Piano World Home Page Forums Restricted and Archives The Coffee Room Has your K-6 grade kid had cootie shots yet?

What the heck are you talking about?

I think he's trying to weave the liberal threads together into a shroud.

I use my real name. My real name is in my profile, as is the town where I live. I am also in the phone book. Everyone here knows what company I work for. Most in the Coffee Room probably even know a bit about some of my family (at least a couple of my kids). What about you? Is your name Kenny Jodgflylmp? What city do you live in? Who do you work for? And your kids? I have never been to one in Colorado or New York or California or Washington because I live in Michigan.

Sameto you SameKenny (SaneKenny),
Thank you.

And you too, Luke's Dad, from earlier on. (What's the name problem with you? Luke is a real name, so that's you. You know in Arab countries, parents get renamed after their - boy - children. Mothers anyhow.)

You two are on the side of the angels.

Ariel

Cute, very cute. You kiss you mother with that mouth?

And, honestly, are you trying to insinuate that I'm gay in some sort of misguided effort to undermine my credibility?

Sorry, buddy boy, but the sad fact is that while you may be acquainted with a homosexual or two, you don't really interact with them on a completely open personal level with them. Yet it's all just surface, because that makes it easier to maintain the us vs. them mentality that pervades your statements of opinion. Methinks thou dost protest too much. Perhaps if you had a very close friend or beloved family member that turned out to be homosexual you might understand them a little better. A coworker is a coworker, and the intimate details of one's coworker's life are far less than one might know of those of a loved one.
I've never maintained that children are not malleable. There are millions of extremist Muslims out there that confirm your point. My point is that homosexuality arises spontaneously, without any "training" or outside influence, and usually in spite of childhood training. Given a couple of hours, I could post far more examples that support my position. While I can appreciate your desire to cling to whatever tiny and controvertible evidence you have that supports your position, the theory that homosexuals can be "converted" is a decidedly fringe idea.
For gay bashers? Nope. They'd rather destroy the thing that causes them to be attracted than come to grips with their own attraction itself.

So, then, you think that the suicides and marriages based on deception are improving society? How?

Matt G,

I follow your arguments, except for the following:

"For gay bashers? Nope. They'd rather destroy the thing that causes them to be attracted than come to grips with their own attraction itself."

Elaborate?

I believe you, Larry, and I would like to put a pause in the thread at this point to say to everyone who might have been aghast to read the ramblings on pages 1-3 of this thread that I take responsibility and wish to apologize for the overly combative tone. Larry, I am sorry for getting things off to such a bad start. I have enough faith in humanity to believe that had I not made what seemed like a personal attack, many of your words would not have been written. And then I would not have felt compelled to hurl even more in your direction. Shall we start over? Shall we agree to retract our insults to one another? Personal insults that come from wounded souls can be excused and forgiven.

This does not mean that the words in this thread don't hurt--they do, and unless your name is Larry, ...

I hope you will understand that I thought the originating threads were stereotyping homosexuals. Even though they appear to, I could have done a better job at discriminating the issues. One of the issues is the tendency to isolate small incidents like the skit and use it to deride an entire group of people. We have seen this happen in the Coffee Room before when talking about gay day at Disney World. I am very sensitive to this sort of thing. (It always really infuriated me in school when the whole class was punished for the behavior of one person. Go figure.)

Many of you know I spent 20 years trying to change my sexuality and have come to a point of greater acceptance. I have also spent the last 20 years in celibacy. From this vantage point I see alot of what goes on in the homosexual community that disturbs me. (I see alot of what goes on in the heterosexual community that disturbs me.) The difference is that a homosexual (usually) grows up with a part of him/her self that remains invisible to everyone else. The most important people in a young homosexual's life must remain ignorant of the true child. This is a big tradgedy and explains a great deal of the behavior that is sometimes observed in homosexual people. People may say "well he acts that way because he's gay". The real reason he acts that way is because he has had to hide for so long and knows that if he didn't hide he'd be shunned and outcast. And when they may finally find a place that seems secure enough to come out, there's usually an explosion of exuberance from having been pent up for so long. There's often also confusion about how to act, knowing they may be insulted and/or physically hurt just for being who they are. There is a lot more I could say about this, but not now.

apple, I meant to mention it last night, but being at work got distracted. I think it's a beautiful poem. "...some of the things that burden adults..."--They should be taught in their own good time (with an eye on reality, of course), don't you think?

I logged on to apologize too.
I am too combative on this issue.
Equality is just too important.

Maybe I should just get used to people being intolerant.

And Jolly, granted, people who have been parents have a unique experience that can't be simulated.

No one has said that homosexuals aren't equal to anyone else. Pushing the teaching of anything of a sexual nature to little kids between five and ten years old, especially against their parents wishes (not to mention state law), is what we're discussing. How much simpler can it be?

