Camille Paglia in http://www.salonmagazine.com/
...
"On the home front, the trial of the second man charged with last
year's murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming has been treated with
blatant manipulation of the news by the liberal major media. As I
wrote in my column immediately after that tragedy, the issue of
exciting but dangerous gay-male cruising for stranger sex cannot be
avoided in this case. But despite even the public warning by Shepard's
mother that "Matt was not a saint," a censored and sanitized version
of the fatal evening is being promulgated by newscasters in lockstep
with gay activist groups.
"It's now a simplistic melodrama of virtue versus villainy, as if
Shepard -- who had a history of two known incidents that ended
violently and who had just the prior week confessed to a fear of being
killed -- had been ambushed and kidnapped from the bar because he was
gay. Human nature is complex: Shepard, who had traveled abroad, was
drawn to his assailants, I suspect, precisely because they were scuzzy
punks whose look and manner fairly screamed trouble.
"What happened to Matthew Shepard was brutal and barbaric, and as a
supporter of capital punishment, I want his killers to fry. (One has
already been sentenced to two consecutive life terms.) Both Alison and
I have long been in favor of bringing torture back, which I argue
would not fall under the rubric of "cruel and unusual punishment"
prohibited by the Eighth Amendment if it were a strict replication of
the suffering that had been inflicted on the victim -- heinous in this
muddled, boozy case but even more atrocious in cold-blooded, precisely
planned serial rape-murders of the Ted Bundy kind.
"But it does not help the cause of gay rights to pump the public
discourse full of intelligence-insulting schmaltz over exceptional
incidents. Hate crimes legislation -- that fascist exercise in thought
control -- will never make cruising 100 percent safe, particularly not
when "rough trade" is involved, a walk on the wild side with
besmirched archangels whose zap of primal energy is one step from
savagery. To erase the questing, provocative, limits-testing, and even
irrational (because id-driven) element in gay-male cruising is a form
of castration -- which the glorified nurses and pious hand-holders of
the gay activist hierarchy know very well how to do."
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
"You have the power to change your world
Small reasons - huge effects
Time is running away
One second per second
Break out of your mindcage
And control your rage
You're responsible - you're responsible
Understand that - understand that
Don't be a cogwheel anymore"
-- Project Pitchfork "Revolution Now"
I can feel the bile rising in my throat. I rescan the top of the post for
the
name of the original Salon author (that my sleep encrusted eyes
originally registered as a blur):
CAMILLE PAGLIA
Oh... (as my blood pressure and pulse rate immediately fall).
<snip>
> Shepard, who had traveled abroad, was
> drawn to his assailants, I suspect, precisely because they were scuzzy
> punks whose look and manner fairly screamed trouble.
>
I find this latest passage very ironic. Judged solely by her writing,
(I don't know Camille Paglia; Camille Paglia was never a friend of mine)
I suspect that Ms Paglia is drawn to her subjects and opinions because
they fairly scream controversy.
.
In other words if she were a garden variety poster to a.p.h. I would dismiss
her as a 'troll.'
Am I being overly generous to her?
Frank
McCormick
>
>
>Camille Paglia in http://www.salonmagazine.com/
>
[---snip---]
Chris, we all know that you believe that Matt Shepard was responsible
for his own murder. You've said as much many times before. But
resorting to Camille Paglia for validation? You've really sunk to a
new low.
Bruce [---the poster formerly known as robbie_c---]
--
------- robb...@nyc.excite.com ------ [bruce c] ------
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Chelsea/3366/index.html
[Legitimate e-mailers: remove 'nyc' from my address]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If God is telling us he can't do anything about starving kids in
the Sudan but he has the time and energy to make gay people
straight, then God is one hurting buckaroo."
---------------------Colin McEnroe
RC> Chris, we all know that you believe that Matt Shepard was responsible
RC> for his own murder. You've said as much many times before. But
RC> resorting to Camille Paglia for validation? You've really sunk to a
RC> new low.
I've been waiting for this for weeks now. It looked to me right
from the start that fox was drinking up Paglia's bile and the only thing
that surprises me about this is that it took him so long to start quoting
her. fox's intense hatred of "queers" and Paglia's are such precise mirror
images of one another that it's tempting to say he's just been parroting
her this whole time. More likely though, they probably both just have the
same dysfunction, are both missing the same vital element of humanity.
It is medieval to turn being victimized by criminals into evidence
of the victim's own moral character. The conservative commentator William
Safire once wrote, with regard to AIDS, that "We know Job suffered and we
know he was good, even though his friends say 'Well, there's got to be a
reason for suffering, so you must have sinned.' When some of my right-wing
friends suggest that AIDS is a scourge against homosexuals, some sort of
moral judgement, the answer is in the Book of Job: It says suffering is no
evidence of sin." But not to someone like fox. By his moral compass, if
you get beaten up, that means you had to have been weak and asking for
it...and if you're raped, that means you must be a whore.
In the film, "The Flim-Flam Man", the George C. Scott character
justifies himself by saying "You can't cheat an honest man." The moral
theory here being that anyone who has something stolen from them, is
probably just as crooked as the thief who did the stealing. But it would
be a mistake to regard that as a kind of moral equivocation. Oh no...for
if the victims of crime didn't allow themselves to be victimized by crime,
then there would be no crime in the first place...ergo, the victims of
crime are actually the Cause of crime, and as such More culpable then their
victimizers. This is precisely what fox has been saying about the victims
of hate crimes, persistently, in here: that if anyone is to blame for hate
crimes, it's not the perpetrators...it's them. By this reckoning, thieves,
thugs, rapists, killers, are More moral then their victims, since they are
not the cause of human misfortune, but only the natural consiquence of
human weakness. The next step after that, is to see them as being a kind
of natural punishment for that weakness. This is the step people have
taken, who say "They had it coming." And that is what fox has said.
"If college kids went into some bar in a steelworking town and started
smart-assing the locals, they'd get just as dead as you poster-boy
[ie: Matthew Shepard -BG]. They too would be asking for it, and yes
this *does* happen."
Asking someone who can make that kind of moral calculation to try
and see how utterly depraved it is, is like asking a maggot to perform
calculus. It just won't happen. When someone sinks that far into the Pit,
they don't come back out.
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give
offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
-William Hazlitt
<snip 2 end>
+==================== L. Michael Roberts ======================+
This represents my personal opinion and NOT Company policy
Burlington, Ont, Canada To reply, remove 'SpamSux' from my E-ddress
"Life is a sexually transmitted, terminal, condition"
+==================================================================+
>Chris, we all know that you believe that Matt Shepard was responsible
>for his own murder.
I believe he should have been a lot more wary than he was, and he was,
yes, in part responsible for what happened. I also believe the
killers should fry.
The main point is that the press' portraying of Shepard as a total
innocent is fraudulent; he had every right to know better than to
deliver himself to these thugs, and he was anything but an innocent.
>You've said as much many times before. But
>resorting to Camille Paglia for validation? You've really sunk to a
>new low.
??
Validation?
I posted the excerpt without comment. I base everything I've written
about Shepard on the news stories and interviews of the event, the
ones you didn't bother reading once you saw an opportunity to start
screaming "homophobia."
I agree with about 80% of what Paglia writes and I simultaneously
think she's totally full of herself. I disagree completely when she
writes that Congress should lay off tobacco, and I agree completely
when she writes about post-modernism and gay culture.
> Bruce Garrett wrote:
> >
> > robb...@nyc.excite.com (robbie_c)...
> >
> > RC> Chris, we all know that you believe that Matt Shepard was responsible
> > RC> for his own murder. You've said as much many times before. But
> > RC> resorting to Camille Paglia for validation? You've really sunk to a
> > RC> new low.
> >
> > I've been waiting for this for weeks now. It looked to me right
> > from the start that fox was drinking up Paglia's bile and the only thing
> > that surprises me about this is that it took him so long to start quoting
> > her. fox's intense hatred of "queers" and Paglia's are such precise mirror
> > images of one another that it's tempting to say he's just been parroting
> > her this whole time.
>
> Have you considered that Chris might be Paglia in drag?
Exactly my thought, in fact.
--
Safe journey,
Letao
djs...@yahoo.com
>Exactly my thought, in fact.
Does saying things like that make you feel "catty?"
> On Sun, 07 Nov 1999 16:15:58 -0400, Le...@fire.and.fishing.net (Letao)
> wrote:
>
> >> Have you considered that Chris might be Paglia in drag?
>
> >Exactly my thought, in fact.
>
> Does saying things like that make you feel "catty?"
I guess inasmuch as such comments make you feel the same way.
You've said yourself that you completely agree with her regarding gay
culture and post-modernism. Even you have to admit you've got a good
camile-drag going here.
Killer: Shepard didn't make advances
A just-unsealed confession demolishes the "gay panic" defense. Too bad the
media wasn't around to hear it.
By Dave Cullen
LARAMIE, Wyo. – Speculation has persisted for the past year that Matthew
Shepard, rather than being the victim of gay-bashing, might really have been
nothing more than a hapless robbery victim who was exploited by gay activists
to reap unwarranted sympathy and advance their own agenda to enact
hate-crimes legislation.
The revisionism intensified during the last two weeks as the media
reported the defense's portrayal of Shepard's killers as suffering from "gay
panic" and Shepard himself as a reckless sexual aggressor who probably
provoked his own death, even if he didn't deserve it.
Statements made by one of the convicted killers, which were revealed for
the first time Thursday, reveal these accounts to be false. But the national
media wasn't around to report it.
In October 1998, Shepard was beaten with a .357 Magnum and tied to a
fence in the Wyoming countryside. Five days later, the 21-year-old died from
his injuries. Earlier this week, a jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of
first-degree felony murder. Shepard's parents agreed to an unexpected deal
with defense attorneys to a sentencing agreement, giving McKinney two life
sentences, rather than exposing him to the death penalty. In April,
McKinney's friend and fellow roofer Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to
felony murder and was sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility
of parole.
With the completion of the final murder trial, and the lifting of Judge
Barton Voigt's gag order, key information related to those questions was
revealed Thursday. According to detectives who interviewed both of the
convicted murderers, there is no evidence that Shepard made any sexual
advances to them – and they dismissed the idea that the murder was the mere
result of a robbery gone bad.
"Far from that!" scoffed Sgt. Rob DeBree, the chief investigator in the
case. "They knew damn well he was gay ... It started out as a robbery and
burglary, and I sincerely believe the other activity was because he was gay."
DeBree was available to reveal much of the sealed information in the
case, but said only a handful of reporters – none of them from the major
national media – had asked. He and police Detective Commander Dave O'Malley
spoke extensively with Salon News Thursday afternoon and again Friday morning
inside the Albany County courthouse.
McKinney and his defense team were silent on the new information, because
his sentencing agreement forbids them from ever discussing the case, or
profiting from it.
The most significant revelations emerged from the secret confession of
Henderson, obtained just three days after his plea bargain. Henderson's
confession is crucial, since he is the only person besides McKinney who knows
what really happened at the Fireside Lounge and that infamous fence last
October. Henderson spoke to DeBree and other detectives for about an hour
and 45 minutes after his sentence was finalized and he had nothing else to
lose.
Henderson debunked the portrayal of Shepard that has gained currency the
past few weeks. Had he testified in court as scheduled at McKinney's trial,
he would have blown apart the watered-down "gay panic" defense pursued to the
end by McKinney's legal team, despite Voigt's rejection of some of its key
components.
During his closing argument, public defender Dion Custis hammered home
the gay panic theme repeatedly, summarizing the key elements of his defense
in two sentences: "It started because Matthew Shepard grabbed [McKinney's]
balls. It continued because Aaron McKinney was a chronic meth user."
The grope never happened, DeBree insists. Henderson told investigators
that as far as he knows, the grope was entirely fictional. In order for
McKinney's story about the pass to hold up, DeBree said, his response to the
homosexual grope would have to have been so silent and serene that Henderson
was oblivious to the entire incident. The three young men were crammed into
the front seat of the truck, with Henderson driving and Shepard squeezed into
the middle. What's more, the defense team's opening statement at trial
repeatedly emphasized that it was McKinney's humiliation in front of his
friend that triggered the attack. Henderson said he never saw it.
But one aspect of the defense's portrayal of McKinney did hold up under
investigation. Independent of Henderson's testimony, the detectives
concluded that McKinney's stunning allegations that a neighborhood bully
forced the 7-year-old McKinney to perform oral sex on him were completely
true. O'Malley lived next door to McKinney for several years, and he said
his son was prepared to testify to witnessing those events during the penalty
phase of the trial. Both detectives said the bully had left Laramie years
ago.
Despite the defense team's repeated allegation that Shepard groped the
young man, DeBree said McKinney recanted it in his own taped confession. The
tape was played in court, but much of it was inaudible to the gallery where
the press was seated. Transcripts were provided to the jury, but remained
under seal late Friday afternoon. DeBree said the tape shows that initially,
McKinney claims Shepard reached over and grabbed his crotch or his leg.
"Then later, he says 'as if he was going to.' To me that says clearly, it
never happened."
Henderson was scheduled as the star witness for the prosecution, as a key
condition of his plea bargain. But he created a flurry of courtroom drama by
abruptly breaking that bargain Oct. 28, refusing to testify just minutes
before taking the stand. He'd already been transported 100 miles from the
state penitentiary in Rawlins, and actually sat down on the stand during a
recess. He was inexplicably pulled from the witness list after a lengthy
closed-door hearing. Only later that day was the source of the drama
revealed. Prosecutor Cal Rerucha said he had taken Henderson at his word,
but that with two life sentences hanging over the convict's head and no
possibility of parole, he had no leverage to force compliance.
According to the detectives, Henderson's testimony also would have
resolved the most contested issue of the case: that he and McKinney
initially approached Shepard and posed as gays to lure him out of the
Fireside Lounge to rob him.
Henderson provided a detailed account of that plan. The killers
identified Shepard as a lonely homosexual, an easy mark, and retreated to the
bathroom to hatch their plot. Henderson made the first advance by whispering
a come-on in Shepard's ear, and "McKinney tried to feminize his voice to
continue the lure," DeBree said.
Henderson's confession confirmed one key aspect of the prosecution's
claim of premeditation, but left another one unresolved. DeBree said
Henderson told them the beating first began in the truck, when McKinney
demanded the wallet, eight to 10 minutes before the main beating at the
fence. The defense consistently maintained that the attack didn't begin
until they reached the fence, and the entire beating amounted to one
explosive fit of rage that lasted as little as two minutes.
However, Henderson said he did not observe another crucial exchange
between McKinney and Shepard. Throughout the trial, prosecutor Rerucha
insisted that McKinney ended the attack with a cold-blooded desire to finish
off the witness. Rerucha contended McKinney feared Shepard would recognize
him and asked if he could read the license plate on the truck; when Shepard
complied successfully, McKinney delivered the final blows, crushing his skull.
The tape of McKinney's confession seemed to confirm that, but the defense
tried to plant doubt in jurors' minds. Henderson said he was already in the
truck at the time and never witnessed that event.
Henderson's statement that the beating began in the truck lends support
to the idea that the crime was premeditated, but Henderson continued to deny
that they planned to beat Shepard from the start.
"Henderson wouldn't come forward with the full aspect of that," DeBree
said. "Of course the typical homicide suspect would not give you that." He
believes Henderson was too ashamed to reveal the most heinous elements of the
crime – both defendants expressed shame for their actions at their
sentencings, after their fates were sealed – and he was also treading the
line between complying with his plea agreement and saving his buddy's life.
"He did as much as he could to cover for McKinney, as well as covering
his own rear end," DeBree said. "He had a reputation of being extremely
loyal to a friend and not a 'snitch' on him."
Prosecutor Rerucha was disgusted by Henderson's double-cross, but
O'Malley and DeBree sympathized with the plight of a convict who would be
labeled a jailhouse rat. "It was self-preservation," O'Malley said. DeBree
nodded. "It was survival. And I'm not sure I would blame him."
They also squelched rumors which had run rampant last week that Henderson
had threatened to recant his confession and testify for the defense. "He
said, 'I'm not testifying for either one,'" DeBree said.
Both detectives expressed relief that Laramie would be spared the penalty
phase, which could have ripped this small town apart. "It certainly could
have been ugly for a lot of people," O'Malley said. Much of the town was
connected to one or both of the parties. For instance, O'Malley had known
McKinney, both of his parents and several cousins, and also graduated from
college with Shepard's uncle.
Outraged by the revisionist view of Shepard as a reckless adventurer who
was complicitous in his own death, DeBree suggested reporters consider the
indignity suffered by the victim's family the past two weeks.
He said there was "absolutely no proof" to support allegations of
Shepard's advance on McKinney: "It's an allegation of a suspect that's
looking down the barrel of a death sentence." He said he believed the other
two witnesses presented by the defense to show Shepard came on to straight
strangers also jumped to ridiculous conclusions. DeBree performed a rigorous
investigation into Shepard's sexual history and found no evidence to support
the characterization. "There was nothing in the history, never any attempt
like that."
DeBree is a big, burly Wyoming sheriff's detective, a man who would be
exceedingly out of place in the Castro or the East Village – the least likely
sort of person to be a shill for the gay community. "That is one thousand
percent torture, what occurred to that boy," he said.
About the writer: Dave Cullen is a Denver writer working on a memoir,
"In a Boy's Dream."
[Dave Cullen is online at davec...@earthlink.net]
FM> I find this latest passage very ironic. Judged solely by her writing,
FM> (I don't know Camille Paglia; Camille Paglia was never a friend of mine)
FM> I suspect that Ms Paglia is drawn to her subjects and opinions because
FM> they fairly scream controversy.
FM> In other words if she were a garden variety poster to a.p.h. I would
FM> dismiss her as a 'troll.'
FM> Am I being overly generous to her?
Depends on how broadly you're defining 'troll' I suppose. You
could say that Fred Phelps and his family waving Matt In Hell signs at
Matthew Shepard's funeral were trolls too I guess. Judging from the
massive FAX campaigning they're said to do, in order to keep the media
informed of who they're going to picket next, you'd have to admit that
getting attention is a big part of the reason they're doing what they do.
But that media attention also has the effect of furthering the pain of
their chosen targets, and when all is said and done I'm more willing to
believe that that's the intended goal, and their own self aggrandizement a
secondary, if not unwelcome side benefit.
I've been following Salon's coverage of the McKinney trial, which
has been excellent, despite Paglia's presence on the columnists menu. But
I had to laugh when I saw the title of her most recent column "Why Ellen
DeGeneres hates me". It's very tempting to put that kind of thing down to
arrested adolescence and nothing more...but when you see a grown adult
pissing on the grave of the victim of such a brutal crime as the one that
occurred in Laramie, then it's hard not to see the behavior for what it is.
What's going on here is a case of cruelty to others for the shear pleasure
of seeing the pain it causes. I suppose there's an element of 'trolling'
involved in that...but it's of a different nature then what you see on
Usenet.
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely
helps them to deceive themselves.
-Eric Hoffer
Thank you much for posting that...I've been following Salon's
coverage of the McKinney trial and missed that...I suppose for the same
reason the rest of the major news media missed it...the trial is over now.
But the image of Matthew Shepard as a sexual predator who provoked
his own murder is just too good for the gutter crowd (hi chris) to let go
I'm sure. They never did let facts get in their way.
Right from the beginning, when it was first insinuated that Shepard
had made a pass or something that provoked the violence, Shepard's friends
all were unanimous in saying that it wasn't in his character to do that
kind of thing. Everyone who knew him speaks of him as being a kind, gentle
and decent kind of guy. As horrific as it is to know that a couple of
lowlife thugs could have taken someone like that away from this earth, it's
all the more obscene to watch people who never knew him from Adam pissing
on his grave in order to make his killing seem reasonable.
