eww. Yeah, some people do, but… eww.

The fact is, I remind people of butt humping because it is funny. Imagine the Burger King meets Ronald McDonald at a singles bar. That’s sort of amusing. Now imagine the King bringing Ronald flowers and candy; that’s slightly more amusing. Picture them frolicking through a flowery meadow, and you’ll probably giggle a little.

Now imagine the King humping Ronald in the butt.

Come on. It just doesn’t get funnier than that. Oral sex isn’t as funny, because you can’t see both faces. And it’s important to say something funny, because straight people - which, lest we forget, are almost all of the people - are uncomfortable with the subject of homosexuality. Just like the openly gay frequently adopt a humorous and flamboyant persona to defuse the apparent threat they represent to a man’s masculinity, not because it’s accurate, but simply because… well, you just can’t be angry at them. The sort of guy who has a problem with gays is usually the same sort of guy who won’t hit a girl, and when you’re even more girly than most girls, he simply can’t beat you up. That used to be rather important.

Face it, gay people are just funny by nature. It’s hysterical to think about how the first gay men got started; I mean, how uncomfortable was that conversation? Even if gaydar already existed, you had no clue what it was detecting. “There’s something about Larry.”

Homosexuality is still pretty new, as an open component of American culture. Give it time. It’s not like Europe, where gay is a word like tall: everyone’s a little tall, even the short ones… the question is how tall.

We’ll accept it in the end. We just have to relax, and take it slow.

Okay, that’s my last butt humping joke today. I have work to do.

 

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy
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By now, everyone who cares has heard that Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern thinks homosexuals are a bigger threat to the nation than terrorists.

Well, the trouble is, she’s right. We have had one successful attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center, and a whole slew of successful attacks by homosexuals on state legislatures. If you consider gay marriage comparable to death - and in christian theology, gay equals sin and sin equals hell and hell equals death - every gay marriage is two deaths. In 9/11, there were about three thousand actual deaths (but, one would assume, no gay marriages). Between May of 2004 and May of 2005, over six thousand gay marriages were performed in the state of Massachusetts. That’s twelve thousand deaths, four times the toll of 9/11, in one state over the course of one year.

Bear in mind, you have to first accept the premise that open practice of homosexuality is equivalent to death. If you don’t accept that, and you believe the only thing comparable to death is… oh, I don’t know, death?… then the statement is ludicrous. Who cares if Joe and Bob are gay and hump each other in the butt? It’s not killing anybody.

But from Sally Kern’s perspective, it is. It’s killing Joe and Bob, they just don’t know it. And as long as Joe and Bob are running around saying “it’s okay to do this”, they’re effectively promoting suicide. So she feels it’s her duty to speak out about it, and to do something about it, and to enact laws that prevent it.

The problem is not that her perspective is wrong (even though it is). The problem is not that her perspective is offensive (even though it is). The problem is that her perspective is a religious perspective, and therefore has no place in American government. It is her duty as a representative of the American people to present a professional image and avoid the appearance of impropriety, but frothing at the mouth about gays certainly isn’t professional. It looks like she’s dangerously insane, even though she clearly isn’t - she just feels strongly about the subject.

I also feel strongly about the subject. I don’t agree with Sally Kern. Indeed, even though I understand her position, I disagree with just about everything she said; the introduction of homosexual topics to preschool classes isn’t intended to make preschoolers gay, it’s intended to ease the social interactions of the many children who have been adopted by gay couples. You can certainly have a problem with the idea that Joe and Bob are talking to your five year old about their sex lives, but if Joe and Bob have a five year old themselves, isn’t your child going to wonder why his classmate doesn’t have a mommy?

And, most importantly, shouldn’t any reasonably qualified parent understand this concept? What happens when the first black child joins a class? The first Asian child? The first non-English speaking child? The situation needs to be explained, and the conditions monitored, until the child is accepted as part of the group. Nobody complains that you’re trying to make the other children black, or Asian, or Spanish-speaking… except dangerously insane people.

How would Sally Kern explain it? “Little Timmy is the poor innocent victim of two evil sinful people who are going to HELL, and they’re raising him to be a Godless heathen sinner who will burn in hell himself. You should bring him to Jesus!”

Absolutely unacceptable in a public servant. Get that bitch out of office.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Parenting, Politics, Religion
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I made this comment to a post on IMAO and thought I should drag it over here. 

Conservatives do not hate gays. They simply want gays to “know their place”, in much the same way they once wanted women to “know their place”, and blacks to “know their place”, and immigrants to “know their place”. What people mistake for hate is the idea that these people have a place, which is on its face a prejudicial and arguably bigoted perspective.

