- Hot
- New
- Categories...
- Producer's Lounge
- Producer's Vault
- The Gulch: Live! (New)
- Ask the Gulch!
- Going Galt
- Books
- Business
- Classifieds
- Culture
- Economics
- Education
- Entertainment
- Government
- History
- Humor
- Legislation
- Movies
- News
- Philosophy
- Pics
- Politics
- Science
- Technology
- Video
- The Gulch: Best of
- The Gulch: Bugs
- The Gulch: Feature Requests
- The Gulch: Featured Producers
- The Gulch: General
- The Gulch: Introductions
- The Gulch: Local
- The Gulch: Promotions
- Marketplace
- Members
- Store
- More...
This persecution complex the organized LGBT groups have is not only asinine because it does not exist, but it also serves to hijack the honor of true Civil Rights struggles that minorities have been forced to engage in because one group of people thought they were better than another. You want your state to recognize gay marriage? Well, push for it. Elect those that see it the same way, and campaign for change. However, to use the struggle of those who were once LEGALLY beaten in public, forced into slavery, tortured, oppressed, bought and sold like cattle to lend credence to some imaginary epic struggle is dishonest and dishonorable.
Setting aside the issue of marriage equality, you're being incredibly ignorant and blind to the very real discrimination and persecution that the LGBT community faces on a regular basis. Everyone gets made fun of, yes, but not everyone gets legitimately discriminated against or persecuted. Being unable to afford expensive products isn't persecution, and trying to say it is just makes you look dumb.
No one ever gets fired from their job or disowned by their family for being fat or wearing glasses, nor do fat people or people with glasses get repeatedly told by significant portions of the population that they're evil abominations whose very existence is a sin against God, and that they're going to Hell for who they are, nor are they beaten and killed in the streets, nor refused necessary life-saving medical service simply because of their physical difference. I've worn glasses since I was in 5th grade, and never in my entire life has anyone ever poked fun at me for it. Fat people occasionally get made fun of, sure, but that's not persecution. Poking fun at someone and actually persecuting them are VERY different acts, and I honestly find it appalling that you would try to suggest that the two are anywhere near the same level as each other. They're not. Pull your goddamned head out of your ass, and wake the hell up.
You don't think the LGBT community has ever been legitimately persecuted? Fuck you. Every single day, gays, lesbians, and transgender people experience everything I've listed above, and then some. Tell me, how many people are murdered each year simply because they happen to be fat or wear glasses? Huh? What? No one? Well by golly gee! What a fucking surprise!
Now how about gays and lesbians? How many of them are attacked each year? How many of them are murdered? Do you have any fucking clue? I'll tell you. According to the FBI's annual hate crime statistics report for 2012, the total number of hate crimes committed against LGBT people in the United States that year (including property damage and vandalism) was 1,376. Then in 2013, the Organization of American States (which collects data from Canada, the United States, Central America and South America) found that in the month of July 2013 alone, 39 LGBT people were murdered, 16 of whom were either gays or lesbians, and 23 of whom were transgender. And that's just in one month. Imagine what the whole year was like. The fact that the number of transgender people killed was almost 50% higher than the murders of both gays and lesbians combined should be shocking, as transgender people are a significantly smaller group (only about 0.3% of the U.S. population openly identifies as transgender, while roughly 3.5% of adults identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual).
According to Transgender Europe (TGEU), every three days, the murder of another trans person is reported. That's another person, another life, just gone. Every three days. From January 1st 2008 to December 31st 2012, TGEU tracked a total of 1,123 reported killings of trans people in 57 countries worldwide. By November of 2013, another 238 murders had been added to that list. And that's just the ones that were reported. There's no telling how many others there were that just got covered up or ignored because nobody cared enough to give a shit. Many of the bodies were never claimed, or even identified. These are people who had lost everything. Their jobs, their homes, their families, even their lives, all just because of who they were.
Have you ever heard the name Brandon Teena? No? How about Gwen Araujo? Angie Zapata? Do these names mean fucking anything to you? Well guess what. They mean something to me. This isn't about fucking marriage. Marriage is merely a means to an end. This is about fighting for a legitimate place in society. It's about fighting for the right to be, the right to live, the right to EXIST! It's about being able to walk down the street in public without fear that some viscous hate monger will clock you over the head with a baseball bat, stab you in the gut, slit your throat, dismember your corpse, set your body on fire, and then throw your charred remains into a dumpster, only to have the police ignore the entire fucking incident because you happened to be "one of THOSE people." You think bad things don't actually happen to LGBT people? You think LGBT people aren't really persecuted? Fuck you. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Here's some information that might wake you up:
Transgender Day of Remembrance (2013):
http://www.transgenderdor.org/memorializ...
Constant rise in murder rates: more than 1,100 reported murders of trans people in the last five years:
http://www.tgeu.org/More_than_1100_trans...
List of high-profile murders of transgender people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unl...
History of violence against LGBT people in the United States:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...