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ One could laugh at the world better if it didn't
mix tender kindliness with its brutality.
-D. H. Lawrence
>A) There's not a shread of evidence that MS was 'cruising.'
(1) when he snuck out of the hotel in Morocco, he was looking for sex. He
found it. Lots of it.
(2) when he got the tar beaten out of him by some roughneck bartender in
Laramie some months before, it was in response to propositioning the guy.
(3) the confession that was posted here had one of the killers pretending to
be gay to lure Shepard out of the bar. What was the basis of the lure?
"We're gay come with us?" What limits will you go to make your point? Have
you a point? Hello? Hello?
>B) Laramie,
>Wyoming is not exactly New york City. I think there are an average of
>like 8 murders a year in the whole state of wyoming. People are a lot
>more trusting in this part of the country than they are in bigger
>states. It's a really big stretch to suggest that MS 'should have
>known' that if he got in a car with these guys he was going to be
>killed. Not that it matters what he 'should have known' anyway.
Yes it does matter that he 'should have known', because whether it was to be a
murder, a robbery, or yet another beating, there is no way that a pair as
stupid and grimy as those tow could have pulled off impersonating a gay man.
Period.
And it does matter because no hate crime law can protect people who have no
sense of self-preservation.
Changing the venue ... no woman deserves to be raped. But if a woman walks
around at 3 AM in unlit parts of bad neighborhoods in provocative clothing,
justice isn't necessarily present to interpose itself between her and
violence.
No woman deserves to be raped, but if if a small and frail woman leaves a
nasty-grimy tavern with a pair of thuggy-looking guys and ends up raped or
dead, it's wrong and unjust but any detective worth a snot is going to ask why
she left with them.
And if she had already been raped and beaten twice before, he's going to have
a shrink interview her to find out what the fuck is wrong with her sense of
caution, because something is waaaaaay wrong there.
And something was way wrong with Shepard.
A little prudence would have saved his life, and no hate crime law and no
after-the-fact hand-wringing about injustice can restore it. As long as the
world has people who are willing to murder to silence a witness to a $20
holdup, we have to, first and foremost, look out for ourselves. You must have
grubworms in your cerebrum if you can't see that.
>> In article <382948...@silver.sdsmt.edu>, zcw...@silver.sdsmt.edu wrote:
>>
>> >A) There's not a shread of evidence that MS was 'cruising.'
>>
>> (1) when he snuck out of the hotel in Morocco, he was looking for sex. He
>> found it. Lots of it.
>>
>> (2) when he got the tar beaten out of him by some roughneck bartender in
>> Laramie some months before, it was in response to propositioning the guy.
>
>Seriously, how do you *know* any of this? I have heard that he was
>assaulted, but how do you actually know that it was because of his
>sexual advances? Or are you just jumping to conclusions?
I read the news stories at the time. I seem to recall there were two
beatings as well as the Morocco gang-rape. I'm certain there was one:
a bartender in Laramie. Why do you insist I am making this up? Why
should I?
Let me get a little personal here ... when the story first broke, I
was as outraged as anyone, it was abhorrent. But then when I read of
Shepard's history, his whoring and the fact that he's had plenty of
opportunity to LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE and had gone ahead and repeated
the behavior that had gotten him assaulted before, I felt, well
*defiled*. I felt like the time I gave $20 to a street panhandler,
believing her story, and a few days later saw her in another part of
town crying a different story. I felt that my sympathy had been taken
advantage of. I felt USED. I didn't like it.
>> (3) the confession that was posted here had one of the killers pretending to
>> be gay to lure Shepard out of the bar. What was the basis of the lure?
>> "We're gay come with us?" What limits will you go to make your point? Have
>> you a point? Hello? Hello?
>
>There need not have been any 'lure,' per se. The two future killers
>probably either already knew Shepard was gay, or assumed it from
>observing him that night, then they decided to kind of feel out the
>situation to see if there was any way they could get him alone and
>'teach him a lesson.' They probably just started talking to him and
>found out he didn't have a car so they offered to give him a ride
>(either home, or to somewhere else he wanted to go).
Zoe ... one of the killers' confessions was released a few days ago;
he spoke of how they had retreated to the men's room and planned the
whole thing, that they knew Shepard was gay and had rich parents, so
they decided to pretend to be gay and lure him away from view to rob
him. At that time the beating was not part of the plan; that was
later, and was to "silence the witness." The pretext of their lure
was that they too were gay and they got him hot for a 3-way.
I don't know about you, but I would never in my life have exercised
such piss-poor judgment as to go private with a pair like that.
>> And it does matter because no hate crime law can protect people who have no
>> sense of self-preservation.
>
>That's not the point, for the zillionth time. Believe me, i avoid
>rednecks like the plague, but there should be no doubt as to where the
>legal and moral obligation lies; there is no legal or moral obligation
>for anyone to *avoid* others who wish to do them serious bodily harm for
>no good reason. There *is* an obligation *not to assault and murder.*
LIKE I SAID ... justice was on his side, it WAS wrong, hell I have
never said anything else! But justice isn't everywhere, and it was
not there that night. Yes there *is* an obligation not to assault and
murder, but not everyone obeys that obligation, and to act as though
there is some intangible force of justice always there to protect one
is insanity.
Where have I ever said otherwise?!?
>Again, that's not the point and it's irrelavent. Shit, i used to
>deliver pizzas in a bad part of Tampa FL; if i was to have been robbed
>(which i was), raped, kidnapped, or assaulted in the course of doing my
>job, the criminal is wrong, i'm not. it's that simple. To say anything
>otherwise is to seriously lower the bar of morality.
The criminal is wrong and you are right. Yes. But if you get killed,
morality won't resurrect you.
>> No woman deserves to be raped, but if if a small and frail woman leaves a
>> nasty-grimy tavern with a pair of thuggy-looking guys and ends up raped or
>> dead, it's wrong and unjust but any detective worth a snot is going to ask why
>> she left with them.
>
>That may be a natural response, but it's irrelavent to the determination
>of right and wrong. As i have said previously, you are conflating
>practicality with morality. No one is saying that people should not be
>cautious; what i am saying is that the moral obligation lies on people
>*not to assault and murder,* not to *avoid* those who would asault and
>murder.
Not to avoid those who would assault and murder?
Is that the advice you'd give to a gay kid living in the boonies? You
have a *right* to be what you are, therefore exercise no caution,
ever? Do you *really* mean that?
You say "No one is saying that people should not be cautious"
Then you say "not to *avoid* those who would asault and murder."
People don't always do the just and right thing. Henderson and
McKinney robbed and murdered Matthew Shepard for the $20 in his
wallet. People have been killed for fifteen cents. People have been
killed for going into the wrong neighborhood. Kids get killed in
school for wearing the wrong brand of sneakers. NONE of this is
right, ALL of this is wrong, but dammit staying alive is, well,
important!
"Right and wrong" are intangibles. There are people out there who
don't play by the rules. There are people out there who don't care if
they are being fair. There are people out there who behave like CJ
Watson writes. Right and wrong don't matter a hill of beans if one of
these people gets you alone with a gun.
>Co-dependent, self-destructive personalities certainly exist, and the
>person who has that personality is responsible for it; however any
>person who would assualt and murder is responsible for *their* behavior
>(regardless of whether the victim was stupid, self-destructive,
>incautious, etc.).
Of course. So what? Dead is dead. If codependency gets your teeth
knocked out, justice won't put them back.
>> And something was way wrong with Shepard.
>
>Look, you don't know anything about him; you're just making stuff up to
>suit your agenda.
"Agenda?" The only agenda I have is to go to bed in about 90 minutes
and go to work tomorrow and to the gym afterward. I have no agenda in
the sense you mean. I know that Shepard should have known better to
go private with scum like those two even had nothing ever happened to
him, and considering that he had been gang-raped and assaulted before,
the fact that he was a mess is beyond reasonably dispute.
>Even *if* everything you believe about him is true, IT'S IRRELAVENT.
No. it's not. His behavior and his inability to place caution before
gratification got him killed. That is relevant.
>So Shepard is responsible for being stupid. His
>killers are responsible for being murderers.
Exactly right.
>> A little prudence would have saved his life,
>
>Or a little respect for other people's lives being shown by his
>killers. However, it's not surprising that you put the responsibility
>on Shepard, instead of the murderers.
No, I don't do that. But I curse the stupidity and the impulsivity or
the naïvite whatever it was that led him to make SUCH a dumb and fatal
move. In case you think I believe otherwise, let me say it yet again:
I think those two losers should fry, and I rejoice at the fact that
they are in one of the nation's most brutal prisons, probably being
inflated with semen at this moment.
>For another thing, you don't know what it's like being a small, not very macho man.
I'm 5'8" myself. Not as diminutive as he, but hardly the stuff of
fearlessness.
>> and no hate crime law and no
>> after-the-fact hand-wringing about injustice can restore it. As long as the
>> world has people who are willing to murder to silence a witness to a $20
>> holdup, we have to, first and foremost, look out for ourselves. You must have
>> grubworms in your cerebrum if you can't see that.
>
>No one is saying that people should *not* look out for themselves. how
>many times does that have to be repeated?
But you said exactly that up above a few paragraphs. And many others
have said exactly the same in this endless debate. Garrett even wrote
that Shepard's impulsive behavior and his whoring were the stuff of
pride. Ideas like that, and the idea that justice protects people
from criminals when nobody else is around ... these are insane.
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
Senior Software Consultant
ICQ: 10792348
========================
"For too long, [gay liberationists] promoted the tragic lie that no avenue of sexuality was any better or nobler than any other; that all demands for responsibility or fidelity or commitment or even healthier psychological integration were covers for 'neoconservatism' or, worse, 'self-hatred'; that even in the teeth of viral catastrophe, saving lives was less important than saving a culture of 'promiscuity as a collective way of life', when of course, it was little more than a collective way of death. They demeaned gay men almost as surely as their unwitting allies, the fundamentalists. And they constructed and defended and glorified the abattoirs of the epidemic, even when they knew exactly what was going on.
"... they didn't help matters by a knee-jerk defense of catastrophic self-destruction, dressed up as cutting-edge theory. If the outside world was guilty of being an accomplice to AIDS by virtue of its negligence, then this inside world was guilty of being an accomplice by virtue of its knowledge. These insiders not only rationalized away a communal bloodbath; they justified the means for its continuance."
-- Andrew Sullivan, "Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival."
A) There's not a shread of evidence that MS was 'cruising.' B) Laramie,
Wyoming is not exactly New york City. I think there are an average of
like 8 murders a year in the whole state of wyoming. People are a lot
more trusting in this part of the country than they are in bigger
states. It's a really big stretch to suggest that MS 'should have
known' that if he got in a car with these guys he was going to be
killed. Not that it matters what he 'should have known' anyway.
zoe
>
>
> --
> Chris Fox
> http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
>
Seriously, how do you *know* any of this? I have heard that he was
assaulted, but how do you actually know that it was because of his
sexual advances? Or are you just jumping to conclusions?
>
> (3) the confession that was posted here had one of the killers pretending to
> be gay to lure Shepard out of the bar. What was the basis of the lure?
> "We're gay come with us?" What limits will you go to make your point? Have
> you a point? Hello? Hello?
There need not have been any 'lure,' per se. The two future killers
probably either already knew Shepard was gay, or assumed it from
observing him that night, then they decided to kind of feel out the
situation to see if there was any way they could get him alone and
'teach him a lesson.' They probably just started talking to him and
found out he didn't have a car so they offered to give him a ride
(either home, or to somewhere else he wanted to go).
>
> >B) Laramie,
> >Wyoming is not exactly New york City. I think there are an average of
> >like 8 murders a year in the whole state of wyoming. People are a lot
> >more trusting in this part of the country than they are in bigger
> >states. It's a really big stretch to suggest that MS 'should have
> >known' that if he got in a car with these guys he was going to be
> >killed. Not that it matters what he 'should have known' anyway.
>
> Yes it does matter that he 'should have known', because whether it was to be a
> murder, a robbery, or yet another beating, there is no way that a pair as
> stupid and grimy as those tow could have pulled off impersonating a gay man.
> Period.
I have pretty much felt that way from the beginning, which is why i
never believed that he hit on them. However, with a lot of effort on
their part (and alcohol/drugs), they might have been able to pull it
off, but i never thought that was an essential part of the story
anyway. They need not have pretended to be gay to get Shepard to accept
a ride from them. I don't know why you find that so incredible. I've
given rides to strangers and i've accepted rides from strangers (when my
car has broken down).
>
> And it does matter because no hate crime law can protect people who have no
> sense of self-preservation.
That's not the point, for the zillionth time. Believe me, i avoid
rednecks like the plague, but there should be no doubt as to where the
legal and moral obligation lies; there is no legal or moral obligation
for anyone to *avoid* others who wish to do them serious bodily harm for
no good reason. There *is* an obligation *not to assault and murder.*
>
> Changing the venue ... no woman deserves to be raped. But if a woman walks
> around at 3 AM in unlit parts of bad neighborhoods in provocative clothing,
> justice isn't necessarily present to interpose itself between her and
> violence.
Again, that's not the point and it's irrelavent. Shit, i used to
deliver pizzas in a bad part of Tampa FL; if i was to have been robbed
(which i was), raped, kidnapped, or assaulted in the course of doing my
job, the criminal is wrong, i'm not. it's that simple. To say anything
otherwise is to seriously lower the bar of morality.
>
> No woman deserves to be raped, but if if a small and frail woman leaves a
> nasty-grimy tavern with a pair of thuggy-looking guys and ends up raped or
> dead, it's wrong and unjust but any detective worth a snot is going to ask why
> she left with them.
That may be a natural response, but it's irrelavent to the determination
of right and wrong. As i have said previously, you are conflating
practicality with morality. No one is saying that people should not be
cautious; what i am saying is that the moral obligation lies on people
*not to assault and murder,* not to *avoid* those who would asault and
murder.
>
> And if she had already been raped and beaten twice before, he's going to have
> a shrink interview her to find out what the fuck is wrong with her sense of
> caution, because something is waaaaaay wrong there.
>
Co-dependent, self-destructive personalities certainly exist, and the
person who has that personality is responsible for it; however any
person who would assualt and murder is responsible for *their* behavior
(regardless of whether the victim was stupid, self-destructive,
incautious, etc.).
> And something was way wrong with Shepard.
Look, you don't know anything about him; you're just making stuff up to
suit your agenda. Even *if* everything you believe about him is true,
IT'S IRRELAVENT. So Shepard is responsible for being stupid. His
killers are responsible for being murderers.
>
> A little prudence would have saved his life,
Or a little respect for other people's lives being shown by his
killers. However, it's not surprising that you put the responsibility
on Shepard, instead of the murderers. For another thing, you don't know
what it's like being a small, not very macho man. He would have had to
have lived in a cave to avoid all the assholes trying to 'prove their
manhood' at his expense.
> and no hate crime law and no
> after-the-fact hand-wringing about injustice can restore it. As long as the
> world has people who are willing to murder to silence a witness to a $20
> holdup, we have to, first and foremost, look out for ourselves. You must have
> grubworms in your cerebrum if you can't see that.
No one is saying that people should *not* look out for themselves. how
many times does that have to be repeated?
zoe
>>> (1) when he snuck out of the hotel in Morocco, he was looking for sex.
>>> He found it. Lots of it.
>>> (2) when he got the tar beaten out of him by some roughneck bartender
>>> in Laramie some months before, it was in response to propositioning the
>>> guy.
>> Seriously, how do you *know* any of this? I have heard that he was
>> assaulted, but how do you actually know that it was because of his
>> sexual advances? Or are you just jumping to conclusions?
cf> I read the news stories at the time.
Not what you were saying a while ago chris:
"I don't consume a lot of news. I don't watch television or listen to
the radio and the newspapers in Seattle are shit."
Now suddenly you're reading the news carefully are you? Heh...
cf> I seem to recall there were two beatings as well as the Morocco
cf> gang-rape.
Do you seem to recall any stories where he, or anyone who knew him,
said that he went out looking for sex in Morocco? No. Because there
weren't any. The rape alone indicates to you that he was looking for sex.
You believe that being raped means someone was looking for sex. You
believe that being raped makes someone a slut. You believe that being
raped makes someone a whore. And you're wondering why so many people in
here are laughing their butts off every time you claim that you're some
kind of better man then all the queers you hate. You're an apologist for
rapists chris...and that's a mighty deep gutter to be living in. Isn't it?
cf> I'm certain there was one: a bartender in Laramie.
You're certain there was one. But there might have been two.
cf> Why do you insist I am making this up?
Making what up chris? That there were two beatings or that you're
certain there was one? You don't know what the hell was going on any more
then any of the rest of us...it's the conclusions you're drawing from the
known facts, that Shepard was Gay bashed, and that he was raped, and that
therefor he must have been a slut and a whore (your words describing him),
that makes you stand out here chris...kinda like a turd in the middle of a
dinning room table...
cf> Why should I?
Oh....because you hate queers?
cf> Let me get a little personal here ... when the story first broke, I
cf> was as outraged as anyone, it was abhorrent.
<laugh>
cf> But then when I read of Shepard's history, his whoring and the fact
cf> that he's had plenty of opportunity to LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE and had
cf> gone ahead and repeated the behavior that had gotten him assaulted
cf> before, I felt, well *defiled*.
<rolling on the floor laughing> Defiled? Defiled? The guy who
once cruised the bushes for sex is feeling a little unclean is he? The guy
who once said that he's had plenty of straight guys and never got beaten up
for it because he did it with more finesse then Matthew Shepard is feeling
somewhat soiled? The guy who said that the only difference between a
Straight guy and a Gay guy is a couple of drinks is feeling used and
abused? How...pray...could you tell?
cf> I felt USED. I didn't like it.
Sorta like having someone get you drunk just to get in your pants
eh?
cf> Zoe ... one of the killers' confessions was released a few days ago;
cf> he spoke of how they had retreated to the men's room and planned the
cf> whole thing, that they knew Shepard was gay and had rich parents, so
cf> they decided to pretend to be gay and lure him away from view to rob
cf> him.
And here all this time you were telling us that Shepard came onto
them because they were straight, and he liked cruising for dangerous sex
with straight guys who were likely to beat him up. Now...when it's
convenient...you admit that Shepard wasn't doing this. They =Were= leading
him on. That fact alone contradicts nearly everything you've said to date
about what happened. You said Shepard came on to Them. You said Shepard
was deliberately cruising straight guys and that he had to expect that it
would get him in trouble. Never mind the gag order that prevented all of
this from coming out until now...from the very first reports it was clear
that this wasn't the case at all. You fabricated every so called "fact"
about what happened out of thin air. No...out of your loathing of
homosexuals...queers...people you're not...because you're one of the
"overtly masculine men who suck cocks"...as opposed to the "girly boys."
cf> I don't know about you, but I would never in my life have exercised
cf> such piss-poor judgment as to go private with a pair like that.
You were a discriminating bush troller were you? How nice.
cf> LIKE I SAID ... justice was on his side, it WAS wrong, hell I have
cf> never said anything else!
Yes you have. You've said he had it coming. That, and all your
pusillanimous lies about his character that you had to wave around in here,
to excuse your saying he had it coming.
cf> You say "No one is saying that people should not be cautious"
cf> Then you say "not to *avoid* those who would asault and murder."
Avoid...how? Oh...right...by staying away from the working
classes. Right? They were working class poor. Their clothes weren't up
to your standards. They drank cheap beer. Probably their hair wasn't
combed. That should have told Shepard everything...right? He was the son
of rich parents and he should have known to stay away from people like
that...right...?
cf> "Agenda?" The only agenda I have is to go to bed in about 90 minutes
cf> and go to work tomorrow and to the gym afterward.