Unfortunately, it’s also true. Everyone of every variety and in every group does, in fact, have a place. The place you have now may not be the place you have tomorrow, and a smart conservative recognises that. What these conservatives are trying to promote is the idea that while gays/women/blacks/immigrants certainly can and should aspire to have all the same rights and privileges and status that white men have, it is counterproductive to force the issue by ramming “EQUALITY NOW” down the country’s throat.

Historically, forcing the issue when the culture is not ready causes a backlash which results in more pain and suffering than the original state promoted. The similarities between the emancipation proclamation and prohibition are generally avoided as a dangerous subject, but they remain instructive.

I for one do not believe that gays would be better off mostly-closeted as they were in the 1970s. I believe they are better off now. I believe the entire American culture is better off now with more acceptance of gays. I believe that we will be better off still when gays are fully accepted as members of American society and nobody even considers one’s personal sexuality worthy of note.

But I do not believe that is what we will get if we make a law that says you MUST fully accept them (e.g. by extending marriage to include them). I believe what we will get is underground cells of homophobic jerks who go out and do real damage to real people to make a political statement about homosexuality. I believe that this is an unconscionable result that must be avoided at all cost, even if it means people accuse me of being homophobic for the rest of my life.

If we just wait, nature will take its course and homophobia will become a quaint oddity of 20th century culture. It’s the long view. Surely we can endure a few fag jokes in exchange for a culture that really does accept homosexuality, rather than one which gives lip service to the idea in public while continuing to fear, resent, and persecute homosexuals behind closed doors.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Politics
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I think that’s the question we should be asking in the whole same-sex marriage debate, but nobody seems to be answering it.

Apparently, people haven’t thought about it.

I’m going to go discuss it with my wife, and post something more concrete later once I’ve organised my thoughts and gotten some external input.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy
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In my ongoing cultural quest, I had been on the track of the legendary people of Gay for several weeks, and had recently met a group of natives who showed the entrance to a great underground city. Here, the people of Gay had stored the records of their great and mighty society, a society filled with deep mystical secrets and fantastic choreography. I picked my way through the uncharted depths, and eventually came to a great door. Before it stood a strange creature, part man, part woman, and yet somehow neither.

“I am the Gay Sphinx,” it said in a mighty stentorian voice. “You stand before the gates of Gay, wherein the secret history of the people of Gay resides. But to venture beyond these gates, into the city of Gay whence the land of Gay once sprang, the seed of what would transcend the kingdom of Gay and become the mighty Gay empire - you must answer my riddle.”

But I was not deterred! I, who have watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail many more times than I care to admit, bravely announced: “Ask me the riddle, Gay Sphinx, for I am not afraid!”

“No!” replied the Gay Sphinx.

And I waited, for a moment, expecting some sort of explanation.

When it became clear that none was forthcoming, I engaged the Gay Sphinx in conversation. “Oh great and mighty Gay Sphinx,” I said, for it is always advisable to be obsequious when speaking to mythological guardians of gates; “you who have faithfully guarded the secrets of the people of Gay for these many long centuries… why ask you not the riddle, that I may answer?”

“The riddle is itself a secret of the people of Gay,” said the Gay Sphinx. “You may not know it until you have answered it.”

“But that is impossible,” I mused, half to myself. ”How can I answer a question I am not asked?”

“Because I will tell you,” said the Gay Sphinx. “When you answer the riddle incorrectly, I will insult and ridicule your answer with sarcastic remarks and general condescension.”

“So what you insult and ridicule is incorrect.”

“Precisely.” The Gay Sphinx grinned. “However, this does not mean that what I do not insult and ridicule is correct. Merely that you have said something more deserving of insult and ridicule.”

“Very well,” I said. “The answer is yes.”

“What a stupid concept,” said the Gay Sphinx. “Do you actually think the riddle protecting the secrets of the people of Gay would be a yes or no question?”

“It could be. So if the answer is not yes, then the answer must be no.”

“Hmph,” snorted the Gay Sphinx. “The world isn’t black and white. You should open your mind to further possibilities.”

“Quite,” I replied. ”So the answer, then, is maybe.”

“How pointless and noncommittal. Maybe what?”

And we proceeded from that point for several hours. I stretched my powers of intellect and logic to their utmost; but it was all in vain. Answer after answer, I was haughtily rebuked for my stupidity and failure to accept the truth: that I could never answer the riddle, for I was incapable of understanding it. The answers I gave became fewer, the time to formulate one growing much longer. And then I was enlightened.