I am only reacting to what I have seen from you. Are you going to tell my young nephew things like:

I am sick and tired of having your perversion shoved in my face...You couldn't be normal if your life depended on it...Your defense of these perverts is pushing me faster and faster toward that opinion too.

Or will you save it until he grows up and you feel less guilty about telling him to keep his queer ways to himself so you can feel safer and more comfortable?

Tolerance should be taught in schools: religious, racial, and of masculine/femenine expressions(not specifically referring to the sexual if they are young). We all know that children will frequently trumpet their parents' prejudices, so why should schools --in an effort to create a more tolerant, less hate-filled society-- not try to counteract any possible prejudices learned at home and that relate so directly to the wellbeing of a society?

Elena
http://www.pianofourhands.com

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gryphon:
Neither my wife nor I will ever get AIDS. (Unless it is introduced into us through a blood transfusion I suppose). We don't engage in risky behaviors like sleeping around or IV drug use.

Gryphon, like I said earlier, I missread your post. I'm sorry for the confusion. I thought you said that if he had been straight he wouldn't have gotten AIDS. My bad.

You bet this is about tolerance

Intolerance gave him AIDS?

No. The whole skit thing, I just don't agree the manner in which the subject is voiced in the skit. Sure there could be skits about abstinency, and Christianiy, just as there should be about Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, safe sex, etc. BUT they should not be presented in a manner that says "I am better than you all" which I think is what this skit preaches and is wrong, but rather that it is all part of our society and should be accepted and not imposed on others. That individuals have the right to practice religion and love whomever they choose as long as it does no harm to another.

Why are some of these subjects given more importance than others? Because it is an attempt to focus attention on issues which are not part of the white, christian, heterosexual stereotype which kids have been bombarded with for generations and which give them little room to find role models if they don't fit this mold. Things, thankfully, are beginning to change but I don't think there will truly be acceptance of any of the thornier issues until they stop being part of the political arena and are thought of as a simple personal choice, like chocolate or vainilla.

Elena
http://www.pianofourhands.com

Dear Matt,

I'm not insinuating, I think you are gay. I base my opinion not only on what you write on this topic, but how you write it, much as a dog defends a bone.

If I am incorrect, I will apologise in advance, if you feel one is needed.

I currently detect an undercurrent in your last statement, that rvaga noticed, namely that people secretly are drawn to the things that they publicly decry. I think that is a bogus argument.

There also is another issue at work within the thread, concerning what society should tolerate.

Some people think society should tolerate everything. I'm sorry, folks, but a society that tolerates everything, will eventually be supplanted by one that tolerates little.

Sorry, Tommy, too much cellulite.

Well said. We have made a lot of progress from the days when this county instutionalized intolerance and prejudice, but there is a way to go.

jf

I am only reacting to what I have seen from you. Are you going to tell my young nephew things like:

I am sick and tired of having your perversion shoved in my face...You couldn't be normal if your life depended on it...Your defense of these perverts is pushing me faster and faster toward that opinion too.


Sigh.....

When writing in a little box, trying to be frugal both with space and time, one must assume that the reader bears these limitations in communication in mind, and keeps certain things in perspective. The word "you" does not always mean "you, the individual". "You" often refers to "you the group". One also writes with the intentions that what he writes be kept in logical context, and not torn apart and then pieced back together to form a different picture than the one originally intended.

When I said "having your perversion shoved in my face", I was not talking to any one person. Nor can you assume that I meant homosexuality is what I was referring to. So, instead of a comment intended to tell an individual that his homosexuality was a perversion, it can also be telling a group of people that dancing naked in the street dressed up in drag is perverse, or that a group of people putting on a play to teach little 5 year old boys how to wear dresses and high heels and make up are perverse. The key is the phrase "shoved in my face". The subject was not Bernard's sexual preference, the subject was teaching little 5 year old boys about sex, and doing so from an alternative point of view.

When I told Bernard "you couldn't be normal if your life depended on it", I was responding to his attack toward me, and that is how I do things. Get in my face, and I get right back in yours. Bernard has apologized, I had already, and the issue is over. I like Bernard. We *are* polar opposites. But that isn't a personal indictment of either one of us.

When I said "Your defense of these perverts is pushing me faster and faster toward that opinion", I said what I meant. Again, there was a clue you could have noticed that showed I was not directing the term "pervert" at Bernard, or any other individual. I said "these perverts", obviously referring to the group putting on these plays. It also is obvious that this is the kind of thing I am saying is being "shoved in my face". These people are going around the country teaching little kids that are too young to even think about sex or sexual preferences to think about them, and to "tolerate" them. I'm all for tolerance. I'm tolerant. But tolerance does not mean I just lay down and let every single thing that someone wants to do go by and simply put up with it. It doesn't mean I give up my standards, or my common sense. When you claim you are simply teaching tolerance, but your method of doing that is to take a room full of little 5 year old boys and teach them that it's ok for them to act like little girls and want to touch each other, you're a liar, and you're a pervert, and you have an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with tolerance.