...and feed the queers to the wolves if that will benefit you.
You've said this in here many times chris, and it tells everyone what's
going on in that open sewer you call a conscience. It's all right with you
if you can gain something at the expense of other homosexuals...in fact
it's more then all right...it's your policy. The ethics of the bush gets a
shave and a haircut and a new suit of clothes and starts calling itself
statesmanship. But a harpy in a polo shirt is still a harpy...
>> Even *if* everything you believe about him is true, IT'S IRRELAVENT.
cf> No. it's not. His behavior and his inability to place caution before
cf> gratification got him killed. That is relevant.
It's relevant that you can't see any possible motivation beyond
gratification. And look carefully at what you're saying here: you're
problem with what he did wasn't that he was seeking gratification...but
that he wasn't careful...and you think you're the better man, because you
are.
But what if Shepard was simply seeking out friendship and
companionship? Despite having been attacked before...despite having wounds
to bear...suppose he was still reaching out to find that trust and
companionship...and that's what got him killed that night? That
possibility is utterly incomprehensible to you, isn't it fox? You just
don't understand how that can be...do you? What are you going to tell your
boyfriend, when he sees that final, that ultimate, emptiness that is the
core of your spirit chris? I think I know...you're going to shrug your
shoulders, look him in the eye, and tell him to grow up.
>>> A little prudence would have saved his life,
>> Or a little respect for other people's lives being shown by his
>> killers. However, it's not surprising that you put the responsibility
>> on Shepard, instead of the murderers.
cf> No, I don't do that.
Yes...you do. Right here:
cf> But I curse the stupidity and the impulsivity or the naïvite whatever it
cf> was that led him to make SUCH a dumb and fatal move.
They lured him out of there...you finally admitted it above. But
you're still insisting that Shepard was responsible for what happened. It
was =his= naivete, not their greed. It was =his= impulsiveness, not their
criminality. His was the fatal move...his killers behavior, his killers
actions, were merely in response to =his= naivete, to =his= impulsiveness.
You neatly shift the burden for what happened onto the victim, who you
hate, and away from the killers, who, in their greed and perdition, have
something in common with you.
>> For another thing, you don't know what it's like being a small, not very
>> macho man.
cf> I'm 5'8" myself.
Yeah...and an "overtly masculine" man who "likes to suck
cocks"...as opposed to the "girly boys." Hearing about how small
and slight he was couldn't have helped him any in your regard could it
chris?
cf> Garrett even wrote that Shepard's impulsive behavior and his whoring
cf> were the stuff of pride.
He lived his life openly, and to the end, despite everything that
happened to him, kept living openly. That you call that whoring says all
that needs to be said about your own claims of openness. You're out in a
work environment, as a contract software developer, where being out isn't an
issue. You live in a fairly tolerant community. You wouldn't dare be as
open somewhere else, and you've said often enough that people who are, are
loud and obnoxious queers who are asking for it. You'll never know what
courage is, but you could probably write a textbook on the subject of
envy. You could start with what it feels like to owe your freedom to live
openly, even in safe places, to people you despise.
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge
ourselves with railing against it.
-Michel de Montaigne
snip....
>Let me get a little personal here ... when the story first broke, I
>was as outraged as anyone, it was abhorrent. But then when I read of
>Shepard's history, his whoring and the fact that he's had plenty of
>opportunity to LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE and had gone ahead and repeated
>the behavior that had gotten him assaulted before, I felt, well
>*defiled*. I felt like the time I gave $20 to a street panhandler,
>believing her story, and a few days later saw her in another part of
>town crying a different story. I felt that my sympathy had been taken
>advantage of. I felt USED. I didn't like it.
WHERE did you read this about his "whoring" around?
Presuming that it is all true, then he was a lusty young man that
enjoyed sex. He should die for that?? He should be beaten to death??
Your prissy sense of sexuality is your own choice--but again you
implicitly JUSTIFY his being murdered--you pander to the "homosexual
panic" "defense" when you go this route. It is abominable.
And you justify blaming the victim tactics of the right-wing psychos.
Fuck that.
snip...
>Zoe ... one of the killers' confessions was released a few days ago;
>he spoke of how they had retreated to the men's room and planned the
>whole thing, that they knew Shepard was gay and had rich parents, so
>they decided to pretend to be gay and lure him away from view to rob
>him. At that time the beating was not part of the plan; that was
>later, and was to "silence the witness." The pretext of their lure
>was that they too were gay and they got him hot for a 3-way.
>
>I don't know about you, but I would never in my life have exercised
>such piss-poor judgment as to go private with a pair like that.
Really? So what, even if that's true?
Your 20-20 hindsight is just so peachy for its public policy
implications.
snip...
>LIKE I SAID ... justice was on his side, it WAS wrong, hell I have
>never said anything else! But justice isn't everywhere, and it was
>not there that night. Yes there *is* an obligation not to assault and
>murder, but not everyone obeys that obligation, and to act as though
>there is some intangible force of justice always there to protect one
>is insanity.
>
>Where have I ever said otherwise?!?
By attacking the victim in the heinous and disgusting way you have. By
applying the "he was so dumb then he deserved it" message that you
cling to. It's revolting.
>>Again, that's not the point and it's irrelavent. Shit, i used to
>>deliver pizzas in a bad part of Tampa FL; if i was to have been robbed
>>(which i was), raped, kidnapped, or assaulted in the course of doing my
>>job, the criminal is wrong, i'm not. it's that simple. To say anything
>>otherwise is to seriously lower the bar of morality.
>
>The criminal is wrong and you are right. Yes. But if you get killed,
>morality won't resurrect you.
This is true. But this doesn't support an argument of kowtowing to a
culture's homophobia--which is EXACTLY what you are doing.
snip...
snip...
>"Right and wrong" are intangibles. There are people out there who
>don't play by the rules. There are people out there who don't care if
>they are being fair. There are people out there who behave like CJ
>Watson writes. Right and wrong don't matter a hill of beans if one of
>these people gets you alone with a gun.
Yes, but your jumping on the "attack the victim" bandwagon doesn't
help to address these issues, does it?
The issues are we need better education in our schools. We need less
blaming the victim. We need recognition of the rights of gay people to
marry and not be treated like second class citizens or worse.
But everything is OK with you so nothing needs to change, right?
Thank the gods and godlets the world doesn't revolve just around you.
George M. Carter
>> LIKE I SAID ... justice was on his side, it WAS wrong, hell I have
>> never said anything else! But justice isn't everywhere, and it was
>> not there that night. Yes there *is* an obligation not to assault and
>> murder, but not everyone obeys that obligation, and to act as though
>> there is some intangible force of justice always there to protect one
>> is insanity.
>> Where have I ever said otherwise?!?
GC> By attacking the victim in the heinous and disgusting way you have. By
GC> applying the "he was so dumb then he deserved it" message that you
GC> cling to. It's revolting.
He's not just implying it...he's said it outright:
"If college kids went into some bar in a steelworking town and started
smart-assing the locals, they'd get just as dead as you poster-boy
[ie: Matthew Shepard]. They too would be asking for it, and yes this
*does* happen."
He really does believe that Shepard had it coming. The question is
whether or not he honestly believe that Shepard had it coming just for
looking for sex. Leaving aside for a moment, the plain fact that even if
he was this doesn't even remotely begin to excuse what was done to
him...the reality here is that all of fox's rhetoric on this subject
proceeds from the basis that the fact Shepard was assaulted, and even
gang raped, in the past, proves that he was some kind of sexual compulsive,
drawn to having dangerous sexual encounters. It is grotesque, it is
obscene, to turn a victim of violence and rape into this merely for the
fact that they were the victims of it...and make no mistake, that's just
what fox is doing here.
Does he really believe all this. I don't think so. What we're
seeing here is cruelty for it's own sake. fox, like Fred Phelps, is
twisting the knife in everyone's grief over this horrific crime, knowing
that the only people who are going to be pained over it, are the sort of
people he despises anyway.
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ "...that poor unfortunate boy in, where was it?
South Dakota? That man was a predator to
heterosexual men."
-Anthony Falzarano, PFOX Ex-President
>On Tue, 09 Nov 1999 23:14:03 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>snip....
>Presuming that it is all true, then he was a lusty young man that
>enjoyed sex. He should die for that?? He should be beaten to death??
>
>Your prissy sense of sexuality is your own choice--but again you
>implicitly JUSTIFY his being murdered--you pander to the "homosexual
>panic" "defense" when you go this route. It is abominable.
>
>And you justify blaming the victim tactics of the right-wing psychos.
>Fuck that.
Look, GM ShortBus, your reading comprehension is so poor I'm not even
going to reply to this. I've written nothing of what you quote me as
writing.
"He should be beaten to death" Get a fucking grip.
"yer honor, it was all her fault with that mini skirt and tight blouse
she was asking for it. No real man could help hisself."
>A) There's not a shread of evidence that MS was 'cruising.' B) Laramie,
>Wyoming is not exactly New york City. I think there are an average of
>like 8 murders a year in the whole state of wyoming. People are a lot
>more trusting in this part of the country than they are in bigger
>states. It's a really big stretch to suggest that MS 'should have
>known' that if he got in a car with these guys he was going to be
>killed. Not that it matters what he 'should have known' anyway.
>
>zoe
Back when Camille was writing "Sexual Personae" -- back before she
acquired a taste for publicity she spoke quite otherwise about the
nature of male sexuality -- folks really ought to read SP, her first
book and magnum opus, very interesting, provocative stuff and funny as
hell.
NOW she seems to have reinvented herself as a dyke and has taken on
some particularly poisonous positions and decided that she has lost
all her previously admiration for gay males.
In the words of Emily Dickenson, whom she so extravagantly admired,
"all public like a frog."
ward
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"The default condition for a citizen in our republic is that
he is FREE to act as he will. He is NOT to be restricted by
prejudices and animosity amongst his neighbors -- if THEY
wish to restrain him from his freedom, THEY must demonstrate
the public interest in so restricting him."
Uncle Ward
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Reading past all her self-adulation there remains a writer of many
scintillating insights. On the balance, I find her worth reading.
However .. it is not any admiration for gay *males* that may have changed
(I'll take your word for it .. I've never read "Sexual Personae" but I've
known several people whose opinions I respect who swore by the book); it is
her view of gay male culture that is at absolute rock-bottom, and when she
writes about it, I find myself in complete agreement. Gay male culture in
America is stultifyingly superficial, is politically frivolous, and has
nothing to offer to anyone with any expectations for his life higher than
those of a typical six-year-old boy.
That is a very different thing than "gay males," since most gay males have
only a tenuous connection to gay culture and most of us would like to see it
drop its many fetalizations and bigotries in favor of something that better
addressed the maturity of its majority.
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
"You have the power to change your world
ELW> "yer honor, it was all her fault with that mini skirt and tight blouse
ELW> she was asking for it. No real man could help hisself."
Exactly. It's one thing for the predator to make his defense
attacking his victim...that sort of thing would hardly be out of character
for a predator after all...but what of the jurors who buy it? What does it
make you, when you sympathize with a sexual predator, and against their
prey?
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you
want to test a man's character, give him power.
-Abraham Lincoln
>Bruce Garrett <bgar...@pobox.com> wrote in message
>news:80c3r7$l...@edrn.newsguy.com...
>> gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) writes...
>> In response to "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Log"
><chri...@earthlink.net>...
>>
<the usual Garrett handkerchief-wringing snipped>
>> Does he really believe all this. I don't think so. What we're
>> seeing here is cruelty for it's own sake. fox, like Fred Phelps, is
>> twisting the knife in everyone's grief over this horrific crime, knowing
>> that the only people who are going to be pained over it, are the sort of
>> people he despises anyway.
Grief?
Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
What an Atlas you must be, bearing on your shoulders every
prematurely-ended life, the loss of every person before his time ..
there being so many murders, so many young deaths to disease, the
endless and unbearable tragedy of wars and earthquakes and famines and
plagues ... I'd be worn out in an hour! And you are still grieving
for the death of a single stranger halfway across the continent a year
ago! Wow!
Oh, wait, you *don't* grieve over every tragedy in the news ... not at
all ... not the 'quake victims and not the plane crashes ... just the
gay ones, huh?
Oh, not all of them, either ... you use their stories as ammunition,
as bloody rags to wave in the faces of people who have the unmitigated
temerity to not see things your way, at people like Chris Fox who say,
"things are not so bad."
You only care about the *cute* ones, don't you, Bruce?
You only care about the *young* and "Gay" ones, don't you Bruce?
Do you wonder why I think of you and Watson as indistinguishable?
A bigot is a bigot is a bigot. And you, Bruce Garrett, are a bigot.
I'm not calling you a wimp, and I could work myself into a good cry
over any one of a billion other tragedies, though frankly nothing
human cuts me as deeply as cruelty to an animal.
The point is not that Shepard's story is anything but a hideous
tragedy, but that Garrett's "grief" seems earmarked for cute young gay
men. I could get just as worked up at any closely-examined early
death, and every bit as wasted by the death of a straight woman as a
gay man. The world is full of tragedy and horror. I don't reserve my
compassion for "my own kind." That's no better than white supremacy.
But to elevate the tragedy of "one of our own" over others' strikes me
as bigotry, and to elevate the tragedy of individual humans over the
near-DAILY extinction of an entire species makes me want to spit.
Glaucous Macaw - extinct
Spix's Macaw - less than 100 remaining
Muhlenberg's Turtle - almost or now extinct
ALL of them gone.
As opposed to ONE PERSON.
What i am saying is that i find it hard to believe that anyone *knows*
the details of what went on in those situations. I snuck out of my
house a few times when i was a kid, but no one other than me and the
people i was with *know* what went on. To have someone today try to
reconstruct what happened on any particular night of my life would be
nothing but speculation. In such a situation, i tend to give people the
benefit of the doubt.
>
> Let me get a little personal here ... when the story first broke, I
> was as outraged as anyone, it was abhorrent. But then when I read of
> Shepard's history, his whoring and the fact that he's had plenty of
> opportunity to LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE and had gone ahead and repeated
> the behavior that had gotten him assaulted before, I felt, well
> *defiled*. I felt like the time I gave $20 to a street panhandler,
> believing her story, and a few days later saw her in another part of
> town crying a different story. I felt that my sympathy had been taken
> advantage of. I felt USED. I didn't like it.
The point is that there is absolutely no way for you to know those
details. It seems to me that given a number of possible explainations
for Matt's previous assaults, you have just chosen to go with the one
that fits your view that gay people are not subject to these kind of
asaults unless they ask for it.
>
> >> (3) the confession that was posted here had one of the killers pretending to
> >> be gay to lure Shepard out of the bar. What was the basis of the lure?
> >> "We're gay come with us?" What limits will you go to make your point? Have
> >> you a point? Hello? Hello?
> >
> >There need not have been any 'lure,' per se. The two future killers
> >probably either already knew Shepard was gay, or assumed it from
> >observing him that night, then they decided to kind of feel out the
> >situation to see if there was any way they could get him alone and
> >'teach him a lesson.' They probably just started talking to him and
> >found out he didn't have a car so they offered to give him a ride
> >(either home, or to somewhere else he wanted to go).
>
> Zoe ... one of the killers' confessions was released a few days ago;
> he spoke of how they had retreated to the men's room and planned the
> whole thing, that they knew Shepard was gay and had rich parents, so
> they decided to pretend to be gay and lure him away from view to rob
> him. At that time the beating was not part of the plan; that was
> later, and was to "silence the witness." The pretext of their lure
> was that they too were gay and they got him hot for a 3-way.
I have heard bits of this, but keep in mind that a killer's confession
is not necessarily to be taken as gospel. A robbery gone bad probably
sounds a little better than premeditated two-on-one assault and murder
of a 5'1" 105lb gay guy.
>
> I don't know about you, but I would never in my life have exercised
> such piss-poor judgment as to go private with a pair like that.
*I* probably wouldn't have either, but #1) I'm a lot more suspicious
than i was when i was 21, and #2) those two guys in a pickup truck in
*wyoming* do not send nearly the same messages they would in San
Francisco. For the most part, they are within the range of average
looking for young men out here; i'd say they're towards the seedy end of
average looking, but there isn't really anything about them that would
alert a *naive, trusting* person.
> >Again, that's not the point and it's irrelavent. Shit, i used to
> >deliver pizzas in a bad part of Tampa FL; if i was to have been robbed
> >(which i was), raped, kidnapped, or assaulted in the course of doing my
> >job, the criminal is wrong, i'm not. it's that simple. To say anything
> >otherwise is to seriously lower the bar of morality.
>
> The criminal is wrong and you are right. Yes. But if you get killed,
> morality won't resurrect you.
Yes, but that is not the issue. I think we need to clarify some terms;
when i say 'wrong' i am speaking of *morally wrong,* i.e. actions that
cause harm to others. I don't consider being incautious to be morally
wrong (unless one is incautious in such a way that other people's lives
are endangered). Obviously, MS made an unwise decision to go with those
men, in light of what happened, but he was not morally 'wrong.' It
seems that you are placing MS's actions in the same category as that of
his killers, if not in degree, at least in kind.
>
> >> No woman deserves to be raped, but if if a small and frail woman leaves a
> >> nasty-grimy tavern with a pair of thuggy-looking guys and ends up raped or
> >> dead, it's wrong and unjust but any detective worth a snot is going to ask why
> >> she left with them.
> >
> >That may be a natural response, but it's irrelavent to the determination
> >of right and wrong. As i have said previously, you are conflating
> >practicality with morality. No one is saying that people should not be
> >cautious; what i am saying is that the moral obligation lies on people
> >*not to assault and murder,* not to *avoid* those who would asault and
> >murder.
>
> Not to avoid those who would assault and murder?
>
> Is that the advice you'd give to a gay kid living in the boonies? You
> have a *right* to be what you are, therefore exercise no caution,
> ever? Do you *really* mean that?
>
> You say "No one is saying that people should not be cautious"
>
> Then you say "not to *avoid* those who would asault and murder."
The wording was not the best; i simply meant that the *moral obligation*
is not on people to avoid murderers, the moral obligation is on people
*not to murder.* I'm not saying that people should not take prudent
measures to prevent themselves from becoming victims of crime, but if a
person does become a victim of crime, their own incautiousness is
completely irrelavent to the assignment of blame. *Murder* is morally
wrong. Not avoiding a murderer is *not* morally wrong. Please, they're
not even in the same universe. We as a society do not need laws and
morals to protect ourselves from the Matthew Shepards of the world; we
need them to protect us from the McKinneys and Hendersons. That message
*should* be crystal clear. it seems to me that you are trying to blur
naivite into a moral failing, and promote the idea that MS 'shares the
blame' for what happened to him. IMO, right is right and wrong is
wrong, and there is nothing wrong with accepting a ride from somebody.
There is something wrong with murder.
>
> >Even *if* everything you believe about him is true, IT'S IRRELAVENT.
>
> No. it's not. His behavior and his inability to place caution before
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> gratification got him killed. That is relevant.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Wrong. Do you understand the notion of a *direct* causal relationship?
Matthew shepard's behavior did not 'get him killed.' He could have
hitch-hiked around the world and it wouldn't have hurt him a bit. The
thing that got him killed was when those guys brought the butt of a
pistol down on his head really hard. By your thinking, there should be
no such thing as laws against murder, because (as every murderer will
tell you) the victim always does something that 'provokes' the murder,
so it's really the *victim's* behavior that gets him/her killed.