FBI Releases Hate Crime Statistics And The Results Are Surprising — And Staggering (2012):
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/fbi...
Comparison of Hate Crime Rates Across Protected and Unprotected Groups:
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp...
Transgender Murders 50 Percent Higher Than Gays, Lesbians In July (2013):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27...
Behind Closed Doors: The Dark Legacy of the Johns Committee:
http://www.behindcloseddoorsfilm.com/ind...
Remembering the UpStairs Lounge - The Largest LGBT Massacre in American History:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyath...
Transgender Woman Dies After Beating in Front of NYPD Precinct:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/08/...
78 trans murders in first four months of 2013, mutilation common:
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/78-tr...
According to a survey conducted last year by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), more than 60 percent of LGBT sexual and domestic violence survivors said they were denied access to domestic violence shelters simply because of who they were:
Outing sexual violence disparities: New data show high rates of sexual assault in LGBT community:
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2013/0...
From Wikipedia:
Violent hate crimes against LGBT people tend to be especially brutal, even compared to other hate crimes: "an intense rage is present in nearly all homicide cases involving gay male victims". It is rare for a victim to just be shot; he is more likely to be stabbed multiple times, mutilated, and strangled. "They frequently involved torture, cutting, mutilation... showing the absolute intent to rub out the human being because of his (sexual) preference". In a particularly brutal case in the United States, on March 14, 2007, in Wahneta, Florida, 25-year-old Ryan Keith Skipper was found dead from 20 stab wounds and a slit throat. His body had been dumped on a dark, rural road less than 2 miles from his home. His two alleged attackers, William David Brown, Jr., 20, and Joseph Eli Bearden, 21, were indicted for robbery and first-degree murder. Highlighting their malice and contempt for the victim, the accused killers allegedly drove around in Skipper's blood-soaked car and bragged of killing him. According to a sheriff's department affidavit, one of the men stated that Skipper was targeted because "he was a faggot."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_ag...
Oh, and then there's this:
The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
by Richard Plant
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pink-Triangle-...
Yeah. That actually fucking happened. But history classes don't mention it because "concerned parents don't want their children to be taught about icky gay stuff in the classroom!" Bastards. So don't go around blabbing about how LGBT people aren't really persecuted, and that it's not really comparable to other civil rights movements, because that's a bunch of fucking bullshit. Know your fucking history, and stop being so god damned ignorant, you fucking ass.
Do gay people have more a more than normal amount of crime done to them? Yes. Is that a Civil Rights violation? No, because those acts are already ILLEGAL. I was referring to the fact that many minorities have faced these atrocities when they were sanctioned by the law of the land. If you want to “win” the struggle for acceptance then call it that. Working to increase tolerance is a great and worthwhile thing, but again, it is not a Civil Rights issue because these crimes are already illegal.
Oh, and your personal insults and cursing me are no more than a fart in the wind, a total waste of time. I have been married three times, so there is nothing you can say to me to get a rise. If personal insults make you feel better though, you are welcome to them.
From Wikipedia:
"Sodomy laws in the United States were largely a matter of state rather than federal jurisdiction, except for laws governing the U.S. Armed Forces. In 1963, the penalties for sodomy in the various states varied from imprisonment for two to ten years and/or a fine of US $2,000. By 2002, 36 states had repealed all sodomy laws or had them overturned by court rulings. The remaining sodomy laws were invalidated by the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law
And let's not forget the Stonewall Riots, where the New York police department (hey, that's law enforcement!) regularly raided gay bars, shutting them down and arresting patrons.
http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2009...
But Stonewall doesn't really count, right? No, of course not...
And do I need to link Richard Plant's book again?
The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals
by Richard Plant
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pink-Triangle-...
And lets not even talk about the current issues in Russia. Seriously, pull your head out of the sand.
The rules in the military against sodomy were not made with homosexuals in mind. They had nothing to do with homosexuality. How do I know? I was in the military and it was part of our training in 1993. I cannot speak to current military training with any first-hand knowledge. Think of the military’s sodomy laws from a perspective of deep isolation with only men around. Just as you see in prisons behaviors can happen that are not normal to the individuals participating or being coerced into participating. The UCMJ did not address the issue of gay sex because gays were not allowed in the military.
As far as state sodomy laws go I concede. Like many people I suppose I technically know how gay men have intercourse, but I have never thought of it as connected to sodomy being illegal in many states. I tend to think of gay men having sex and sodomy as two different things. This could be due to the connotations attached to sodomy as a violation of one person by another.
These laws tend to be outdated and unenforceable anyway. I just checked. Sodomy is illegal in my state, Tennessee, along with any form of oral sex. Then again it is also law that if you allow your wife to drive a car in the city of Memphis a man must walk in front of the vehicle waving a red flag to warn other drivers. All three laws are ignored, but they should be formally repealed.
"A valuable contribution...the lesson that The Pink Triangle elicits from the Holocaust is the realization that we are still haunted by the specters of the Third Reich."
