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.
Perhaps the field has something to do with the "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy" segments on SNL...
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
{{{curtsy}}
Why don't we just ask Osama bin Lad -- Osama Obama -- Obama --- OH NEVER MIND!
Awwwwwwwwwww. Mr Fancypants has his knickers in a knot over Freepers. Don't ya just love it when we get a response from the nerve-endings that were hit?
BTTT for later read.
BUMP
But the real itch they are trying to scratch is this: they love their mothers, yet hate them, and its all very complicated.
Are you sure you're a liberal? I read your profile page and you seem rational. That's why I ask.
I'd say, if you don't think the government should make most decisions for the people, if you beleive it's okay to own a gun, and that people who allow themselves to get pregnant shouldn't kill their baby, you may be a conservative.
Waz UP?
There is some inverse relationship there. Haven you ever heard the term "educated beyond their capacity to reason"?
Did the author ever consider that we like making him go crazier?
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
ROBERT HEINLEIN
Almost as cool as the day I discovered I was a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!
Its interesting how this column unfolds. Listen, I think a good 10% of the people on Free Republic ARE extremist who live on the outer fringe of reason and only want to spew venomous hate for those who do not support their really whacked out views. That being said, the vast majority of the people on here are more than willing to take a considerate view of the facts and advance the dialogue in a mature, intelligent way.
I can't understand how you can dedicate the first four or five paragraphs of an article essentially labeling a whole group of people as lunatics so that you can use the last paragraph to legitimize yourself. Its too bad, that as the author seeks to label freepers as polemic and hateful, he only accomplishes the opposite. He brands himself as the true irrational.
Cheers!
Wouldn't you think someone with a PhD in any kind of psychology would realize that?
Apparently, his fudge-packer lifestyle suppresses his ability to reason.
I think it focuses on brainwashing others into believing that they are victims of atrocious childhood abuse that they don't remember....( I am making this up, but it sounds good)
I think he misspelled proctology.
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