>
> >So Shepard is responsible for being stupid. His
> >killers are responsible for being murderers.
>
> Exactly right.
Stupidity is not a crime. It is not even a moral failing. to suggest
that stupidity even remotely excuses murder or shifts the blame onto the
victim is just plain wrong.
>
> >> A little prudence would have saved his life,
> >
> >Or a little respect for other people's lives being shown by his
> >killers. However, it's not surprising that you put the responsibility
> >on Shepard, instead of the murderers.
>
> No, I don't do that.
YOu just said it. (highlighted above) You've said it many times.
> But I curse the stupidity and the impulsivity or
> the naïvite whatever it was that led him to make SUCH a dumb and fatal
> move.
When you curse MS's behavior ten times for every time you curse the
murderers' behavior, it makes people wonder who you're really blaming.
zoe
>On Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:49:36 GMT, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 09 Nov 1999 23:14:03 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
>><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>snip....
>
>>Presuming that it is all true, then he was a lusty young man that
>>enjoyed sex. He should die for that?? He should be beaten to death??
>>
>>Your prissy sense of sexuality is your own choice--but again you
>>implicitly JUSTIFY his being murdered--you pander to the "homosexual
>>panic" "defense" when you go this route. It is abominable.
>>
>>And you justify blaming the victim tactics of the right-wing psychos.
>>Fuck that.
>
>Look, GM ShortBus, your reading comprehension is so poor I'm not even
>going to reply to this. I've written nothing of what you quote me as
>writing.
Good sign. Maybe you're even getting how indefensible some of your
horseshit is. Bravo!
George M. Carter
OK Fox... so go ahead and call me a wimp but I read the Victim
Impact Statement by Mr. Shepard from the trial and it moved me to
tears to the point that I had to stop reading and come back to it
later only to end up shedding more tears.
Go read it for yourself at http://listen.to/gayisok then click the
'Dennis Shepard’s statement to the court 11/4/99' link. Tell me it
does not cause you to feel grief or bring a tear to your eye.
On a related note: In his statement, Mr. Shepard says "I find it
intolerable that the priests of the Catholic Church and the Newman
Center would attempt to influence the jury, the prosecution, and the
outcome of this trial by their castigation and persecution of Mr.
Rerucha and his family in his private life, by their newspaper
advertisements, and by their presence in the courtroom."
Does anyone have more into on this? What ads were run and what did
they say? How come the Catholic church, who claim that sexual
orientation is "God given", got "involved" in this trial?
>
>The point is not that Shepard's story is anything but a hideous
>tragedy, but that Garrett's "grief" seems earmarked for cute young gay
>men. I could get just as worked up at any closely-examined early
>death, and every bit as wasted by the death of a straight woman as a
>gay man. The world is full of tragedy and horror. I don't reserve my
>compassion for "my own kind." That's no better than white supremacy.
>
>But to elevate the tragedy of "one of our own" over others' strikes me
>as bigotry, and to elevate the tragedy of individual humans over the
>near-DAILY extinction of an entire species makes me want to spit.
Goddammit, there's a lot more to it that that.
Ever know some perfectly nice little kid who ends up dead? Like one
of my parents' friends had a neighbor kid I used to see whenever we
went over to their house ... we were kids then too, and we usually
ended up gamboling around with the friends' kids and this neighbor kid
when our parents were visiting. One day my Dad told me that this
kid's father had gone into some stupid drunken rage and had killed his
own stepson.
And then there was the 12-year ofl son of another of my parent's
friends, who will never walk again or even move his fucking THUMB
because some goddamn drunk tradesman with a beard rear-ended their car
and crippled the kid for life. Twelve years old.
These kids never had a fucking chance. They never got to experience
anything of life and now they never will. I could go on and on, but
these two spring to mind. Kids with murderous drinking parents, nice
kids, friendly kids, trusting kids, betrayed kids.
Never get a chance. Never hurt anyone. Dead, crippled, blind,
betrayed.
Then we have Matthew Shepard .. LONE LEE and HOR NEE so he sneaks out
of the hotel looking to get his NEEDS MET and manged to get them met
by a whole gang of Moroccan street kids.
But he survives! How LUCKY! Not many get a second chance after
something like that .. one of the gang could have killed him or
blinded him or castrated him just for kicks. But no! He gets a
second chance! He gets another opportunity to learn from the
experience and get on the right track! Not like some 12-year-old
lying in a hospital bed with nothing but the ceiling to look at until
a bedsore gets infected and kills him ...
Cut to Laramie, Matthew has decided that he's too LONE LEE an' HOR
NEE, an' why should he deny himself what he WANTS? He likes to take
sexual risks, after all .. it's FUN! Wheeee!!! Morocco is forgotten,
there's the thrill of the chase ... so he heads to Cheyenne with his
slut-buddied and they play Russian Roulette with strange men! Life is
good! it's ... FUN!
Oh, but *this* weekend there's no way there .. and mmmmMMMMMMm just
*look* at that HOT STUD tending bar over there ... he looks SO BUTCH
and so MEAN and mmmMMMMmmm!!! Just my type! Well, he's probably
straight (BORE ring dah ling!) but hey, that's not MY problem ... I
know what I want an I want it NOW!
Another beating ... and this time he survives again. You'd think that
would be enough .. but he gets a THIRD chance! Yet another
opportunity to mend his compulsive and slutty ways and get serious.
But hey! That would mean .. NOT GETTING WHAT HE WANTS! And once
again the bruises heal, the loose teeth reseat themselves ... and
comes another night, and Matthew is LONE LEE an' HOR NEE again.
This time his luck runs out in a spectacular fashion. Strike OUT.
It remains a tragedy ... make no mistake about it ... but when I think
of the two chances he had to wise the fuck UP and the chances he threw
away in favor of capitiulating to the slutty thrill-seeking that had
become his pattern of behavior, and when I compare that to some dead
child who never got ONE chance, or some kid lying in the hospital
unable to turn his own HEAD, excuse MOI if I don't get just a little,
well, COLD inside about the fact that Matthew Shepard should have
known better. He had at least two chances more than a lot of others
get.
snipped signs of compassion...
>Then we have Matthew Shepard .. LONE LEE and HOR NEE so he sneaks out
>of the hotel looking to get his NEEDS MET and manged to get them met
>by a whole gang of Moroccan street kids.
This sums it up, Chris. Your arrogant hatred of the weakness of
someone who is lonely and/or horny. That now you can justify sneering
at his death by murder. That you can diminish the horrendousness of
the crime by pointing accusing, arrogant, brutal and uncompassionate
fingers of disdain at someone who was murdered.
This is reprehensible. It is disgusting. It is vile. It is homophobic
and vicious. But you just don't get that, do you?
George M. Carter
>Grief?
>
>Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
>are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
>What an Atlas you must be, bearing on your shoulders every
>prematurely-ended life, the loss of every person before his time ..
>there being so many murders, so many young deaths to disease, the
>endless and unbearable tragedy of wars and earthquakes and famines and
>plagues ... I'd be worn out in an hour! And you are still grieving
>for the death of a single stranger halfway across the continent a year
>ago! Wow!
Believe it or not, Chris, some people do feel grief over the people
who incurred tragedy and have found themselves in the media because of
it. Some actually feel joy and elation when it's "good" news being
reported! I can give you, just off the top of my head, two examples
from myself in recent years:
1. A few years ago, the National Figure Skating Championship was held
in San Jose, CA. The San Jose Mercury News ran a front-page, below the
fold, picture of Rudy Galindo taken at the moment he realized his
scores were enough to gain him the championship. The picture was
close-up, very clear... and quite moving. The range of emotions
showing on his face brought a fast smile to my face and tears to my
eyes, immediately. Despite the supposition that all figure-skaters,
the male ones, anyway, are gay; I did not know of Galindo's
orientation until I read the article, so "gay pride" had absolutely
nothing to do with it. It was the person and the accomplishment - and
the photographer's evidence of what that accomplishment meant for him,
personally - that moved me.
2. JonBenet Ramsey. The first time I saw her photograph I, again, was
moved to tears for this little girl, quickly followed by disgust at a
set of parents who would paint their little girl up like some
post-pubescent trollop and parade her around.
Its' called "compassion," Chris, and empathy. MOST human beings
possess the ability to feel these things... those that don't normally
have recognized social disorders ranging from the mild to being an
actual sociopath.
You CONSTANT insistence that Matthew Shepard was, in part, to blame
for his own death, while CONSTANTLY changing the reasons as to just
why he had partial responsibility, ultimately boils down to one thing,
and one thing only: MS was responsible for his own death because he
didn't have the good sense not to go out that night, but should have
stayed home.
Eric Payne
Livermore, CA
> On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 02:00:20 -0500, "L. Michael Roberts"
> <News...@SpamSux.LaserFX.com> wrote:
>
> >> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
> >> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
> >> What an Atlas you must be, bearing on your shoulders every
> >> prematurely-ended life, the loss of every person before his time ..
> >> there being so many murders, so many young deaths to disease, the
> >> endless and unbearable tragedy of wars and earthquakes and famines and
> >> plagues ... I'd be worn out in an hour! And you are still grieving
> >> for the death of a single stranger halfway across the continent a year
> >> ago! Wow!
> >
> > OK Fox... so go ahead and call me a wimp but I read the Victim
> >Impact Statement by Mr. Shepard from the trial and it moved me to
> >tears to the point that I had to stop reading and come back to it
> >later only to end up shedding more tears.
> > Go read it for yourself at http://listen.to/gayisok then click the
> >'Dennis Shepard?s statement to the court 11/4/99' link. Tell me it
> >does not cause you to feel grief or bring a tear to your eye.
>
> I'm not calling you a wimp, and I could work myself into a good cry
> over any one of a billion other tragedies, though frankly nothing
> human cuts me as deeply as cruelty to an animal.
>
> The point is not that Shepard's story is anything but a hideous
> tragedy, but that Garrett's "grief" seems earmarked for cute young gay
> men. I could get just as worked up at any closely-examined early
> death, and every bit as wasted by the death of a straight woman as a
> gay man. The world is full of tragedy and horror. I don't reserve my
> compassion for "my own kind." That's no better than white supremacy.
>
> But to elevate the tragedy of "one of our own" over others' strikes me
> as bigotry, and to elevate the tragedy of individual humans over the
> near-DAILY extinction of an entire species makes me want to spit.
>
> Glaucous Macaw - extinct
> Spix's Macaw - less than 100 remaining
> Muhlenberg's Turtle - almost or now extinct
>
> ALL of them gone.
>
> As opposed to ONE PERSON.
Just out of curiosity, Chris...
Do you mourn equally for all those extinctions that occurred on a
regular basis BEFORE humans inhabited the earth?
--
John
NOTE: "From" address is deliberately wrong.
My correct e-mail address is:
desalvio["AT" SYMBOL]monitor.net
>On Wed, 10 Nov 1999 10:59:51 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:49:36 GMT, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 09 Nov 1999 23:14:03 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
>>><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>snip....
>>
>>>Presuming that it is all true, then he was a lusty young man that
>>>enjoyed sex. He should die for that?? He should be beaten to death??
>>>
>>>Your prissy sense of sexuality is your own choice--but again you
>>>implicitly JUSTIFY his being murdered--you pander to the "homosexual
>>>panic" "defense" when you go this route. It is abominable.
>>>
>>>And you justify blaming the victim tactics of the right-wing psychos.
>>>Fuck that.
>>
>>Look, GM ShortBus, your reading comprehension is so poor I'm not even
>>going to reply to this. I've written nothing of what you quote me as
>>writing.
>
>Good sign. Maybe you're even getting how indefensible some of your
>horseshit is. Bravo!
>
> George M. Carter
Perhaps there has been a general failure of reading ability --
strangely enough my interpretation of your defensive internalized
homophobia is exactly the same as Carter's
You may or may not mean what it is that you are saying; you may or may
not understand what it is that you are saying, but there can be no
doubt that YOU ARE SAYING IT!
Poor judgement is NOT a justification for homicide, not even remotely
save in your posts, and those of your fellow homophobes.
ward
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
"Love, like a mountain-wind upon an oak,
Falling upon me, shakes me leaf and bough."
Sappho of Lesbos
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
s'matter with your kill file chris? Need some help getting
it to work...?
cf> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
cf> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
I can still recall the feeling I had when I read this:
"There was abundant evidence to use to formally charge McKinney, said
prosecutor Calvin Rerucha as he opened the hearing with an emotional
statement and recounted the witnesses he planned to call. Rerucha
briefly described the grisly crime. Shepard was covered with blood,
he said. Only one clean spot was found on his face "where tears had
run down." He powerfully described how Shepard remained tied to a
fence, with the "constant Wyoming wind as his companion," for 18
hours before he was found."
-Court TV Nov. 19, 1998
...I'd try and describe it for you...but that would be like trying
to get one of his killers to actually feel remorse, wouldn't it? I hear
when they first put him in the slammer, McKinney was signing autographs for
the other innmates...
cf> You only care about the *cute* ones, don't you, Bruce?
And according to you, you care more about abused children then
about Matthew Shepard. Do I draw the conclusion from that, that you're a
pedophile...?
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ I have always considered it as treason against the
great republic of human nature, to make any man's
virtues the means of deceiving him.
-Samuel Johnson
Oh...look...now he's replying to himself...
cf> Goddammit, there's a lot more to it that that.
Why yes chris...yes there is...
cf> Ever know some perfectly nice little kid who ends up dead?
Sure. One in Laramie just last year...
cf> And then there was the 12-year ofl son of another of my parent's
cf> friends, who will never walk again or even move his fucking THUMB
cf> because some goddamn drunk tradesman with a beard rear-ended their car
cf> and crippled the kid for life. Twelve years old.
Say chris...Matthew Shepard was somebody's son too you know. You
Do know that...right...? Or do you...
cf> Never get a chance. Never hurt anyone. Dead, crippled, blind,
cf> betrayed.
And what chance did Shepard's killers give him chris? And who,
precisely, did he ever hurt? He must have hurt you somehow big
time...or else why would you be pissing on his grave...?
cf> Then we have Matthew Shepard...
Yes...
cf> ...LONE LEE and HOR NEE so he sneaks out of the hotel looking to get
cf> his NEEDS MET and manged to get them met by a whole gang of Moroccan
cf> street kids.
"On Oct. 12, 1998, my first-born son, and my hero, died. On Oct. 12,
1998, part of my life, part of my hopes and part of my dreams died,
50 days before his 22nd birthday..."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> But he survives! How LUCKY! Not many get a second chance after
cf> something like that .. one of the gang could have killed him or
cf> blinded him or castrated him just for kicks. But no! He gets a
cf> second chance! He gets another opportunity to learn from the
cf> experience and get on the right track! Not like some 12-year-old
cf> lying in a hospital bed with nothing but the ceiling to look at until
cf> a bedsore gets infected and kills him ...
"Matt loved people and he trusted them. He could never understand how one
person could hurt another, physically or verbally. They would hurt him
and he would give them another chance. This quality of seeing only good
gave him friends around the world. He didn't see size, race,
intelligence, sex, religion or the hundred other things that people use
to make choices about people. All he saw was the person ... All he
wanted was to be accepted as an equal."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> Cut to Laramie, Matthew has decided that he's too LONE LEE an' HOR
cf> NEE, an' why should he deny himself what he WANTS?
"My son was taught to look at all sides of an issue before making a
decision or taking a stand. He learned his early when he helped campaign
for various political candidates while in grade school and juror high.
When he did take a stand, it was based on his best judgment.
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> He likes to take sexual risks, after all .. it's FUN! Wheeee!!!
"Such a stand cost him his life when he quietly let it be known that he
was gay. He didn't advertise it but he didn't back away from the issue
either. For that I'll always be proud of him."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> Morocco is forgotten, there's the thrill of the chase ... so he heads
cf> to Cheyenne with his slut-buddied and they play Russian Roulette with
cf> strange men! Life is good! it's ... FUN!
"He showed me that he was a lot more courageous than most people,
including myself. Matt knew that there were dangers to being gay, but he
accepted that and wanted to just get on with this life and his ambition
of helping others."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> Oh, but *this* weekend there's no way there .. and mmmmMMMMMMm just
cf> *look* at that HOT STUD tending bar over there ... he looks SO BUTCH
cf> and so MEAN and mmmMMMMmmm!!! Just my type!
"Mr. McKinney, you made the world realize that a person's lifestyle is
not a reason for discrimination, intolerance, persecution and violence.
This is not the 1920's, 30's and 40's of Nazi Germany. My son died
because of your ignorance and intolerance. I can't bring him back. But I
can do my best to see that this never, ever happens to another person or
another family again."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> Well, he's probably straight (BORE ring dah ling!) but hey, that's not
cf> MY problem ... I know what I want an I want it NOW!
"As I mentioned earlier, my son has become a symbol, a symbol against
hate and people like you, a symbol for encouraging respect for
individuality, for appreciating that someone is different, for
tolerance. I miss my son but am proud to be able to say that he is my
son..."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> Another beating ... and this time he survives again. You'd think that
cf> would be enough .. but he gets a THIRD chance! Yet another
cf> opportunity to mend his compulsive and slutty ways and get serious.
"I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney. However,
this is the time to begin the healing process, to show mercy to someone
who refused to show any mercy, to see this as the first step to my own
closure about losing Matt. ... Mr. McKinney, I'm going to grant you life,
as hard as it is for me to do so, because of Matthew."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> But hey! That would mean .. NOT GETTING WHAT HE WANTS! And once
cf> again the bruises heal, the loose teeth reseat themselves ... and
cf> comes another night, and Matthew is LONE LEE an' HOR NEE again.
"You robbed me of something very precious and I will never forgive you
for that. Mr. McKinney..."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> This time his luck runs out in a spectacular fashion. Strike OUT.
"I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives. May you have
a long life and may you thank Matthew every day for it."
-Statement of Dennis Shepard to the Court
cf> It remains a tragedy ... make no mistake about it ...
And thank goodness there are people in the world outraged enough by
crimes like this to do something to put an end to it. But not you of
course. You'd rather demonize the victims...if the victims are queer.
Vis:
cf> ...but when I think of the two chances he had to wise the fuck UP and
cf> the chances he threw away in favor of capitiulating to the slutty
cf> thrill-seeking that had become his pattern of behavior...
A queer is attacked by Gay bashers and you say that the queer was
asking for it...otherwise they wouldn't have been attacked. A queer
is gang raped and you say that the queer was a slut and a whore who went
out looking for sex...otherwise they wouldn't have been gang raped. You
place the responsibility for violence upon the victims of violence. You
place the responsibility for rape upon the victims of rape. And then you
ask us to believe you'd feel differently, if the victims were children.
But you are leading childre by the hand into a world where brutality is
excused, where trust is ridiculed, where people who are tortured to death
simply for seeking out companionship are regarded with more contempt then
their killers. How will children fare in a world where trust is regarded
as an open invitation to prey on someone? It is children, who will suffer
the most from the world you're delivering them into. But they're only the
innocent bystanders in your personal war on queers...aren't they...
cf> ...and when I compare that to some dead child who never got ONE chance,
cf> or some kid lying in the hospital unable to turn his own HEAD, excuse
cf> MOI if I don't get just a little, well, COLD inside about the fact that
cf> Matthew Shepard should have known better.
"They should have known better" is the excuse of all criminals.
It's the final refuge of the criminal mindset, and what differentiates the
predator from the rest of us. We are all vulnerable at some times, and
under some circumstances. We walk down the darkened street anxious to get
home, thinking the mugger won't be there this time. We offer to help the
person in need, trusting that they really are in need, and not just trying
to get us to lower our guard for that one moment too many. We allow the
stranger to approach us in the parking lot to ask the time, glancing at our
own watch, and trusting that when we look back up again it won't be into
the muzzle of a gun. We allow people into our places of business whether
we know them personally or not, trusting that they are coming in to do
business with us, and not to rob us.
