Well, yes, that's seems to have been the custom for a few centuries in our European type cultures. It appears to have worked quite well judging from the way those societies crashed when it was relaxed significantly. 
Posted on 01/14/2005 7:57:27 AM PST by madprof98
Woo hoo! I've made the big time. Last month, the website Free Republic featured a thread about my Nov. 18 column, "Queers Who Don't Act Right." You probably don't know much about Free Republic unless you are a right-wing lunatic. Free Republic is so far right that wing-nut gay muckraker Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, one of the architects of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, both left the site in 1999 because it was too extreme, even for them.
In the years since, the site has become the contemporary version of a marathon meeting of the old John Birch Society and the KKK. Most recently, Free Republic was in the news when John Corsi, one of the Swift Boat Veterans who authored a book attacking John Kerry, turned out to post embarrassingly racist messages there. (Of course, he argued his racist insults were all "a joke." Talk about your Clintonian rhetoric.) The site also was in the news recently because someone correctly posted that Dan Rather had relied on phony documents to impute President Bush's National Guard service.
Free Republic is so extreme that it's a blast to read. Don't bother to explore the site with the idea of posting an alternative perspective or to correct facts. Your post will simply be deleted, despite its owner's celebration of freedom of speech. The site has no hesitation in reprinting copyrighted material, like my column, even though the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both successfully sued to stop such theft. In other words, as is generally true of the lunatic far right, the truth, free speech and the law only matter when they support their point of view.
Of course, Freepers, as the creepy wing-nuts on the site are called, were not alone in being outraged by my column. I received quite a lot of mail, mainly from other gay people, questioning my argument that LA Fitness at Ansley Mall overreacted when it closed its sauna because of some occasional sex and reopened it with a new picture window overlooking the locker room. As an update, I might add that the window has effectively eliminated unseen sexual interactions inside the sauna and made room for another, more open form of sex between people on either side of the window: exhibitionism and voyeurism.
Most of my correspondents argued that the occasional discovery of sex in the sauna merited involvement by the police and the health department, reconstruction of the sauna and a report by one of the local TV stations. And, as usual, they concluded that because I called that overreacting, I must favor sex in public spaces. No matter that I said I find the behavior annoying. To be righteous, I must find it -- what? -- criminally actionable.
I wasn't surprised by the reaction. Sex troubles people more than anything. That's why Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob, while Bush was re-elected despite lying about a war that has killed thousands. Gay people's oppression is the result of their sex lives, so it's not surprising that they are hypersensitive to anything that might add to the picture of deviance. But it has become obvious that the very effort to make all deviance disappear and to assimilate -- to marry, for example -- increases prejudice.
The Freepers, of course, took outrage over my column to dizzy heights, fabricating arguments I did not make. This began with the man who posted it, "madpro98." He said that I dismissed "all sexual conventions, including common decency, as so much homophobia." Actually, I wrote no such thing. Then, of course, the Freepers concluded that the case of LA Fitness means every gay man is a sauna whore. For example, "Sender" writes: "Does anyone else think it's strange that gay men often have sex in a public toilet stall? ... Even if we had unisex public restrooms, somehow I can't imagine a man and a woman eyeing one another while washing their hands, then just jumping in the stall for a go."
The writer obviously has never been to Buckhead on a Saturday night. But what cracks me up is that the Freepers are so anxious to bash someone like me that they don't even realize when they are supporting a contrary argument. For example, "buffyt" quoted my statement that I don't like "stumbling upon any sex scene to which I have not been invited." Then she riffed obsessively about heterosexual couples at Mardi Gras "coupling all over the place" while the police ignore them. Exactly. Heterosexuals spoil the view with public sexual interactions every bit as much as homosexuals, arguably more, when they can find a place to do it. Nobody followed up on that post, of course.
I'm not going to quote the mind-boggling illogics and endless sophomoric fag-bashing (despite arguing they aren't homophobic). But I will thank "Jack Black," who wrote: "I think this was very well written. He is writing for the audience of radical homosexuals as one, so I have trouble twisting my thoughts enough to get to his point of view, but I still think the writing is good." Kiss me, dude!
Cliff Bostock holds a Ph.D. in depth psychology. Write him at cliff.bostock@ creativeloafing.com.
That boy needs some therapy.
No doubt, I can't keep up with the reading...
I quit going to a health club in the St. Louis area when I saw two guys going at it in the whirlpool....shudder
Hey you got yours, I'm going with the creepy wing-nut.
How come I didn't get my KKK application ? I've been here about 6 years and not once have I been invited to join. I'm really hurt you guys are leaving me out.
Well, yes, that's seems to have been the custom for a few centuries in our European type cultures. It appears to have worked quite well judging from the way those societies crashed when it was relaxed significantly.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write an article blasting a website I've spent no more than 4 minutes looking at, just to try to score points with my ideological breathren. I mean, it seems to work for Cliffie-poo, and it's also required for my latest degree, "Sinking-To-New-Depths Psychology.
If we start with the basic descriptions of degrees:
B.S. -> Bull Sh!t
M.S. -> More Sh!t
Ph.D. -> Pile it Higher & Deeper
Then a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology must spend a lot of time at the bottom of a deep pile of sh!t.
Madprof BUMP...................not rump...............BUMP:)
Right wing lunatic sex ping
Depth psychology is mostly Jungian and archetypal, and deals with the idea that myths are universal and come from some constant aspect of human psychology that lies deep in the mind below the conscious level. So there's a little bit of Freud, but mostly Jung. It was fairly successful as a method for literary interpretation, but has never been helpful as a method of psychological analysis. In fact you can say that about most modern schools of psychology. Practiced in moderation on the right literary works, they can be helpful. But they don't do squat to cure patients from mental diseases.
It converges on religion in a vague sort of way, as in Joseph Campbell's notorious book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Chesterton would say it's the kind of silly thing that creeps into the mind if you push God (i.e. for westerners, Christianity) out.
This guy comes from such a different planet there's no arguing with him. But every mention of FreeRepublic, even lying and negative, is useful.
LOL!
Always one of my favorites. Looking forward to it.
I'll bet 90% of lib arts PHD's are left wingers, and/or poofters:)
Hey Peyton, ponder this that I once heard someone say...
"He has his head so far up his a$$ that he has to open his mouth to see where he was going."
A painfully obvious indication that this caker is a self loather...a fact about himself that he missed as he wrote it.
It's just one big FReepin' Mad House!!
Now I know why lead-based paint was outlawed.
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