Or will you save it until he grows up and you feel less guilty about telling him to keep his queer ways to himself so you can feel safer and more comfortable?

That is an ignorant, bigotted statement Elena, and nothing more than a snide attack. I will tell him nothing, as long as he doesn't do something to offend me. Since you apparently are so clouded logically because of this topic, let me elaborate on that response though. If your nephew, as an adult, simply mentioned he was a homosexual, I would continue to talk with him in the same polite manner as before. His sexual preference is of no concern to me, and not the topic of our discussion. If he *made* his homosexuality a topic of discussion, I would tell him I didn't care about his sexual preferences one way or the other, and could we go back to talking about whatever we had been discussing beforehand. If he reach for my crotch and asked me for sex, I'd put him in the morgue. But until that happened, I would treat him exactly the same way I would treat anyone else. If on the other hand he said "I want to take a room full of 5 year old children and talk to them about my sexual preferences and tell them that they should be tolerant of it, and that if they feel like being like me it's ok", I would call him a pervert and let him know then and there that if he tries to talk to *my* kids like that he is in for a *really* rough ride. By the same token, if a heterosexual male said "I want to take a room full of 5 year old children and tell them what my wife and I like to do in bed and that if they feel like doing that too it's ok", I will call *him* a pervert, and let him know that he too is in for a really rough ride if he tries to talk to my 5 kid about things like that.

Get it through your head folks - K-6 kids are too young for this, and I don't care *what* your own personal sexual preferences are, keep them to yourself when you're around small children. If your goal is to teach tolerance, focus your energy where it is acceptable, and where it will do the most good - teach the parents how to parent and then get your ass out of their way and let them PARENT! Don't do it for them, don't take a bunch of little kids and give them information they are too young to process and claim you're teaching tolerance. And if you think that makes me some kind of homophobe, or some kind of throwback in the evolutionary ladder, so be it. But keep your agendas to yourself when you get around children.

GEEZ, for the life of me I can't understand what's so difficult about this for some of you to understand.

Larry, it's not just about body parts and it's not just about sex. I agree that young kids should not be learning about sex--hetro, homo, or miscellaneous---in elementary school. On the other hand, I believe that all kids at a very early age should learn that some men love each other and some women love each other in the same way that mommy and daddy love each other and that that is ok. The point is that by teaching tolerance and understanding at a young age you: (1) allow kids who start to realize in middle school that they may be gay to understand that they are not freaks, not alone, that they do not have to commit suicide to escape it, and (2) teach kids who are hetrosexual to accept the fact that others are different and that the differences should be respected rather than denigrated. These messages have to begin at a young age because otherwise it is too late.

In my mind, it's not a question of whether a parent "approves" of homosexuality, because homosexuality IS. It's a question of whether we are going to teach our children (finally) to respect and be tolerant of those who may be different, whether by race, religion, or sexual preference.

jf

Well, if you had actually read my question, you wouldn't have answered in this way. My question was why you would feel it necessary to resort to double-entendre and innuendo to take potshots at me, rather than debating my position. Your description of my writing on this topic is also quite telling. You must somehow believe that no right-minded straight person could so sympathetically defend homosexuality. That is where you are absolutely wrong.

You seem to have a penchant for apologetic lip-service statements like the one above. This statement couldn't be construed by anyone as an apology anyway. It is far too smug and insincere. Perhaps you should consider refraining from making statements that might require an apology. Or is that too difficult for you?

Think whatever you like, but a common psychological profile for a young gay-basher is someone who has been indoctrinated into the values of the anti-gay culture around him. Deep fear of his own secret same-sex feelings can drive him to act out against gay men, as if that will prove he isn't what they are, or to somehow vanquish the desires by attacking the things (gay men) that stir these repressed feelings. I'm quite sure this is not the case for all gay-bashers, and I wouldn't presume to even say this profile fits the majority. The point here, though, is that in this type of case, repressed homosexual feelings can lead to externalized violence.

Gee, there's really nothing like overgeneralization to needlessly sensationalize one's position. :rolleyes: Nobody has proposed or is proposing tolerating "everything", as you so carelessly tossed out. Can you really believe that tolerance of homosexuality is equivalent to tolerance of "everything"? Or is it that you just can't limit yourself to the topic being discussed?
Aahhh, the grand sweeping gesture designed to drive home the point. Unfortunately, you have no point, because the corollary is just as true, to wit: "A society that tolerates little will eventually be supplanted by one that tolerates much." I think that our society currently tolerates little, and would like to see a more tolerant one gradually overtake it. Sorry to hear that you think that's the wrong direction.

One of the interesting aspects of this debate is that the same people who are saying the skit is inappropriate for young children because they are young, malleable and should not/need not have to deal with issues such as this are the same ones who a couple of months ago were defending the school district in the South who were going after a Lesbian mother through her seven year old son.

Either children at this age are too young for this sort of thing or they are not. It can't be both ways.