And when we are lonely, and searching for companionship, or for
love, we allow the friendly stranger to approach us in bars and taverns and
shops, in the parks and on the beaches. What is the difference between
someone who trusts a stranger while looking for love, for a lifetime or for
that matter just for the night...and someone who trusts them in any other
possible human context? Just one thing: the level of trust when you take
someone into your arms, is profoundly greater. We are lowering our
defenses in a deeply intimate way. And this is why those crimes
merit a special condemnation that is more then the regard for any physical
injury that may result. Rape is not merely an attack on the body, it is an
attack on the sprit...an injury to another person's ability to trust, to
accept intimacy and love from another. We place a special level of
sanction against those kinds of crimes, because it is an attack on our
deepest ability to trust in each other, and absent trust, nothing that we
call civilization is possible to us. We hold in esteme people who have
suffered that kind of spiritual violence, yet hold on to their ability to
trust. fox holds them in contempt. No...he does more then that...he
demonizes them.
cf> He had at least two chances more than a lot of others get.
Including the chance to grow up into a world where trusting another
human being gets you ridiculed at best, and murdered at worst? You care so
much about kids that you're perfectly willing to deliver them into a world
where the only social contract that applies is Jack London's law of the
jungle? How very thoughtful of you chris. Al Capone would make a better
father then you.
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.
-George Orwell
>In article <80ei27$1r...@edrn.newsguy.com>, Bruce Garrett
><bgar...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>- "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Log" <chri...@earthlink.net>...
>-
>- s'matter with your kill file chris? Need some help getting
>- it to work...?
It works fine. Posts from you go straight into the toilet.
>- cf> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
>- cf> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
>-
>- I can still recall the feeling I had when I read this:
>-
>- "There was abundant evidence to use to formally charge McKinney, said
>- prosecutor Calvin Rerucha as he opened the hearing with an emotional
>- statement and recounted the witnesses he planned to call. Rerucha
>- briefly described the grisly crime. Shepard was covered with blood,
>- he said. Only one clean spot was found on his face "where tears had
>- run down." He powerfully described how Shepard remained tied to a
>- fence, with the "constant Wyoming wind as his companion," for 18
>- hours before he was found."
Oh, please, Bruce, tell us how you felt! Please describe the emotions
that went through your mind. Get poetic. Fondle a daffodil and walk
slowly about the room as you speak. Gaze into middle distance ...
pause ... get a catch in your voice ... cue the tear ....
What contemptible pathos. To bring up this monumentally irrelevant
emotionalism is like some Republican yelling about "children and
families and jobs" as part of a speech about cutting the wealthy some
more slack.
>- ...I'd try and describe it for you...but that would be like trying
>- to get one of his killers to actually feel remorse, wouldn't it? I hear
>- when they first put him in the slammer, McKinney was signing autographs for
>- the other innmates...
And this has to do with what I wrote how, exactly?
Funny how you believe something like this yet you question the many
news reports about Shepard's life prior to his death. It's called
"dishonesty," Bruce, something you and Jesse Helms are both
well-versed in.
>- cf> You only care about the *cute* ones, don't you, Bruce?
>-
>- And according to you, you care more about abused children then
>- about Matthew Shepard. Do I draw the conclusion from that, that you're a
>- pedophile...?
Yes, Bruce, I care a lot more about abused kids than I do about
Matthew Shepard. Even *straight* abused kids. As for your
"pedophile" remark, that's vile and low even for you. That's got to
be some sort of record.
>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:42:57 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>snipped signs of compassion...
>
>>Then we have Matthew Shepard .. LONE LEE and HOR NEE so he sneaks out
>>of the hotel looking to get his NEEDS MET and manged to get them met
>>by a whole gang of Moroccan street kids.
>
>This sums it up, Chris. Your arrogant hatred of the weakness of
>someone who is lonely and/or horny. That now you can justify sneering
>at his death by murder. That you can diminish the horrendousness of
>the crime by pointing accusing, arrogant, brutal and uncompassionate
>fingers of disdain at someone who was murdered.
>
>This is reprehensible. It is disgusting. It is vile. It is homophobic
>and vicious. But you just don't get that, do you?
Sorry, but when it comes to some guy who got more second chances than
most people ever get, my tear ducts are all dried up over the fate of
the many others who never got a first chance.
You snipped the parts that would get in the way of your self-pitying
grandstanding. You write like some guy who would make a big hoo-hah
over a white woman getting raped in an African country where there's a
civil war going on and people are dying like stalks of wheat at
harvest time ... because she was one of "his kind."
I don't hear you getting so outraged over the murders, gay or
otherwise, that have come since ... people who weren't "cute" enough?
People who weren't gay? Not "your type?"
You pick out this horseshit about "arrogant hatred of the weakness of
someone who is lonely and/or horny" from a post about kids getting
killed or paralyzed without ever having a chance at life.
This is reprehensible. It is disgusting. It is vile. It is dishonest
and vicious. But you just don't get that, do you?
cf> Sorry, but when it comes to some guy who got more second chances than
cf> most people ever get, my tear ducts are all dried up over the fate of
cf> the many others who never got a first chance.
Like all those queers you've said you'd throw to the wolves in a
heartbeat, if doing that would improve your own life?
cf> I don't hear you getting so outraged over the murders, gay or
cf> otherwise, that have come since ... people who weren't "cute" enough?
cf> People who weren't gay? Not "your type?"
Say...aren't you the nutcase who keeps saying that people who read
about that stuff, and post news stories about it, are
obsessive...preoccupied with their own victimization? Gosh chris...if
that's not how you feel any more...I could post a bunch of stories about
other Gay beatings and killings that have happened since the death of
Matthew Shepard. Would you like to hear about them? Or would you rather
tell us again that paying attention to hate crimes is something only
crybabies do...
cf> You pick out this horseshit about "arrogant hatred of the weakness of
cf> someone who is lonely and/or horny" from a post about kids getting
cf> killed or paralyzed without ever having a chance at life.
Like I said once before guy...you know the artist by their
brush stroke...
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ ...when I see billboards screaming "Save Our
Children," I wonder who really needs to be saved.
The big guy shoving my friend into the wall
certainly didn't look like he was the one who needed
any rescue mission.
-Letter to the Editor, Idaho Falls Post Register.
>> s'matter with your kill file chris? Need some help getting it to
>> work...?
cf> It works fine. Posts from you go straight into the toilet.
I see. <blink> So...howcum you're still reading me then? It's
not reading my posts if you're reading them from some other post, is it?
Well...I've seen far flimsier rationalizations from you. Starting with
your excuses for your first post in here...you remember that one...where
you said if someone offered you the cure for homosexuality when you
were younger, knowing what you now know [sic] about queers, you'd take it
in a heartbeat. But mind you...you're not self hating or anything...
Seriously guy...most news clients (those are the programs you use
to read the news articles from Usenet news servers), can grep (you're a
programmer, you know about regular expressions...right?) the body of the
article too and (j)unk articles with my address in them. And unlike you I
don't change my address field whenever my mood changes. You really don't
have to read me if you don't want to guy...
>> ...I'd try and describe it for you...but that would be like trying to
>> get one of his killers to actually feel remorse, wouldn't it? I hear
>> when they first put him in the slammer, McKinney was signing autographs
>> for the other innmates...
cf> And this has to do with what I wrote how, exactly?
The two of you have a lot in common when it comes to sympathy for
the kid he killed...don't you think...?
cf> Funny how you believe something like this yet you question the many
cf> news reports about Shepard's life prior to his death.
Which? The ones that quoted family and friends regarding his
character? I take it you think those aren't worth paying attention to,
because anyone who would befriend a queer can't be trusted...right...?
cf> It's called "dishonesty," Bruce, something you and Jesse Helms are both
cf> well-versed in.
So tell me about the news report you read, quoting a credible
first hand source who knew him, that said that Matthew Shepard was out
looking for cheap anonymous sex the night he was gang raped.
Dishonesty? Dishonesty? There isn't a shed of evidence that he
was anything like the careless slut you claim he was. None. Zero. Nada.
Zilch. You're inventing all of it, claiming that the fact that he was
raped proves that he was self destructive, claiming that the fact
that he was assualted meant that he was looking for it. You're demonizing
someone who was kidnapped, tortured and then left to die so that you can
argue that what was done to him wasn't such a terrible thing after all...to
mitigate the culpability of his murderers...to forgive them a portion of
their sins (they're still working class after all...)...so that nobody will
might thinking that killing a trifling little queer is as bad as killing
the "overtly masculine men who suck cocks"...such as...well...yourself.
>>> You only care about the *cute* ones, don't you, Bruce?
>> And according to you, you care more about abused children then about
>> Matthew Shepard. Do I draw the conclusion from that, that you're a
>> pedophile...?
cf> As for your "pedophile" remark, that's vile and low even for you.
As vile and low as using a dead college kid's gang rape to call
them a slut and a whore? You think?
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ "You know...Frederic fucking Chopin."
-Kevin Jarre, "Tombstone"
>Give it up Bruce.
He never will. It would be like asking you to give up your religion.
>Ir is obvious Chris will not hear you.
You got that right. Matter of fact I am not listening to him.
>In many ways he hates Gay andLlesbians every bit as much as any any
> Phelps-type.
Oh put a fucking cork in this, will you?
I don't hate gays and lesbians. I hate everyone equally. What I really
despise though is this reverence for weakness of character that passes for
tolerance, and what I hate most of all is the bigotry and separatism that is
the expression of gay self-identification. I despise the gay-fundamentalism
that says we are entirely without culpability for our plight, coming out of
the same mouth that cheers on offensive behavior and feigns to see no
difference between putting a cork into the offensive behavior and going back
into the closet.
If you ever read my posts you'd see that I blast at the fundamentalists on
both sides. I have more to say to the Hartungs and the Ass-a-sauri than I
have to say to the Garretts and the Krahlins.
>Probably, if he was not a homosexual himself, he would even more
>virulent (sp) in what he says.
No, I would not, and that is the WHOLE POINT.
I won't bother trying to explain it to you; the fact that you see loyalty to
the herd as coming with being a member of it your blind spot. I no longer try
to shine light into blind spots
>I wonder how Chris will be able to show us how two gay men shot in their
>own home, in their own bed, were asking for it?
Show me where I ever said anyone was "asking for it."
(Whose posts for some reason have stopped getting to my news
server. Hopeufully this is just a temporary backup somewhere
in Usenet...)
>> Ir is obvious Chris will not hear you.
cf> You got that right. Matter of fact I am not listening to him.
<smile> You've responded to me twice today alone chris....
cf> I don't hate gays and lesbians. I hate everyone equally.
For sure? I thought you had such a better life then everyone else
guy. Why bother with hate...when your life is so swell...?
cf> Show me where I ever said anyone was "asking for it."
Your wish is my command...
"If college kids went into some bar in a steelworking town and
started smart-assing the locals, they'd get just as dead as you
poster-boy. They too would be asking for it, and yes this
*does* happen."
From: chri...@earthlink.net (Wahre Arbeit)
Subject: Re: Origins and Endings
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 20:36:46 GMT
Message-ID: <7tj05d$otl$3...@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Note that the "poster-boy" he's referring to here is, of course,
Matthew Shepard...
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ In spite of everything I still believe that
people are good at heart. - Anne Frank
> In article <gspmcc-1111...@1cust201.tnt47.chi5.da.uu.net>,
gsp...@nohate.poboxes.com (Rainbow Christian) wrote:
>
> >Give it up Bruce.
>
> He never will. It would be like asking you to give up your religion.
>
> >Ir is obvious Chris will not hear you.
>
> You got that right. Matter of fact I am not listening to him.
>
> >In many ways he hates Gay andLlesbians every bit as much as any any
> > Phelps-type.
>
> Oh put a fucking cork in this, will you?
Chris, how about putting a fucking cork in your whole attitude?
You're getting pathetic.
>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 13:13:07 GMT, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:42:57 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
>><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>snipped signs of compassion...
>>
>>>Then we have Matthew Shepard .. LONE LEE and HOR NEE so he sneaks out
>>>of the hotel looking to get his NEEDS MET and manged to get them met
>>>by a whole gang of Moroccan street kids.
>>
>>This sums it up, Chris. Your arrogant hatred of the weakness of
>>someone who is lonely and/or horny. That now you can justify sneering
>>at his death by murder. That you can diminish the horrendousness of
>>the crime by pointing accusing, arrogant, brutal and uncompassionate
>>fingers of disdain at someone who was murdered.
>>
>>This is reprehensible. It is disgusting. It is vile. It is homophobic
>>and vicious. But you just don't get that, do you?
>
>Sorry, but when it comes to some guy who got more second chances than
>most people ever get, my tear ducts are all dried up over the fate of
>the many others who never got a first chance.
This is first of all based on your dubious and unstated sources about
Matthew. But it is also STILL wholly irrelevant. A fact you seem
incapable of comprehending in your zeal to act every bit as cruelly as
the men who killed Shepherd. "Oh, he had a second chance so at this
point he deserved it." Fuck that.
>You snipped the parts that would get in the way of your self-pitying
>grandstanding. You write like some guy who would make a big hoo-hah
>over a white woman getting raped in an African country where there's a
>civil war going on and people are dying like stalks of wheat at
>harvest time ... because she was one of "his kind."
What the fuck are you babbling about?
>I don't hear you getting so outraged over the murders, gay or
>otherwise, that have come since ... people who weren't "cute" enough?
>People who weren't gay? Not "your type?"
Darling, I have been getting pissed off at ANYBODY who has been
savaged, brutalized or murdered. I have demonstrated for and written
letters to police and DAs to get proper investigations conducted for
people who have been hurt or killed. It doesn't matter to me if they
are beautiful, men or women, straight or gay, ugly, black, white,
Puerto Rican, rich or poor.
That YOU would bring up this vile argument only attests to how low you
apparently will go to sustain this reprehensible and vicious position.
>You pick out this horseshit about "arrogant hatred of the weakness of
>someone who is lonely and/or horny" from a post about kids getting
>killed or paralyzed without ever having a chance at life.
Because it IS what you are doing. YOU are the one who seems to have a
selective set of criteria for who deserves compassion or outrage over
the injustice of their death. The one who seems utterly incapable of
understanding how the nature of our homophobic, heterocentrist culture
FOSTERS this kind of ugliness, hate and brutality.
You are the one who has decried the efforts of activists who have
fought against the bigotries found in the media, news or
entertainment, in the police forces unwillingness to investigate and
prosecute the murder of gays and lesbians by calling activists
embarrassing or some such.
>This is reprehensible. It is disgusting. It is vile. It is dishonest
>and vicious. But you just don't get that, do you?
I get a lot more than you do dear.
But despite my harsh words here, Chris, understand something. I see
that there is a GREAT deal of compassion in you. And a great deal of
good thinking in a lot of your other posts.
And what I'm really asking you here is to take a moment and consider
what I'm saying. You are not the paragon of evil and I hold great hope
in my heart that you will see and understand.
George M. Carter
>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 02:00:20 -0500, "L. Michael Roberts"
><News...@SpamSux.LaserFX.com> wrote:
>
>>> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
>>> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
>>> What an Atlas you must be, bearing on your shoulders every
>>> prematurely-ended life, the loss of every person before his time ..
>>> there being so many murders, so many young deaths to disease, the
>>> endless and unbearable tragedy of wars and earthquakes and famines and
>>> plagues ... I'd be worn out in an hour! And you are still grieving
>>> for the death of a single stranger halfway across the continent a year
>>> ago! Wow!
>>
>> OK Fox... so go ahead and call me a wimp but I read the Victim
>>Impact Statement by Mr. Shepard from the trial and it moved me to
>>tears to the point that I had to stop reading and come back to it
>>later only to end up shedding more tears.
>> Go read it for yourself at http://listen.to/gayisok then click the
>>'Dennis Shepard?s statement to the court 11/4/99' link. Tell me it
>>does not cause you to feel grief or bring a tear to your eye.
>
>I'm not calling you a wimp, and I could work myself into a good cry
>over any one of a billion other tragedies, though frankly nothing
>human cuts me as deeply as cruelty to an animal.
A wonderfully revealing statement.
>
>The point is not that Shepard's story is anything but a hideous
>tragedy, but that Garrett's "grief" seems earmarked for cute young gay
>men. I could get just as worked up at any closely-examined early
>death, and every bit as wasted by the death of a straight woman as a
>gay man. The world is full of tragedy and horror. I don't reserve my
>compassion for "my own kind." That's no better than white supremacy.
Who has suggested that Bruce (or I, for that matter) are "reserving
their compassion for their own kind?"
>
>But to elevate the tragedy of "one of our own" over others' strikes me
>as bigotry, and to elevate the tragedy of individual humans over the
>near-DAILY extinction of an entire species makes me want to spit.
So, spit already -- it's still buncombe.
>
>Glaucous Macaw - extinct
>Spix's Macaw - less than 100 remaining
>Muhlenberg's Turtle - almost or now extinct
>
>ALL of them gone.
>
>As opposed to ONE PERSON.
Therefore what?
>>Sorry, but when it comes to some guy who got more second chances than
>>most people ever get, my tear ducts are all dried up over the fate of
>>the many others who never got a first chance.
>
>This is first of all based on your dubious and unstated sources about
>Matthew. But it is also STILL wholly irrelevant. A fact you seem
>incapable of comprehending in your zeal to act every bit as cruelly as
>the men who killed Shepherd. "Oh, he had a second chance so at this
>point he deserved it." Fuck that.
Show me where I EVER said he "deserved it," that the murderers were
"justified," or any of these other villianously inaccurate misrepresentations.
What I have said, and what I say again, is that I have vastly more sympathy
for people who have never had a chance than I do for someone who kept on doing
things that had gotten him in trouble before. In my mind it's like one of
those people who steps over three rope barriers saying "DO NOT ENTER," slips
on a recently-waxed floor, and sues a store.
I have no reason to doubt the reports of Shepard's previous beatings; his
parents reported them .. were they lying? And in my mind, reading of his
sexpeditions to bars and a generally whoring lifestyle, the pattern that
emerges is the drearily familiar one of a spoiled-rotten young gay man of the
type we are all familiar with. I'm young, I'm cute, I can do whatever I want.
I don't *like* people like that.
>Darling, I have been getting pissed off at ANYBODY who has been
>savaged, brutalized or murdered. I have demonstrated for and written
>letters to police and DAs to get proper investigations conducted for
>people who have been hurt or killed. It doesn't matter to me if they
>are beautiful, men or women, straight or gay, ugly, black, white,
>Puerto Rican, rich or poor.
Then I am most happy to be wrong in YOUR case. Conceded.
>That YOU would bring up this vile argument only attests to how low you
>apparently will go to sustain this reprehensible and vicious position.
Excuse me, but that's how it looks to me. There have been several more gay
murders in the year since, only they were older men and not as attractive as
Shepard .. not *dolls* .. one was beheaded, which has to be at least as
spectacular as being left on a fence .. where is the outcry? Call it whatever
you like.
>Because it IS what you are doing. YOU are the one who seems to have a
>selective set of criteria for who deserves compassion or outrage over
>the injustice of their death. The one who seems utterly incapable of
>understanding how the nature of our homophobic, heterocentrist culture
>FOSTERS this kind of ugliness, hate and brutality.
"Homophobic heterocentrist" .. why don't you throw in a few other mush-headed
neologisms while you're at it? Did it not turn out that the Shepard thing was
a robbery?!?