~ San Francisco Chronicle (quote printed on the back of the book)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B70Msi7vr...
Fun fact: during WWII, homosexuality was illegal among countries on both sides of the war, the Axis AND the Allies! And you're right that the Nazis persecuted far more people than just gays (the Jews were obviously their main target), but unlike the other victimized groups who were released with the Allied victory, homosexuals who survived the Nazi death camps were thrown right back into prison after the war because the Allied forces still viewed them as criminals. Germany's laws against homosexuality were not repealed until 1969.
While you may think of same-sex intercourse and sodomy as being two different things, I sincerely doubt the law makers who wrote the laws did, as such nuanced understanding about the subject probably didn't really exist back then. And those laws WERE used to persecute the LGBT community, and the Supreme Court decision which invalidated all such laws (at least the ones that hadn't already been repealed by the states) was only back in 2003. That wasn't very long ago.
Here's some more history regarding LGBT persecution, specifically within the Mormon church prior to 1980:
http://www.connellodonovan.com/lgbtmormo...
Honestly, there's every bit as much history in the LGBT movement as there is in any other group which has faced persecution. I'm sorry for cursing at you, but I just don't understand why you're trying to say that it can't be viewed in the same light as other civil rights movements. It seems like a double standard.
No, I am not saying history has no impact on the present. I view history as the road map of both the present and the future. I am saying that the event and time period, WWII Nazis have nothing to do with how the gay community is viewed in the modern US, or what the gay community is trying to accomplish. When you take an event perpetrated by a totalitarian regime and try to apply it to our modern republic you loose all context because American cannot comprehend such atrocities and loose touch with the factual material. Think of Rep. Jackson's claim that she is a freed slave. What do you think she would do if she came face to face with real slavery. It is no longer a context Americans can relate to. Should it be forgotten? Never, but that does not mean it is applicable to our society.
Here is my point in a nutshell. Legally members of the gay community have the same rights as everyone else right now. The work is done in that respect. What is lacking is not rights, but acceptance of the gay community as a foregone conclusion in our society not to be either honored or hated. Why not honored or hated? Simple. The alternative to honor and hate is normality.
Look at how things have gone down with the black community. Blacks and whites have the same rights. It has not stopped there though. Now we are seeing an overcompensation, with people who oppose the president being called racist because to most people he is black. Look at the liberal media's treatment of black on white crime as if it does not exist, and the overwhelming feeling that blacks should not be subject to hate crime laws. You also see this in hiring and promotion favoritism due to Affirmative Action or Leveraging Diversity. It is seen by many as reverse discrimination, and is doing nothing more than keeping racism alive in America.
I would think this is something the gay community could learn from. We do not want to be facing this same issue 1000 years from now. The gay community should spend less time promoting it's Civil Rights struggle and more time promoting the gay community as an absolutely normal everyday thing, and nothing for people to get excited over.
I am not saying that it can't be viewed in the same light as other civil rights movements. People are free to view it however they want. I will say that promoting it as such will stir up more issues as time goes along than promoting it as normal will.
Regarding the issue of Affirmative Action, I do think there's a legitimate argument to be made that reverse-racism can potentially act as an effective counter-weight against regular racism, the logic being that racism is impossible to eliminate completely, and therefore the solution is to try and balance against it and compensate for it instead. That's the theory, anyway. I remain open to the possibility that it might not be as effective as was initially thought. But there are a lot of other factors involved as well, so its difficult to say for sure.
Anyway, good discussion, and nice talking with you. Thanks for being so patient with me, even when I lost my temper. ;)
The key to marriage is understanding that no one in any state has the legal right to get married to anyone. I was first married in 1994, and at the time Indiana required a blood test on the bride before they would issue the license. If the bride did not submit, then the license would be denied. Those tests are gone now, but there are still laws that determine who can marry whom. In Tennessee you cannot marry any blood relative, while in Kentucky you can marry your third cousin. The point is that for better or worse the state CONTROLS who can marry whom.
We would do better to leave the gay marriage question alone completely and push for the power over marriage currently residing with the state to be removed and returned to the people where it belongs. This would not only solve the question of gay marriage, but would also prevent it from coming back again in the future. It is my business who I choose to marry and when. A basic frame work of a form to be filled out, witnesses, and a filing process can easily remove all the complications of marriages and allow people to marry who they want, when they want, with or without any religious involvement. If marriage is an indivdual right it cannot be controled by the state or the feds.
Reverse racism serves no purpose but to prolong racism in our society. The issue of race and discrimination will begin to disappear when people begin to ignore that the different races exist at all. Morgan Freeman got it right. “There is absolutely no reason for black history month as black history is American history.” So long as we continue to focus on the things that make us different and separate racism and bigotry will always be a factor in our society. The more laws we make to control people and dictate opportunity the worse it will get and the longer it will go on. You cannot heal wounds by picking at them over and over again. At some point you have to let it go.