Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Oh fudge, now Mikhail Pletnev in trouble too

That is not exactly a tip-off, you know. Most likely the Thai man made a deal with the police in exchange for possibly lesser sentences. I mean you can't seriously expect to walk into a police station and proclaim one of the local piano teachers is a paedophile and expect them to raid the studio based on just a stranger's accusation right?

Ha ha - too funny - after calling gay people inhuman, aberrant, abnormal, offensive, irresponsible, immoral, unacceptable, arrogant, comparable to murders, wife-beaters, mother-burners, drunks, smokers, fat people, having a 'tendency to paederastry' (what does that mean?), socially dangerous - -
now he doesn't want to discuss it and has run off to his closet - -

where to start? It makes my dizzy head spin.

Ha ha - this kills me too - what century are we in now? Limp wrists and long hair? I'm speechless for once. That quote all by itself and without any help invalidates everything this guy has to say.

When I originally saw the post on Pletnev, I figured the conversation would quickly move from "pedophiles" to "homosexuals," with a neat equation of the two, but hoped I'd be wrong; I'm disappointed to see that I was right. For shame.

.

You know... for a group of such intelligent individuals...

Some peoples views on homosexuality is absolutely moronic.

Some of you should just stick to discussing Beethoven. Your views on other topics make you appear like small minded bigots.

Several anecdotal points, probably unrelated.

1) At my university, 3 of the 4 piano professors were unquestionably gay. Including mine. He never bothered me at all, other than by insisting that I practice more. He was a great fellow. He died of AIDS in the late 1980s. Around the same time as a number of his friends, many of whom I knew and valued as friends. I never heard that any of the gay professors had any kind of relationship other than professional with any of their students.

The fourth professor was a randy jerk, well known for hitting on female students. He was my least favorite of the bunch.

2) As a youngster (around 12), I played for a terrific concert artist, who concluded that I had real talent. While he thought that my teacher had done a great job, he suggested some prominent teachers within driving distance who could really push me. He really liked his first choice, but he did tell my parents, in so many words, that I should not be left alone with him. I was a complete innocent at the time, but I do remember the expression on my mother's face. I never asked my parents what he meant, but I figured it out a couple of years later.

3) My daughters studied for years with a gay fellow. I would have been happy to have had sons study with him. He had many male students, including young teens, and they all thought the world of him. As did their parents, and these were not the kind of people to be unaware of these concerns.

thanks for sharing wdot - just imagine! gay men who didn't bother you and who didn't molest their students! and examples to prove it -

+1

This thread has meandered into some bizarre territory.

Homosexuality is no more unnatural than red hair. Why this is even being raised as a component of the conversation is beyond me.

Having sex with children is wrong, and can be argued as such from any number of angles. Teenagers are on the cusp of adulthood, and this is where society struggles to create boundaries, or where one society defines appropriate behaviour differently to another.

This discussion has at times bewildered the element in the story that is problematic: it is illegal in Thailand to have sex with a minor. I think we would all agree that this is also an immoral activity. The immorality is about the age difference, with respect to the extreme youth of the younger party, along with a whiff of exploitation in a 'rich-man-poor-boy' sense as well.

This kind of exploitative sexual behaviour is known to take place in pianistic circles, maybe not more than in society generally, but that does not change the fact that many of us are aware of these instances and where the perpetrator has not been held accountable for their actions. This comes down to the difficulty faced by the powerless party to hold the powerful party accountable, to see a court case through, to expose what is commonly known, and so forth. The personal consequences of the abuse are often compounded by revealing publicly that the abuse has taken place.

It would be nice to think that our profession held itself to a higher standard than society generally, and that there were ways we could rigidly enforce a social norm of not having sex with minors.

Hey - guess what? - gay people don't think like this. M - your ideas are too pedestrian, too uninteresting to even refute. But for the good of your soul, as an exercise, you should refute them yourself. And start with this premise: gay people are just average joes and jills, just like anyone else - tax paying, responsible adults who don't want pity or 'permission' or scolding or boring hand wringing. We pretty much just want to be left alone to live our own lives without being fired or beaten up or witch hunted or evicted or otherwise slammed around.

THis is my swan song to Piano Forums. I've got better things to do with my precious time than spend it reading trash like this.

The thread has started a (somewhat predictable) downhill slide. I'm off to bed now, but if the discussion continues on it's current trajectory, I'll likely close it tomorrow to keep the peace.

g'night all!

Just to clarify a point . . . Homosexuality is fundamentally biological, it is not a choice in any rational sense and, in light of the scientific evidence that has been accumulating for the past 40 years, it can in no way be regarded as a moral issue in contemporary society. Pedophilia on the other hand is a potentially harmful psychological disorder completely distinct from homosexuality, which is not a mental disorder. I can provide numerous scientific data to back all this up. Just say the word and I will post the sources.

Yes -- and it's a shame. For a while it was a pretty high-level discussion of tough issues.

At least it's heartening that the number of small-minded bigots unearthed by this thread is small. Looking on the bright side.

-J

We can always look on the bright side. The trajectory of this thread has not particularly surprised me, but it has been interesting to follow. The thread need not be closed if folks remain civil. And to the social liberals (of which I am one): this isn't really the proper venue, is it? We need to chill out.

Let the conservatives show their true colours.

This thread is sad. Makes me realize exactly which members here are compete morons. Oh well..

well said.

I started to respond to some schocking statements in this thread on a few occasions but was too discouraged to bother really.
Mattardo, open your mind's eyes. Your arguments are anachronistic to say the least. The world has moved on.

Antiquated and a little naive sounding, to my ears. To say nothing of ethnocentric, sexist, culture-centric . . .

There are only two kinds of people in this world: people who try to separate the world into kinds of people, and people who don't.

If you think about it, the members offering such AMAZINGLY limited views are very... few. I could count maybe two, and I can only remember the name of one member, right of the bat (sp?)!

The % seem to be quite nice. If only 2 members openely offer such offensive views, it means that they count for less than the 2% of the general posters in here!

Never mind then?

There's always going to be people who will think they are trying to rationalize something, only to polute it with fear, and hatred!

So never mind...

Many of my good friends and co-workers are gay and I have little trouble with them. In fact I largely prefer their company than those of 'football fan/ beer drinking/ awful driving' mentality!

To reply to whomever it was that said marrying off young teens, who then become mothers by age 14 or so, is just a matter of culture and not wrong in any absolute sense:

The problem is that all too often very young mothers die in childbirth, and often their babies die as well. There is also a horribly high rate of obstetric fistulas in such girls (look it up if you don't know what that is). Just because they are biologically able to conceive doesn't mean they are biologically able to manage a pregnancy. Fortunately, this issue is getting a lot more attention lately, and in the countries where child brides are common, the practice is being discouraged.

About Pletnev, well, the truth will come out somehow or other (I hope), and our opinions won't matter.

Elene
(student of a gay guy who's a perfect gentleman)