As for my apportioning of compassion .. why do sentences for crimes get
harsher for repeat offenders?
>You are the one who has decried the efforts of activists who have
>fought against the bigotries found in the media, news or
>entertainment, in the police forces unwillingness to investigate and
>prosecute the murder of gays and lesbians by calling activists
>embarrassing or some such.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. I applaud and contribute to real activism that has goals
of equality. I decry and revile activism that begins and ends with the mere
expression of rage, and whose goal is not legitimacy but personal catharsis.
All too much gay activism seems to be the kind that increases tensions and
broadens the divisions while providing the activist a momentary emotional
thrill. I applaud poeople like Rick Rosendall of GLAA in Washington DC; I
revile people like Carmen Vasquez in NYC. I regard separatists as bigots and
as far as I'm concerned the sentiments of people like Ezekiel Krahlin are
indistinguishable from those of Fred Phelps.
>But despite my harsh words here, Chris, understand something. I see
>that there is a GREAT deal of compassion in you. And a great deal of
>good thinking in a lot of your other posts.
I must say this was an unexpected paragraph.
>And what I'm really asking you here is to take a moment and consider
>what I'm saying. You are not the paragon of evil and I hold great hope
>in my heart that you will see and understand.
Ditto all around. And I am listening.
To be honest, I'm really tired of writing about Matthew Shepard .. I'm
repeating myself as much as Hartung at this point and I don't like it. I
really resent being quotes as saying he "deserved it" and the rest. But he
had at least three chances to figure out that he was leading a
self-destructive life and he threw them away. That's sad, that's tragic, but
past some point with some people you just have to give up and let them choose
their own lives.
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
"I hear the roar of a big machine
Two worlds and in between
Hot metal and methedrine
I hear Empire Down"
-- Sisters of Mercy "Lucretia My Reflection"
> Perhaps there has been a general failure of reading ability --
> strangely enough my interpretation of your defensive internalized
> homophobia is exactly the same as Carter's
And everyone else's, except the crazy phobes, who leaped to welcome him.
--
To e-mail me replace "spamsucks" with "azstarnet.com"
> On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 00:42:57 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
> <chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> snipped signs of compassion...
>
> >Then we have Matthew Shepard .. LONE LEE and HOR NEE so he sneaks out
> >of the hotel looking to get his NEEDS MET and manged to get them met
> >by a whole gang of Moroccan street kids.
>
> This sums it up, Chris. Your arrogant hatred of the weakness of
> someone who is lonely and/or horny.
And there is not even any evidence that it was the case in either of those
instances.
>Really, Ward, what was the point of bringing up that nonsense about "how he
>felt" reading that nonsense about "crying?" At that time Shepard had bits of
>skull in his cerebrum and was a vegetable. He wasn't "weeping." But Garrett
>was. And yes, I find emotionalism in a debate to be contemptible. It cues me
>that Garrett sees all this as some sort of performing stage, and I don't care
>for his act. If you don't care for mine, killfile me.
And once again Rabid Wannbe has some *special* incite to Matthew's
last moments and mind, that allows him to vilify a kid undeserving of
this fate.
Rabid: NO ONE should have to ever have such happen to them. NO ONE, it
was horrible and the definition of evil, why people like you and
westd/anonymous (are you the same person?) want to defend such is
beyond rational thinking.
There is NO excuse for what happened, be it Matthew, any other kid, or
anyone.
>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:00:16 -0600, gsp...@nohate.poboxes.com (Rainbow
>Christian) wrote:
>
>>In article <80ei27$1r...@edrn.newsguy.com>, Bruce Garrett
>><bgar...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>- "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Log" <chri...@earthlink.net>...
>>-
>>- s'matter with your kill file chris? Need some help getting
>>- it to work...?
>
>It works fine. Posts from you go straight into the toilet.
>
>>- cf> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
>>- cf> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
>>-
>>- I can still recall the feeling I had when I read this:
>>-
>>- "There was abundant evidence to use to formally charge McKinney, said
>>- prosecutor Calvin Rerucha as he opened the hearing with an emotional
>>- statement and recounted the witnesses he planned to call. Rerucha
>>- briefly described the grisly crime. Shepard was covered with blood,
>>- he said. Only one clean spot was found on his face "where tears had
>>- run down." He powerfully described how Shepard remained tied to a
>>- fence, with the "constant Wyoming wind as his companion," for 18
>>- hours before he was found."
>
>Oh, please, Bruce, tell us how you felt! Please describe the emotions
>that went through your mind. Get poetic. Fondle a daffodil and walk
>slowly about the room as you speak. Gaze into middle distance ...
>pause ... get a catch in your voice ... cue the tear ....
>
>What contemptible pathos.
Speaking of "contemptible'" -- what a thoroughly contemptible
star-turn of swinishness -- some days, Fox, you really out-do
yourself.
ward
<blush>
'twern't nuthin ...
Really, Ward, what was the point of bringing up that nonsense about "how he
felt" reading that nonsense about "crying?" At that time Shepard had bits of
skull in his cerebrum and was a vegetable. He wasn't "weeping." But Garrett
was. And yes, I find emotionalism in a debate to be contemptible. It cues me
that Garrett sees all this as some sort of performing stage, and I don't care
for his act. If you don't care for mine, killfile me.
--
There are cases on record of people who lost up to 90% of their brain
and still had above average IQ's and no problems. You have no way
to know how it was with Matthew, he may have been aware but
unresponsive right up to the end.
This is how it MIGHT have been: http://www.goodnet.com/~ewillia/clouds.html
>In article <382c8e3f...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>
>>>Sorry, but when it comes to some guy who got more second chances than
>>>most people ever get, my tear ducts are all dried up over the fate of
>>>the many others who never got a first chance.
>>
>>This is first of all based on your dubious and unstated sources about
>>Matthew. But it is also STILL wholly irrelevant. A fact you seem
>>incapable of comprehending in your zeal to act every bit as cruelly as
>>the men who killed Shepherd. "Oh, he had a second chance so at this
>>point he deserved it." Fuck that.
>
>Show me where I EVER said he "deserved it," that the murderers were
>"justified," or any of these other villianously inaccurate misrepresentations.
> What I have said, and what I say again, is that I have vastly more sympathy
>for people who have never had a chance than I do for someone who kept on doing
>things that had gotten him in trouble before. In my mind it's like one of
>those people who steps over three rope barriers saying "DO NOT ENTER," slips
>on a recently-waxed floor, and sues a store.
Let me try to explain one last time. Declaring a lack of sympathy for
his murder is so close to saying he deserved it as to be nearly
indiscernible. You may wish to make some amplify the nominal
distinction, but the result is the same.
You are also, I believe, basing your judgment AGAINST Sheppard, not
his murderers, on possibly baseless accusations of what happened prior
to his joining up with those guys. And even if he did it for sex, that
you imply there is something wrong with Sheppard for doing so is
homophobic! What's wrong with a 3-way? Between consenting adults, it
can be fine.
What you are doing, here, too, is justifying a lack of sympathy based
on Sheppard's being too trusting of others, despite his having been
hurt in the past. I mean, my god, the guy was barely an adult in his
early 20s! (No offense to you 20-somethings out there).
But your "sympathy" drying up the way it does for the reasons that you
have stated I find reprehensible and deeply homophobic at their root.
Something I'm hoping that over time you will see. Not to vindicate my
view. Not to castigate you. For your own spiritual growth.
>I have no reason to doubt the reports of Shepard's previous beatings; his
>parents reported them .. were they lying? And in my mind, reading of his
>sexpeditions to bars and a generally whoring lifestyle, the pattern that
>emerges is the drearily familiar one of a spoiled-rotten young gay man of the
>type we are all familiar with. I'm young, I'm cute, I can do whatever I want.
> I don't *like* people like that.
Why? Arguendo. Say it's all true. Some people grow out of that type of
behavior, given a chance. Some don't. Such behavior might not suit
your own moral yardstick, but why must you apply and demand that
everyone follow YOUR yardstick?
Probably the guys that murdered him could feel some justification if
they felt somehow that he deserved it because he wanted something THEY
found disgusting. And this is the root of where I find your arguments
horrifying. You show as much compassion as his murderers. And almost
lend an argument, whether your facts are correct or not, that they
were justified.
>>Darling, I have been getting pissed off at ANYBODY who has been
>>savaged, brutalized or murdered. I have demonstrated for and written
>>letters to police and DAs to get proper investigations conducted for
>>people who have been hurt or killed. It doesn't matter to me if they
>>are beautiful, men or women, straight or gay, ugly, black, white,
>>Puerto Rican, rich or poor.
>
>Then I am most happy to be wrong in YOUR case. Conceded.
Thank you.
>>That YOU would bring up this vile argument only attests to how low you
>>apparently will go to sustain this reprehensible and vicious position.
>
>Excuse me, but that's how it looks to me. There have been several more gay
>murders in the year since, only they were older men and not as attractive as
>Shepard .. not *dolls* .. one was beheaded, which has to be at least as
>spectacular as being left on a fence .. where is the outcry? Call it whatever
>you like.
That's because of the way the media plays its games. Jon Benet Ramsey
undoubtedly got a lot more play than many other murder victims.
>>Because it IS what you are doing. YOU are the one who seems to have a
>>selective set of criteria for who deserves compassion or outrage over
>>the injustice of their death. The one who seems utterly incapable of
>>understanding how the nature of our homophobic, heterocentrist culture
>>FOSTERS this kind of ugliness, hate and brutality.
>
>"Homophobic heterocentrist" .. why don't you throw in a few other mush-headed
>neologisms while you're at it? Did it not turn out that the Shepard thing was
>a robbery?!?
"Mush-headed neologisms"?? Frankly, I used the terms cause I knew
you'd fall for the bait. Couldn't resist it.
Robbery? No. It turned out that the Sheppard thing was a brutal,
anti-gay murder.
>As for my apportioning of compassion .. why do sentences for crimes get
>harsher for repeat offenders?
I've lost you here. What are you saying? That each successive case
where you lose compassion will result in a harsher sentence upon you?
Possibly.
>>You are the one who has decried the efforts of activists who have
>>fought against the bigotries found in the media, news or
>>entertainment, in the police forces unwillingness to investigate and
>>prosecute the murder of gays and lesbians by calling activists
>>embarrassing or some such.
>
>Wrong, wrong, wrong. I applaud and contribute to real activism that has goals
>of equality. I decry and revile activism that begins and ends with the mere
>expression of rage, and whose goal is not legitimacy but personal catharsis.
So.
>All too much gay activism seems to be the kind that increases tensions and
>broadens the divisions while providing the activist a momentary emotional
>thrill. I applaud poeople like Rick Rosendall of GLAA in Washington DC; I
>revile people like Carmen Vasquez in NYC. I regard separatists as bigots and
>as far as I'm concerned the sentiments of people like Ezekiel Krahlin are
>indistinguishable from those of Fred Phelps.
Ah, all I know about Carmen is that she is a feminist and wrote an
article about lesbians with HIV. I'm not sure why you say this. I know
nothing about Rosendall.
As to separatists, it's kind of a silly notion. Enclaves of gay/queer
develop. But personally, I like living in a world with a lot of
different types of people in it.
>>But despite my harsh words here, Chris, understand something. I see
>>that there is a GREAT deal of compassion in you. And a great deal of
>>good thinking in a lot of your other posts.
>
>I must say this was an unexpected paragraph.
Cool. I'm try to grow spiritually. And apply it practically. (Although
I'm still a devout agnostic.)
>>And what I'm really asking you here is to take a moment and consider
>>what I'm saying. You are not the paragon of evil and I hold great hope
>>in my heart that you will see and understand.
>
>Ditto all around. And I am listening.
I think you are. I am trying to as well.
>To be honest, I'm really tired of writing about Matthew Shepard .. I'm
>repeating myself as much as Hartung at this point and I don't like it. I
>really resent being quotes as saying he "deserved it" and the rest. But he
>had at least three chances to figure out that he was leading a
>self-destructive life and he threw them away. That's sad, that's tragic, but
>past some point with some people you just have to give up and let them choose
>their own lives.
By that standard, I should be dead. The downfall of my life as a teen
and in my 20s was drugs. Did lots of them. Somehow, luck more than
anything, I survived. I don't have HIV but I do have hepatitis C. I
consider myself very lucky.
And partly, it is having survived those experiences that causes me to
retain a sense of compassion--not only for the many men and women who
have been murdered for being (or perceived to be) gay or lesbian or
transgendered. But for all humans, even those sad, pathetic fuck ups
that killed Matthew. I'm glad they did not get the death penalty. But
I can only hope that the fact that these perpetrators WERE caught,
prosecuted and sentenced will deter others from feeling that, just
because they don't LIKE someone and their lifestyle, or their
"whoring" or their drugging, that gives them the right to hurt or kill
them. Or even lose compassion for them.
I'm blessed by the people who had compassion for me and honor them
deeply. And hasten to point out that compassion is very much about
engaging people actively. Trying to change the world so there is more
understanding. It's so damn easy to make up reasons to hate people and
kill people. And when you sneer at Sheppard for having supposedly made
some mistakes in his past as a justification for tossing out
compassion, it comes across quite strongly to homophobic individuals
as a justification for hating anyone, deriding anyone, who may be
different (in some aspects weaker, possibly).
George M. Carter
>
>>
>> >Really, Ward, what was the point of bringing up that nonsense about "how
>he
>> >felt" reading that nonsense about "crying?" At that time Shepard had
>bits of
>> >skull in his cerebrum and was a vegetable. He wasn't "weeping."
>
>
>There are cases on record of people who lost up to 90% of their brain
>and still had above average IQ's and no problems. You have no way
>to know how it was with Matthew, he may have been aware but
>unresponsive right up to the end.
Don't you remember the four or five days between the discovery of his
comatose body and his death? The doctors were saying that if he
survived he would be a brain-dead vegetable.
My eyes tear in a cold wind and I don't have to be sad about anything.
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
>On Fri, 12 Nov 1999 22:38:00 GMT, chri...@earthlink.net (Leere Grab)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <382c8e3f...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>>
>Let me try to explain one last time. Declaring a lack of sympathy for
>his murder is so close to saying he deserved it as to be nearly
>indiscernible. You may wish to make some amplify the nominal
>distinction, but the result is the same.
I don't see it as indiscernible .. though I'm getting a clearer
picture of your view now. I see it as more like someone who keeps
running across a busy street and counting on drivers to brake in time
... the third or fourth time he gets hit by a car, I care a lot less
than I would for someone who got killed crossing with the lights and
hit by someone running the light. I don't claim to be the latest
incarnation of Buddha, you know; I have what people who know me well
consider to be a far more sensitive compassion than most people, but I
also have points past which it dimishes sharply. You're confusing
that with the idea that someone "deserves" what happens.
Change of venue ... a lot of gay people who get in trouble at work are
people who, in my experience, act confrontational about their gayness.
By "confrontation" I don't mean other-than-invisible; I mean they do,
wear, and say things that have no function but to draw attention to
it. They get fired because enough people complain that they are
irritating to be around.
Do they *deserve* to get fired? No. Do they have a reasonable
expectation that co-workers should endure their preening performance?
Again, no. In the real world, shit gets on our nerves. We know that.
These people have the option of not wearing T-shirts and buttons with
those nasty-funny "queer" slogans; they have the option of not being
"on" when they're at work; they choose otherwise.
I've never said Shepard "deserved" what he got.
>You are also, I believe, basing your judgment AGAINST Sheppard, not
>his murderers, on possibly baseless accusations of what happened prior
>to his joining up with those guys. And even if he did it for sex, that
>you imply there is something wrong with Sheppard for doing so is
>homophobic! What's wrong with a 3-way? Between consenting adults, it
>can be fine.
There are several tangents in this paragraph. First of all, I've said
the murderers should fry and I have gloated about the fact that they
are in one of the country's most brutal prison systems.
Second, I've never said it was wrong for Shepard to "leave for sex."
I've said that for Shepard to place his own interest in these two
toughs ahead of the alarm bells that MUST have been going off in his
head was ridiculous; it was seven miles past naïve, it was suicidal.
It would be like telling a guy with a baseball bat in Sacramento that
you have a thousand dollars in your pocket and you're looking for a
big score.
Third, the morality of 3-ways is not part of the discussion. I've
never written anything about the wrongness of Shepard wanting to get
laid .. he was single, after all. Though frankly I wish gay people
would get away from this idea that sexual fantasy fulfillment is such
an imperative.
>What you are doing, here, too, is justifying a lack of sympathy based
>on Sheppard's being too trusting of others, despite his having been
>hurt in the past. I mean, my god, the guy was barely an adult in his
>early 20s! (No offense to you 20-somethings out there).
He was WAY too trusting. He had not only been hurt in the past, he'd
been gang-raped and beaten looking for sex.
>But your "sympathy" drying up the way it does for the reasons that you
>have stated I find reprehensible and deeply homophobic at their root.
Please don't use words like "homophobic" on me. That word is as worn
out as the story that ends with "there was nobody left to speak up."
My sympathy dries up for people who keep on doing things that have
made them trouble in the past, regardless of any gay connection or
not. How do you feel about people who are sent to drug-dryout centers
four times, seven times, ten times?
>Why? Arguendo. Say it's all true. Some people grow out of that type of
>behavior, given a chance. Some don't. Such behavior might not suit
>your own moral yardstick, but why must you apply and demand that
>everyone follow YOUR yardstick?
What does morality have to do with it? I said I don't like people
like that. I didn't say laws should be passed against them. There
are all kinds of people I don't like ... people who make dirty jokes
all the time, people who smoke cigarettes in public, people who are
cruel to animals. I will continue to dislike people like that.
>Probably the guys that murdered him could feel some justification if
>they felt somehow that he deserved it because he wanted something THEY
>found disgusting.
How do you feel about people like Tom Keske and Ezekiel Krahlin,
expressing hatred of heterosexuals? Do you feel that the situation of
gays in society excuses their behavior? I don't hear you protesting
Krahlin's irritating little signature.
I don't care if the murderers found some justification in their
disgust at Shepard's homosexuality .. they were wrong as hell, and
they are probably being inflated like balloons with semen at this very
moment.
>And this is the root of where I find your arguments
>horrifying. You show as much compassion as his murderers. And almost
>lend an argument, whether your facts are correct or not, that they
>were justified.
No.
>>Excuse me, but that's how it looks to me. There have been several more gay
>>murders in the year since, only they were older men and not as attractive as
>>Shepard .. not *dolls* .. one was beheaded, which has to be at least as
>>spectacular as being left on a fence .. where is the outcry? Call it whatever
>>you like.
>
>That's because of the way the media plays its games. Jon Benet Ramsey
>undoubtedly got a lot more play than many other murder victims.
It's not just the media.
>"Mush-headed neologisms"?? Frankly, I used the terms cause I knew
>you'd fall for the bait. Couldn't resist it.
So are you arguing this to get a rise out of me?
>Robbery? No. It turned out that the Sheppard thing was a brutal,
>anti-gay murder.
It was a robbery. The murder was to silence him. It wasn't rational,
these guys were speed freaks and they were drunks.
>>Wrong, wrong, wrong. I applaud and contribute to real activism that has goals
>>of equality. I decry and revile activism that begins and ends with the mere
>>expression of rage, and whose goal is not legitimacy but personal catharsis.
>
>So.
So, someone who gets a momentary emotional thrill out of making a
jackass of himself does so at the expense of hardening a few more
enemies. I'm convinced that most anti-gay people have some misgivings
about what they know to be bigotry, and all it takes is one "queer"
jackass getting his rocks off expressing his infantile rage to silence
those misgivings forever and turn a fence-sitter into a hardened
bigot.