“I have it,” I said. “This long, and no longer.”

The Gay Sphinx looked confused, for the first time in our long conversation. I waited almost a minute before I took pity on him. Or her. Whatever a Gay Sphinx is.

“The riddle,” I explained, “is how long I will put up with this nonsense before I simply open the door. There is, after all, nothing actually preventing me from doing so.”

“But that’s against the rules,” objected the Gay Sphinx.

“Whose rules?” I asked. “Rules exist within a framework of consensus. If I reject your rules and refuse to play your game, those rules don’t apply to me anymore. I can make my own rules.”

The Gay Sphinx grabbed my hand as I moved to open the door. “You can’t refuse to play the game,” he said frantically. “It violates the natural order of things.”

I made no reply. I simply opened the door, and stepped through. As I did so, it occurred to me that his final objection had sounded somehow familiar.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy
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I was sitting around thinking the other day, and I got to wondering.

What would happen if you somehow managed to cram a half dozen gay-bashers into a small space with a half dozen gays for several days?

The immediate answer is, the gay-bashers would beat the crap out of the gays. So what if the gay-bashers can’t let it be known that they’re gay-bashers, and have to pretend they’re just plain old straight guys?

I think what would probably happen is that they’d get over their homophobia, because homophobes base their hatred largely on misconceptions about gays. Once they perceive that these aren’t true, the homophobia would start to seem silly. Alternately, if you simply pretend you don’t hate gays for a week, maybe it will become a habit.

Since a disproportionate number of homophobes are overcompensating for their own homosexual desires, chances are one of the gay-bashers would turn out to be gay. This would also encourage dropping the homophobia.

And when you put all this together, it could be a really great movie. It has all the right pieces and parts. Maybe I could write a screenplay.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Media, Philosophy
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Repeat after me. 

Tolerance is not acceptance. Acceptance is not approval. Approval is not a basic human right.

Gay marriage is a great example of this. When you’re intolerant of gays, what we generally call “homophobic”, you don’t just oppose gay marriage. You oppose being gay altogether. Tolerance, acceptance, and approval lead into the gay marriage question.

(more…)

Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy, Politics
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First, anyone claiming Representative Foley is some sort of criminal is an idiot. What he has done is embarrassing, and distinctly outside the code of conduct for a Congressional Representative. He should lose his seat, which he has. But the fact is, he didn’t do anything illegal! In 33 states (including parts of his own represented state of Florida) and the District of Columbia the age of sexual consent is 16 or lower. Three states - Iowa, Missouri, and South Carolina - have the age of sexual consent set at 14, just as I recommend. Fully twenty-nine states explicitly provide the age of sexual consent as 16, without requiring partners to have a comparable age, and without explicitly specifying a higher age for homosexual relations. Since Foley has confined his activity to pages sixteen and older within the D.C. limits, our opinion of his behavior is irrelevant: sex with a sixteen year old is LEGAL in that jurisdiction, and since there are areas of his own state which provide a similar legal climate, it cannot be legitimately claimed that he has crossed state lines for the purpose of having sex with a minor.

Second, the Republican plan to build a 700 mile fence on the Mexican border is stupid. We are already seeing major repercussions in the farming community from a lack of migrant workers, because the increased scrutiny is making them afraid to migrate. This means that the migrant workers are poorer, the farmers are poorer, and the law of supply and demand sends the price of healthy food up. Manufacturers of crap like Twinkies and donuts, however, will be largely unaffected… thus encouraging the low-income American to eat less real food in favor of the much less expensive garbage that already makes us a nation of the obese. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Finally, Islam is not an aggressor. Islam is a victim. There is an irreducible proportion of violent assholes with terrorist tendencies in the world, and they need ignorant simple-minded people to take the actual risks in the battle against sensible humanity. While religion is not inherently ignorant or simple-minded, the ignorant and simple-minded are readily converted to religion, and it is in the direct interest of the violent assholes to convert those people to a religion which supports their goals. Islam is simply the latest in a string of religions which are supportive of those goals when appropriately twisted and misinterpreted; almost every religion on the planet has been so used. The criteria are simply an ability to claim that “God says you need to kill everyone” by twisting the scriptures, a sufficiently large population of ignorant and simple-minded people familiar with the scriptures, and a suitable mechanism to isolate people from rational discourse and critical thinking.

And on the unimportant front, Al Gore just said that cigarette smoking is a major contributor to global warming. For those who don’t happen to speak complete and total moron, that translates to “I invest no thought whatsoever in the words that come out of my mouth”.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Global Warming, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Religion
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