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.
Shall we call him a WAAAAAAAAAAmbulance???
Interesting choice of a name too.
He chose "ExPatBack".
Possible previous handle of "ExPat"?
"ExPat" showing as banned or suspended.
bump!
*Ping for later*
Freepers? I consider myself a member of the Pajamahadeen.
I just read the post you are ostensibly responding to.
You are a troll.
You randomly chose a post to respond to, and your post has NOTHING to do with anything RebelBanker said in his post.
Especially this half of your post:
"This thread is pretty extreme. First of all, he was right about posting up copyrighted material and the thread also demonstrates the "fag bashing" he was talking about. Nobody's even talked about what he actually said in the column.
I love this site but I do get tired of seeing people launch these personal attacks. All this guy's got to do is publish a handful of the posts here to make all of us look like anti-intellecutal bigots. Get a grip, people. There's a way to disagree with homosexuality without acting like redneck children in a trailer park playground!"
"Anti-intellectual Bigots"??
JohnGalt loved to say that all the time whenever he hadn't a leg to stand on.
I don't have enough knowledge at this point to have an informed opinion. My uninformed opinion, however, is that social security should remain a guarantee. Insofar as it needs to be fixed, and I've read like 30 different opinions of how much trouble there actually is, I think it could probably be fixed by adjustments in how payouts are calculated. I think there's going to be some problems with the Baby Boomer generation, but I don't know how all the projections factor in population growth and economy growth and all that. I mean, there's a lot of things talking about these 75-year projections, and further, but could you trust any economic projection from 75 years ago to be close to accurate today?
I know that there's stuff about 2018, and saying that's about when social security benefits will outstrip income into the program, and then they're saying it'll use up its reserves in 2045 or thereabouts. To calculate those kinds of figures they've got to project birth rates, economic growth, immigration rates, etc, etc. A lot of guessing. Educated guessing, but still guessing.
So okay, I've hemmed and hawed enough. I think the Baby Boomer generation will be a strain, and force the dip into the reserves. But I don't think (and remember, this is an extremely uneducated opinion) that the problem will necessarily extend beyond the life expectancy of the Baby Boomers. So given that the reserves will hold out until about 2045, it may not be necessary to change anything.
It would seem that some Social Security has become "welfare" in that benefits flow to people with no regard to whether they had earnings' deductions.
To me, that's kind of the point. Some people don't make enough to save money for retirement. So we all pay a progressive tax to make sure that everyone has a little money when they're old.
My own opinion is that Social Security has always been unjustified as a means of forcing people to have savings that they otherwise would have to create for themselves. If it was ever truly a savings program, there could never have been a time when there were insufficient funds.
I don't see it as a savings program at all. It couldn't have been, because it started paying out right when it was created, before anyone had time to save anything. Some people seem to try to cast it in that light, but I think of it more as guaranteed welfare for old people.
Depth psychology is psychoanalysis. My brother has the same degree. It's off the beaten track, but so is half of what people study these days."I admit I lurk here under a different screen name."
RE-ally.
We've met before then.
"I figured that if I had even a mildly different perspective I'd get ripped a new one."
Not true.
We have Democrats who do post here, and they post rather well thought out intelligent posts and actually discuss things, not post troll drek.
Not everyone here agrees.
For proof, look at the flamage threads about the War on Drugs.
For you to try to claim that "if I had even a mildly different perspective I'd get ripped a new one" shows how little you know of FR, and shows you to BE a troll.
I spent a few minutes researching the Pacifica Graduate Institute, seeing as I had never heard of it. They have study programs in mythology and something called "ecopsychology."
Sounds like a degree mill for moonbats.
I'm disappointed in that troll. He was absolutely no fun. A complete waste of time.
Same here.
He wasn't a challenge and wasn't even worth crushing.
*sigh*
Drat! The troll was zotted before I even had a chance to taunt him myself!
Thanks for the quick catch, FRiend!
Bassackwards - we already have souls. Without them we could not create literature and mythology to begin with.
I'll be right behind you with my ES-355 and Les Paul...
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