>>All too much gay activism seems to be the kind that increases tensions and
>>broadens the divisions while providing the activist a momentary emotional
>>thrill. I applaud poeople like Rick Rosendall of GLAA in Washington DC; I
>>revile people like Carmen Vasquez in NYC. I regard separatists as bigots and
>>as far as I'm concerned the sentiments of people like Ezekiel Krahlin are
>>indistinguishable from those of Fred Phelps.
>
>Ah, all I know about Carmen is that she is a feminist and wrote an
>article about lesbians with HIV. I'm not sure why you say this. I know
>nothing about Rosendall.
Vasquez also wrote a rambling catch-all diatribe that demanded, among
other things, that the government finance her artificial insemination.
She is a complete idiot.
>>>But despite my harsh words here, Chris, understand something. I see
>>>that there is a GREAT deal of compassion in you. And a great deal of
>>>good thinking in a lot of your other posts.
>>
>>I must say this was an unexpected paragraph.
>
>Cool. I'm try to grow spiritually. And apply it practically. (Although
>I'm still a devout agnostic.)
I'm a devout atheist. My lover is a devout Buddhist and we have as
much Buddhist iconography in this house as any modest temple in Viêt
Nam. I'm also very interested in early Christianity, back when it was
a spiritual experience and before it became reduced to rote. But I
will never believe in any God.
>By that standard, I should be dead. The downfall of my life as a teen
>and in my 20s was drugs. Did lots of them. Somehow, luck more than
>anything, I survived. I don't have HIV but I do have hepatitis C. I
>consider myself very lucky.
I got into some very hard drugs for a few years, after a
quarter-century of smoking pot. I also used to go to bathhouses and
parks, though I got sick of all that before AIDS appeared. But I got
sick of the sluttiness crap in less than a year, and I was Shepard's
age when I decided I couldn't stand it. Yeah I was lonely and I was
horny but I didn't want the life that was prescribed for gay men back
then. I actually went straight again for a year, so disgusted was I
with The Scene.
>And partly, it is having survived those experiences that causes me to
>retain a sense of compassion--not only for the many men and women who
>have been murdered for being (or perceived to be) gay or lesbian or
>transgendered. But for all humans, even those sad, pathetic fuck ups
>that killed Matthew. I'm glad they did not get the death penalty.
There again, we differ. There's evidence that the tendency toward
aggression is genetic, and removing stupid and brutal people from the
gene pool with electricity strikes me as sensible. Considering that
the rest of us have to lock our doors, worry about our houses being
empty, and generally structure our lives around the possibility of
violence, I think we've been held hostage to aggressive young men long
enough.
>But
>I can only hope that the fact that these perpetrators WERE caught,
>prosecuted and sentenced will deter others from feeling that, just
>because they don't LIKE someone and their lifestyle, or their
>"whoring" or their drugging, that gives them the right to hurt or kill
>them.
It confers no such right.
>Or even lose compassion for them.
Sorry, but with entire species vanishing from the earth faster than
one per day, with children being maimed and murdered by drunken
fathers, with women being terrorized by dirt-stupid husbands, with
armies slaughtering whole towns, ... I don't have a lot of compassion
left for *people* who *continue* to make bad choices. It diminishes
with repeition and past some point I have to say, "to hell with them.
They've had plenty of chances."
>I'm blessed by the people who had compassion for me and honor them
>deeply. And hasten to point out that compassion is very much about
>engaging people actively. Trying to change the world so there is more
>understanding.
Understanding, yes; compassion, yes; infinite tolerance for
recidivism, no; reverence for weakness, no.
>z...And when you sneer at Sheppard for having supposedly made
>some mistakes in his past
Supposedly?
>as a justification for tossing out compassion,
I think of it more as giving up on them.
>...it comes across quite strongly to homophobic individuals
>as a justification for hating anyone, deriding anyone, who may be
>different (in some aspects weaker, possibly).
Misinterpretation is their problem. People who are already bigoted
are going to look at anything that sounds like support or agreement;
look at Watson with his NARTH, look at the bigots on here leaping on
my criticisms of the gay culture as support for their bigotry.
If Shepard had not been gay, if he were a woman in a bar who had
gotten raped and beaten several times before, we would not be having
this conversation; we'd be saying, "you'd think she would have known
better than to leave with a pair of bikers." We make a vehement
exception for Shepard because he was gay (and young, diminutive,
doe-eyed and cute). Part of equality is not only getting the same
treatment and rights but being judged by the same criteria, and in
mine, Shepard was just like that hypothetical woman. Neither
"deserved" it; both had good reason to know better. It's tragic. But
not everyone in the world is just and fair.
If you want to talk more, please leave Shepard out of it and get
hypothetica, I am sick to death of writing about him. And please
leave the clichés out of it too.
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
> I'm blessed by the people who had compassion for me and honor them
> deeply. And hasten to point out that compassion is very much about
> engaging people actively. Trying to change the world so there is more
> understanding. It's so damn easy to make up reasons to hate people and
> kill people. And when you sneer at Sheppard for having supposedly made
> some mistakes in his past as a justification for tossing out
> compassion, it comes across quite strongly to homophobic individuals
> as a justification for hating anyone, deriding anyone, who may be
> different (in some aspects weaker, possibly).
Thanks, George. That was an excellent post.
--
Safe journey,
Letao
djs...@yahoo.com
>In article <382d602c...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, gm...@ix.netcom.com
>(GMCarter) wrote:
>
>> I'm blessed by the people who had compassion for me and honor them
>> deeply. And hasten to point out that compassion is very much about
>> engaging people actively. Trying to change the world so there is more
>> understanding. It's so damn easy to make up reasons to hate people and
>> kill people. And when you sneer at Sheppard for having supposedly made
>> some mistakes in his past as a justification for tossing out
>> compassion, it comes across quite strongly to homophobic individuals
>> as a justification for hating anyone, deriding anyone, who may be
>> different (in some aspects weaker, possibly).
>
>Thanks, George. That was an excellent post.
>
>--
>Safe journey,
Thanks. Likewise.
George
>On Sat, 13 Nov 1999 13:03:50 GMT, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 12 Nov 1999 22:38:00 GMT, chri...@earthlink.net (Leere Grab)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>In article <382c8e3f...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>>>
>
>>Let me try to explain one last time. Declaring a lack of sympathy for
>>his murder is so close to saying he deserved it as to be nearly
>>indiscernible. You may wish to make some amplify the nominal
>>distinction, but the result is the same.
>
>I don't see it as indiscernible .. though I'm getting a clearer
>picture of your view now. I see it as more like someone who keeps
>running across a busy street and counting on drivers to brake in time
>... the third or fourth time he gets hit by a car, I care a lot less
>than I would for someone who got killed crossing with the lights and
>hit by someone running the light. I don't claim to be the latest
>incarnation of Buddha, you know; I have what people who know me well
>consider to be a far more sensitive compassion than most people, but I
>also have points past which it dimishes sharply. You're confusing
>that with the idea that someone "deserves" what happens.
Well, from the get-go, I reject this simplistic comparison to
Matthew's life. But apparently you have a lot more information on his
life that allows you to pass such a facile and cruel judgment. That I
object to.
>Change of venue ... a lot of gay people who get in trouble at work are
>people who, in my experience, act confrontational about their gayness.
On what do you base this? What does "confrontational" mean? Where do
you live, anyway?
>By "confrontation" I don't mean other-than-invisible; I mean they do,
>wear, and say things that have no function but to draw attention to
>it. They get fired because enough people complain that they are
>irritating to be around.
What? Should guys that talk about all the pussy they've gotten be
fired? Should the guy with his wedding band, pictures of the wife and
kids be fired? Or the women that talk about their trip with their
husband to such and such romantic spot?
>Do they *deserve* to get fired? No. Do they have a reasonable
>expectation that co-workers should endure their preening performance?
"Preening performance"? And you talk about my use of "homophobic
heterocentrist" as a "mush-headed neologism"! Here, you're simply
being provocative...and once again displaying your homphobia.
Indeed, by swerving off into this arena, you make your own homophobia
all the more clearer! Chris, why can't you see this?
I can feel the palpable waves of disgust that you have for a guy who
is effeminate, lisps and talks to loud. Because they're different.
Because you resent the fact that so many gay men are like that and
just cause you like to suck dick, you don't want to be a faggot.
Isn't this true? This is the core of a lot of your beliefs. And you
march in lockstep with society condemning anyone who swishes. It's
because you're insecure.
If you were secure in your gayness, you would learn to have compassion
for people just for who they are...and let go of that judgmental pain
and resentment.
>Again, no. In the real world, shit gets on our nerves. We know that.
Yes. All kinds of shit gets on our nerves. Nervous nellies like you
get on my nerves!!
>These people have the option of not wearing T-shirts and buttons with
>those nasty-funny "queer" slogans; they have the option of not being
>"on" when they're at work; they choose otherwise.
And now you must insist that they not be permitted to do so? Well,
clue time. Most places of employment have dress codes that don't
permit that.
>I've never said Shepard "deserved" what he got.
Yet--your hatred of his "lifestyle" is so much like the right wing
bigotry that incites those poor dumb assholes that killed him. Guys
that are sadly not learning about same sex love, but are probably
learning a lot about rape.
>>You are also, I believe, basing your judgment AGAINST Sheppard, not
>>his murderers, on possibly baseless accusations of what happened prior
>>to his joining up with those guys. And even if he did it for sex, that
>>you imply there is something wrong with Sheppard for doing so is
>>homophobic! What's wrong with a 3-way? Between consenting adults, it
>>can be fine.
>
>There are several tangents in this paragraph. First of all, I've said
>the murderers should fry and I have gloated about the fact that they
>are in one of the country's most brutal prison systems.
Ugh. Well, I can't say I feel so happy about that fact. But they
fucked up and they are paying for it.
>Second, I've never said it was wrong for Shepard to "leave for sex."
>I've said that for Shepard to place his own interest in these two
>toughs ahead of the alarm bells that MUST have been going off in his
>head was ridiculous; it was seven miles past naïve, it was suicidal.
Here again--now you are right inside his head. You know all about the
situation and are convinced that "alarm bells" should have been going
off. Maybe you're right. Maybe he ignored vital clues that could have
saved his life. Let's assume he was blinded by lust. That's not a
good thing but it doesn't deserve your brutal condemnation.
>It would be like telling a guy with a baseball bat in Sacramento that
>you have a thousand dollars in your pocket and you're looking for a
>big score.
More metaphors based on tenuous or non-existent data to bolster an
argument as to why your lack of compassion is justified. There are
deeper reasons for your harshness. I think it has to do with your own
alarm bells.
>Third, the morality of 3-ways is not part of the discussion. I've
>never written anything about the wrongness of Shepard wanting to get
>laid .. he was single, after all. Though frankly I wish gay people
>would get away from this idea that sexual fantasy fulfillment is such
>an imperative.
Not all gay people feel that way. By any stretch. I think most HUMANS
feel that way about sex from about the teen years into the early 30s.
Regardless of orientation. And in our Western culture, we develop all
types of myths (belief systems) such as "sexual fulfillment is
important" or "sex = success" etc.
>>What you are doing, here, too, is justifying a lack of sympathy based
>>on Sheppard's being too trusting of others, despite his having been
>>hurt in the past. I mean, my god, the guy was barely an adult in his
>>early 20s! (No offense to you 20-somethings out there).
>
>He was WAY too trusting. He had not only been hurt in the past, he'd
>been gang-raped and beaten looking for sex.
I have to take your word for this. But sometimes such acts of violence
don't make people wiser--maybe they reinforced a sense of desire and a
fatal NEED to trust people's better nature. You condemn him for being
too trusting??
>>But your "sympathy" drying up the way it does for the reasons that you
>>have stated I find reprehensible and deeply homophobic at their root.
>
>Please don't use words like "homophobic" on me. That word is as worn
>out as the story that ends with "there was nobody left to speak up."
>My sympathy dries up for people who keep on doing things that have
>made them trouble in the past, regardless of any gay connection or
>not. How do you feel about people who are sent to drug-dryout centers
>four times, seven times, ten times?
I feel compassion. I know how damn difficult it is.
>>Why? Arguendo. Say it's all true. Some people grow out of that type of
>>behavior, given a chance. Some don't. Such behavior might not suit
>>your own moral yardstick, but why must you apply and demand that
>>everyone follow YOUR yardstick?
>
>What does morality have to do with it? I said I don't like people
>like that. I didn't say laws should be passed against them. There
>are all kinds of people I don't like ... people who make dirty jokes
>all the time, people who smoke cigarettes in public, people who are
>cruel to animals. I will continue to dislike people like that.
These are certainly your choices. I'm not arguing otherwise. I'm
trying to point out that your reasons for disliking Matthew are
shallow, cruel--and reflect a deeper, abiding homophobia inside you.
One that you constantly reiterate. One I hope you will come to
understand and overcome.
>>Probably the guys that murdered him could feel some justification if
>>they felt somehow that he deserved it because he wanted something THEY
>>found disgusting.
>
>How do you feel about people like Tom Keske and Ezekiel Krahlin,
>expressing hatred of heterosexuals? Do you feel that the situation of
>gays in society excuses their behavior? I don't hear you protesting
>Krahlin's irritating little signature.
Oh, I have in the past. I got into quite an argument with Krahlin
before on that issue. It's silly.
>I don't care if the murderers found some justification in their
>disgust at Shepard's homosexuality .. they were wrong as hell, and
>they are probably being inflated like balloons with semen at this very
>moment.
Yeah. The irony in that doesn't escape me either.
>>And this is the root of where I find your arguments
>>horrifying. You show as much compassion as his murderers. And almost
>>lend an argument, whether your facts are correct or not, that they
>>were justified.
>
>No.
I know you say that. I know most of you believes that. But part of you
does not. I just want you to examine that part a little more closely.
>>>Excuse me, but that's how it looks to me. There have been several more gay
>>>murders in the year since, only they were older men and not as attractive as
>>>Shepard .. not *dolls* .. one was beheaded, which has to be at least as
>>>spectacular as being left on a fence .. where is the outcry? Call it whatever
>>>you like.
>>
>>That's because of the way the media plays its games. Jon Benet Ramsey
>>undoubtedly got a lot more play than many other murder victims.
>
>It's not just the media.
No, but the media have a strong influence on the way many people
think. Unfortunately.
>>"Mush-headed neologisms"?? Frankly, I used the terms cause I knew
>>you'd fall for the bait. Couldn't resist it.
>
>So are you arguing this to get a rise out of me?
Sure. Same way you went off on justifying people being irritated with
some flaming faggot at work and that then they should get rid of them.
Because they irritate people. Sort of like Matthew iritates you. So
now we're rid of him, huh?
>>Robbery? No. It turned out that the Sheppard thing was a brutal,
>>anti-gay murder.
>
>It was a robbery. The murder was to silence him. It wasn't rational,
>these guys were speed freaks and they were drunks.
It wasn't just a robbery. As to its lack of rationality, we utterly
agree.
And could bring us to the issue of the need for more comprehensive
medical treatment for substance abuse...but that's another topic.
>>>Wrong, wrong, wrong. I applaud and contribute to real activism that has goals
>>>of equality. I decry and revile activism that begins and ends with the mere
>>>expression of rage, and whose goal is not legitimacy but personal catharsis.
>>
>>So.
>
>So, someone who gets a momentary emotional thrill out of making a
>jackass of himself does so at the expense of hardening a few more
>enemies. I'm convinced that most anti-gay people have some misgivings
>about what they know to be bigotry, and all it takes is one "queer"
>jackass getting his rocks off expressing his infantile rage to silence
>those misgivings forever and turn a fence-sitter into a hardened
>bigot.
I have found it to be quite to the contrary. But I'm sure the scenario
you describe happens sometimes.
>>>All too much gay activism seems to be the kind that increases tensions and
>>>broadens the divisions while providing the activist a momentary emotional
>>>thrill. I applaud poeople like Rick Rosendall of GLAA in Washington DC; I
>>>revile people like Carmen Vasquez in NYC. I regard separatists as bigots and
>>>as far as I'm concerned the sentiments of people like Ezekiel Krahlin are
>>>indistinguishable from those of Fred Phelps.
>>
>>Ah, all I know about Carmen is that she is a feminist and wrote an
>>article about lesbians with HIV. I'm not sure why you say this. I know
>>nothing about Rosendall.
>
>Vasquez also wrote a rambling catch-all diatribe that demanded, among
>other things, that the government finance her artificial insemination.
>She is a complete idiot.
Somehow I don't buy this analysis.
>>>>But despite my harsh words here, Chris, understand something. I see
>>>>that there is a GREAT deal of compassion in you. And a great deal of
>>>>good thinking in a lot of your other posts.
>>>
>>>I must say this was an unexpected paragraph.
>>
>>Cool. I'm try to grow spiritually. And apply it practically. (Although
>>I'm still a devout agnostic.)
>
>I'm a devout atheist. My lover is a devout Buddhist and we have as
>much Buddhist iconography in this house as any modest temple in Viêt
>Nam. I'm also very interested in early Christianity, back when it was
>a spiritual experience and before it became reduced to rote. But I
>will never believe in any God.
I accept that. I neither accept nor reject the possibility of god or
gods. I find, however, the absolute belief that one does not exist as
much a faith as those who devoutly believe!
>>By that standard, I should be dead. The downfall of my life as a teen
>>and in my 20s was drugs. Did lots of them. Somehow, luck more than
>>anything, I survived. I don't have HIV but I do have hepatitis C. I
>>consider myself very lucky.
>
>I got into some very hard drugs for a few years, after a
>quarter-century of smoking pot. I also used to go to bathhouses and
>parks, though I got sick of all that before AIDS appeared. But I got
>sick of the sluttiness crap in less than a year, and I was Shepard's
>age when I decided I couldn't stand it. Yeah I was lonely and I was
>horny but I didn't want the life that was prescribed for gay men back
>then. I actually went straight again for a year, so disgusted was I
>with The Scene.
Now we're getting to the core of things. I understand you better now.
I think your disdain for Matthew is based in insecurity--a recognition
that he could have been you on one level. And perhaps on another
level, that you could have been those guys that beat him to death. And
that scares you. Fear turns into anger. Anger is cooled in the chill
of disdain.
>>And partly, it is having survived those experiences that causes me to
>>retain a sense of compassion--not only for the many men and women who
>>have been murdered for being (or perceived to be) gay or lesbian or
>>transgendered. But for all humans, even those sad, pathetic fuck ups
>>that killed Matthew. I'm glad they did not get the death penalty.
>
>There again, we differ. There's evidence that the tendency toward
>aggression is genetic, and removing stupid and brutal people from the
>gene pool with electricity strikes me as sensible. Considering that
>the rest of us have to lock our doors, worry about our houses being
>empty, and generally structure our lives around the possibility of
>violence, I think we've been held hostage to aggressive young men long
>enough.
Hmf. That smacks of eugenics. You feel held hostage, tho?
I agree, though. That is why as a Queer activist, I seek to change a
culture that has been pretty homophobic, with a slight change only
recently. I want to see that change take deeper root and be durable.
And part of it has to be among ourselves.
>>But
>>I can only hope that the fact that these perpetrators WERE caught,
>>prosecuted and sentenced will deter others from feeling that, just
>>because they don't LIKE someone and their lifestyle, or their
>>"whoring" or their drugging, that gives them the right to hurt or kill
>>them.
>
>It confers no such right.
We agree.
>>Or even lose compassion for them.
>
>Sorry, but with entire species vanishing from the earth faster than
>one per day, with children being maimed and murdered by drunken
>fathers, with women being terrorized by dirt-stupid husbands, with
>armies slaughtering whole towns, ... I don't have a lot of compassion
>left for *people* who *continue* to make bad choices. It diminishes
>with repeition and past some point I have to say, "to hell with them.
>They've had plenty of chances."
But don't you get it? Matthew was the one maimed and murdered. Yet,
you persist in justifying your right to be so callous.
That callous is covering a wound, Chris.
>>I'm blessed by the people who had compassion for me and honor them
>>deeply. And hasten to point out that compassion is very much about
>>engaging people actively. Trying to change the world so there is more
>>understanding.
>
>Understanding, yes; compassion, yes; infinite tolerance for
>recidivism, no; reverence for weakness, no.
I don't see the compassion. And indeed, it's a bit of a conflict to
deny a reverence for weakness. The Buddhist perspective shows us how
valuable that is--because we are all vulnerable. As to infinite
tolerance for recidivism--tolerance and compassion are very similar.
And both require active engagement.
>>z...And when you sneer at Sheppard for having supposedly made
>>some mistakes in his past
>
>Supposedly?
Yes. I haven't seen the same reports you have so I don't have any way
to evaluate them or the source.
>>as a justification for tossing out compassion,
>
>I think of it more as giving up on them.
that's the coward's way out, friend. Because you're giving up on
trying to change anything. Whether in the Matthew's of the world or
the dumb animals that murdered him.
>>...it comes across quite strongly to homophobic individuals
>>as a justification for hating anyone, deriding anyone, who may be
>>different (in some aspects weaker, possibly).
>
>Misinterpretation is their problem. People who are already bigoted
>are going to look at anything that sounds like support or agreement;
>look at Watson with his NARTH, look at the bigots on here leaping on
>my criticisms of the gay culture as support for their bigotry.
I can't comment on these. But they sound very much like homophobic
individuals whining about being called a bigot by calling people that
point out their bigotry bigots. It's a lame, reflexive tactic.
Because, yes, Chris, I think sometimes you have some deep and profound
bigotries.
>If Shepard had not been gay, if he were a woman in a bar who had
>gotten raped and beaten several times before, we would not be having
>this conversation; we'd be saying, "you'd think she would have known
>better than to leave with a pair of bikers." We make a vehement
>exception for Shepard because he was gay (and young, diminutive,
>doe-eyed and cute). Part of equality is not only getting the same
>treatment and rights but being judged by the same criteria, and in
>mine, Shepard was just like that hypothetical woman. Neither
>"deserved" it; both had good reason to know better. It's tragic. But
>not everyone in the world is just and fair.
No, you're wrong again. I would NOT toss out my sense of compassion
for her. You are making the vehement exception here to justify your
lack of respect for Matthew. That is cruel and misguided...
>If you want to talk more, please leave Shepard out of it and get
>hypothetica, I am sick to death of writing about him. And please
>leave the clichés out of it too.
I think I've had my say. I hope you will be able to reflect upon what
I've said and come to a place of deeper enlightenment and compassion.
I'll spin the prayer wheel for you and shoot some dharma light your
way!
George M. Carter
cf> Don't you remember the four or five days between the discovery of his
cf> comatose body and his death? The doctors were saying that if he
cf> survived he would be a brain-dead vegetable.
Nobody is denying the condition he was in when he was found, after
18 hours tied to that fence. But Larimer County Coroner Pat Allen
testified that he may not have lost consciousness right away. By the time
they found him he was almost certainly in a coma...but that was 18 hours
after the attack. 18 hours, as prosecutor Calvin Rerucha put it, with the
constant Wyoming wind as his companion.
cf> My eyes tear in a cold wind and I don't have to be sad about anything.
I was wondering how you knew what tears were...
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ Every murder turns on a bright hot light, and a lot
of people...have to walk out of the shadows.
-Mark Hellinger
> cf> My eyes tear in a cold wind and I don't have to be sad about anything.
>I was wondering how you knew what tears were...
He's the same asshole who has derided you as a crybaby. =)
> >I don't see it as indiscernible .. though I'm getting a clearer
> >picture of your view now. I see it as more like someone who keeps
> >running across a busy street and counting on drivers to brake in time
> >... the third or fourth time he gets hit by a car, I care a lot less
> >than I would for someone who got killed crossing with the lights and
> >hit by someone running the light. I don't claim to be the latest
> >incarnation of Buddha, you know; I have what people who know me well
> >consider to be a far more sensitive compassion than most people, but I
> >also have points past which it dimishes sharply. You're confusing
> >that with the idea that someone "deserves" what happens.
>
> Well, from the get-go, I reject this simplistic comparison to
> Matthew's life. But apparently you have a lot more information on his
> life that allows you to pass such a facile and cruel judgment. That I
> object to.
>
Yes, fox's analogies are way off. they usually involve someone being
hurt by *accidental, non-criminal* behavior. that is a far cry from
willful, hate-driven, murder.
>
> >Second, I've never said it was wrong for Shepard to "leave for sex."
> >I've said that for Shepard to place his own interest in these two
> >toughs ahead of the alarm bells that MUST have been going off in his
> >head was ridiculous; it was seven miles past naīve, it was suicidal.
>
> Here again--now you are right inside his head. You know all about the
> situation and are convinced that "alarm bells" should have been going
> off. Maybe you're right. Maybe he ignored vital clues that could have
> saved his life. Let's assume he was blinded by lust. That's not a
> good thing but it doesn't deserve your brutal condemnation.
Exactly. I don't see why fox thinks naivite (sp?) or even outright
stupidity is so offensive. Okay, it might not be something to be proud
of, but it certainly shouldn't be grounds for excusing or making light
of a person's murder. Fox is making far too much of this, and i think
you're right that it is because of some personal situation.
>
> >It would be like telling a guy with a baseball bat in Sacramento that
> >you have a thousand dollars in your pocket and you're looking for a
> >big score.
Guess what? if the guy with the bat assualted the guy with the money, it
would be just as wrong as if he broke into somebody's house and beat
them over the head. 'But your honor, he showed me the money and made
me want it' is in *no way* a mitigating factor, either legally or
morally. that's what Fox doesn't get, and apparently never will. Based
on what he's written, it seems that he is basically of the mind that the
law of the jungle should rule.
> >He was WAY too trusting. He had not only been hurt in the past, he'd
> >been gang-raped and beaten looking for sex.
>
> I have to take your word for this. But sometimes such acts of violence
> don't make people wiser--maybe they reinforced a sense of desire and a
> fatal NEED to trust people's better nature. You condemn him for being
> too trusting??
>
Like i said, the law of the jungle.
> How do you feel about people who are sent to drug-dryout centers
> >four times, seven times, ten times?
They are not there because of the murderous, criminal activities of
others. false analogy.
>
> >>And this is the root of where I find your arguments
> >>horrifying. You show as much compassion as his murderers. And almost
> >>lend an argument, whether your facts are correct or not, that they
> >>were justified.
> >
> >No.
>
> I know you say that. I know most of you believes that. But part of you
> does not. I just want you to examine that part a little more closely.
Totally. He says the murder was not justified. he also says that he
has no sympathy for Matthew Shepard. Does he have sympathy for the
killers? Does he view them both with equal sympathy? Does he view the
whole incident from a position of neutrality towards it? Any of those
responses would be the wrong answer, in my opinion.
> >
> >So, someone who gets a momentary emotional thrill out of making a
> >jackass of himself does so at the expense of hardening a few more
> >enemies. I'm convinced that most anti-gay people have some misgivings
> >about what they know to be bigotry, and all it takes is one "queer"
> >jackass getting his rocks off expressing his infantile rage to silence
> >those misgivings forever and turn a fence-sitter into a hardened
> >bigot.
>
> I have found it to be quite to the contrary.
Right. Where are all these 'flaming faggots?' In Wyoming? I don't
think so.
>
> >>>>But despite my harsh words here, Chris, understand something. I see
> >>>>that there is a GREAT deal of compassion in you. And a great deal of
> >>>>good thinking in a lot of your other posts.
frankly, i think he just shot his mouth off with one of his usual
outrageous, extreme statements when this thread first started, and now
he doesn't want to be seen as admitting a mistake.
> >There again, we differ. There's evidence that the tendency toward
> >aggression is genetic, and removing stupid and brutal people from the
> >gene pool with electricity strikes me as sensible. Considering that
> >the rest of us have to lock our doors, worry about our houses being
> >empty, and generally structure our lives around the possibility of
> >violence, I think we've been held hostage to aggressive young men long
> >enough.
Which is exactly why we should not be excusing violence and blaming the
victim. That's not a good way to reduce violence.
zoe
snip...
>
>frankly, i think he just shot his mouth off with one of his usual
>outrageous, extreme statements when this thread first started, and now
>he doesn't want to be seen as admitting a mistake.
I hope you're right. But I'm afraid he just doesn't realize it is a
mistake. I'm hopeful that with time and reflection, more compassion
will grow in his heart.
snip...
>Which is exactly why we should not be excusing violence and blaming the
>victim. That's not a good way to reduce violence.
You're so right!!
George M. Carter
>On Wed, 10 Nov 1999 20:59:50 GMT, chri...@earthlink.net (Leere Grab)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <382a3cd4.22017648@news-server>, wste...@hawaii.rr.com (Ward Stewart) wrote:
>>>
>>>Back when Camille was writing "Sexual Personae" -- back before she
>>>acquired a taste for publicity she spoke quite otherwise about the
>>>nature of male sexuality -- folks really ought to read SP, her first
>>>book and magnum opus, very interesting, provocative stuff and funny as
>>>hell.
>>>
>>>NOW she seems to have reinvented herself as a dyke and has taken on
>>>some particularly poisonous positions and decided that she has lost
>>>all her previously admiration for gay males.
>>
>>Reading past all her self-adulation there remains a writer of many
>>scintillating insights. On the balance, I find her worth reading.
>>
>You found her "worth reading" but have not read her first and only
>major book. This self admitted ignorance on your part in no way
>dilutes your opinions -- It does, however, reveal with great clarity
>the emptiness of your views.
Yes I find her worth reading even though I have not read "Sexual
Personae." That's admitted ignorance? That has got to be the most
gratuitously subjective piece of crap to ever come from someone other
than David Hartung. YOU don't like what she has to say ... tough. I
agree with a lot of it.
>>However .. it is not any admiration for gay *males* that may have changed
>>(I'll take your word for it .. I've never read "Sexual Personae" but I've
>>known several people whose opinions I respect who swore by the book); it is
>>her view of gay male culture that is at absolute rock-bottom, and when she
>>writes about it, I find myself in complete agreement. Gay male culture in
>>America is stultifyingly superficial, is politically frivolous, and has
>>nothing to offer to anyone with any expectations for his life higher than
>>those of a typical six-year-old boy.
>>
>>That is a very different thing than "gay males," since most gay males have
>>only a tenuous connection to gay culture and most of us would like to see it
>>drop its many fetalizations and bigotries in favor of something that better
>>addressed the maturity of its majority.
>
>UTTER crap and malevolent crap as well -- kissing the ass of our
>common enemy and reenforcing his vile opinions may not be the very
>best way to advance our common interests.
What "common enemy" would that be, Ward? The entire heterosexual
population? Sorry, but I have a lot of heterosexual friends and we
get along just fine. Those "vile opinions" you speak of are held by a
tiny minority of people whom I would probably find to thick-headed and
stupid to enjoy the company of in person.
I stand on what I wrote, and I have the majority of gay men with me on
that .. gay culture as such has nothing to offer to a mature and
relationship-oriented gay man. It's superficial, immature, boring,
sleazy, slimy, gratuitous, and vain. The loneliest gay men are found
in the gayest cities.
And gay culture is bigoted as hell. Misogyny and racism are rampant
and accepted, betrayal of friends is taken as a fact of life. You
like it? You can keep it.
Name me ONE THING about gay culture that is worth hanging onto in a
post-bigotry world ... just ONE. And I mean a real one, not that lie
about it being "more tolerant" because it is emphatically not.
All in all, I find your statement about "kissing the ass of our common
enemy" to precisely mirror the pointless rebelliousness that has so
thoroughly short-circuited the efforts for gay equality; that is an
entirely adolescent viewpoint and is entirely unconstructive.
Wow. And to think that at one time I respected you. I do no longer.
--
Chris Fox
http://home.earthlink.net/~chrisfox/
"In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are
consequences."
-Robert G. Ingersoll
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those
who don't have it."
-George Bernard Shaw
"A witty saying proves nothing."
-Voltaire
"The Big Bang is creationist"
-- CJ Watson
cf> And to think that at one time I respected you.
And who, prey, would want with the respect of a lout like you
chris...someone who thinks being raped makes a person a slut and a
whore...who thinks the only Gay people who are attacked are the loud
obnoxious types who were asking for it? Al Capone? Ted Bundy? The
Serbian high command?
cf> I do no longer.
Your respect isn't exactly a mark of virtue guy...
---
-Bruce Garrett \ http://www.pobox.com/~bgarrett
Cockeysville, MD. / \ Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet
depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without
thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without
the roar of its many waters. -Frederick Douglass
>In article <382a3cd4.22017648@news-server>, wste...@hawaii.rr.com (Ward Stewart) wrote:
>>
>>Back when Camille was writing "Sexual Personae" -- back before she
>>acquired a taste for publicity she spoke quite otherwise about the
>>nature of male sexuality -- folks really ought to read SP, her first
>>book and magnum opus, very interesting, provocative stuff and funny as
>>hell.
>>
>>NOW she seems to have reinvented herself as a dyke and has taken on
>>some particularly poisonous positions and decided that she has lost
>>all her previously admiration for gay males.
>
>Reading past all her self-adulation there remains a writer of many
>scintillating insights. On the balance, I find her worth reading.
>
You found her "worth reading" but have not read her first and only
major book. This self admitted ignorance on your part in no way
dilutes your opinions -- It does, however, reveal with great clarity
the emptiness of your views.
>However .. it is not any admiration for gay *males* that may have changed
>(I'll take your word for it .. I've never read "Sexual Personae" but I've
>known several people whose opinions I respect who swore by the book); it is
>her view of gay male culture that is at absolute rock-bottom, and when she
>writes about it, I find myself in complete agreement. Gay male culture in
>America is stultifyingly superficial, is politically frivolous, and has
>nothing to offer to anyone with any expectations for his life higher than
>those of a typical six-year-old boy.
>
>That is a very different thing than "gay males," since most gay males have
>only a tenuous connection to gay culture and most of us would like to see it
>drop its many fetalizations and bigotries in favor of something that better
>addressed the maturity of its majority.
UTTER crap and malevolent crap as well -- kissing the ass of our
common enemy and reenforcing his vile opinions may not be the very
best way to advance our common interests.
ward
-----------------------------------------------------
Justice is not allowed to cast off her blindfold
and look down the pants of persons requesting a marriage license
to see if they are eligible.
Craig K. Gowens
-----------------------------------------------------
>Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn wrote:
>>
>> Camille Paglia in http://www.salonmagazine.com/
>>
>> ...
>>
>> "On the home front, the trial of the second man charged with last
>> year's murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming has been treated with
>> blatant manipulation of the news by the liberal major media. As I
>> wrote in my column immediately after that tragedy, the issue of
>> exciting but dangerous gay-male cruising for stranger sex cannot be
>> avoided in this case. But despite even the public warning by Shepard's
>> mother that "Matt was not a saint," a censored and sanitized version
>> of the fatal evening is being promulgated by newscasters in lockstep
>> with gay activist groups.
>>
>> "It's now a simplistic melodrama of virtue versus villainy, as if
>> Shepard -- who had a history of two known incidents that ended
>> violently and who had just the prior week confessed to a fear of being
>> killed -- had been ambushed and kidnapped from the bar because he was
>> gay. Human nature is complex: Shepard, who had traveled abroad, was
>> drawn to his assailants, I suspect, precisely because they were scuzzy
>> punks whose look and manner fairly screamed trouble.
>>
>> "What happened to Matthew Shepard was brutal and barbaric, and as a
>> supporter of capital punishment, I want his killers to fry. (One has
>> already been sentenced to two consecutive life terms.) Both Alison and
>> I have long been in favor of bringing torture back, which I argue
>> would not fall under the rubric of "cruel and unusual punishment"
>> prohibited by the Eighth Amendment if it were a strict replication of
>> the suffering that had been inflicted on the victim -- heinous in this
>> muddled, boozy case but even more atrocious in cold-blooded, precisely
>> planned serial rape-murders of the Ted Bundy kind.
>>
>> "But it does not help the cause of gay rights to pump the public
>> discourse full of intelligence-insulting schmaltz over exceptional
>> incidents. Hate crimes legislation -- that fascist exercise in thought
>> control -- will never make cruising 100 percent safe, particularly not
>> when "rough trade" is involved, a walk on the wild side with
>> besmirched archangels whose zap of primal energy is one step from
>> savagery. To erase the questing, provocative, limits-testing, and even
>> irrational (because id-driven) element in gay-male cruising is a form
>> of castration -- which the glorified nurses and pious hand-holders of
>> the gay activist hierarchy know very well how to do."
>
>
>A) There's not a shread of evidence that MS was 'cruising.' B) Laramie,
>Wyoming is not exactly New york City. I think there are an average of
>like 8 murders a year in the whole state of wyoming. People are a lot
>more trusting in this part of the country than they are in bigger
>states. It's a really big stretch to suggest that MS 'should have
>known' that if he got in a car with these guys he was going to be
>killed. Not that it matters what he 'should have known' anyway.
>
>zoe
Back when Camille was writing "Sexual Personae" -- back before she
acquired a taste for publicity she spoke quite otherwise about the
nature of male sexuality -- folks really ought to read SP, her first
book and magnum opus, very interesting, provocative stuff and funny as
hell.
NOW she seems to have reinvented herself as a dyke and has taken on
some particularly poisonous positions and decided that she has lost
all her previously admiration for gay males.
In the words of Emily Dickenson, whom she so extravagantly admired,
"all public like a frog."
ward
-------------------------------------------------------------
The 1964 Civil Rights Act is "the single most dangerous piece
of legislation ever introduced in the Congress"
He later opposed a national holiday for that
"pervert" Martin Luther King Jr.
Who but? Jesse Helms
-------------------------------------------------------------
>On Wed, 10 Nov 1999 10:59:51 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 10 Nov 1999 13:49:36 GMT, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 09 Nov 1999 23:14:03 -0800, "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn"
>>><chri...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>snip....
>>
>>>Presuming that it is all true, then he was a lusty young man that
>>>enjoyed sex. He should die for that?? He should be beaten to death??
>>>
>>>Your prissy sense of sexuality is your own choice--but again you
>>>implicitly JUSTIFY his being murdered--you pander to the "homosexual
>>>panic" "defense" when you go this route. It is abominable.
>>>
>>>And you justify blaming the victim tactics of the right-wing psychos.
>>>Fuck that.
>>
>>Look, GM ShortBus, your reading comprehension is so poor I'm not even
>>going to reply to this. I've written nothing of what you quote me as
>>writing.
>
>Good sign. Maybe you're even getting how indefensible some of your
>horseshit is. Bravo!
>
> George M. Carter
Perhaps there has been a general failure of reading ability --
strangely enough my interpretation of your defensive internalized
homophobia is exactly the same as Carter's
You may or may not mean what it is that you are saying; you may or may
not understand what it is that you are saying, but there can be no
doubt that YOU ARE SAYING IT!
Poor judgement is NOT a justification for homicide, not even remotely
save in your posts, and those of your fellow homophobes.
>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 02:00:20 -0500, "L. Michael Roberts"
><News...@SpamSux.LaserFX.com> wrote:
>
>>> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
>>> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
A wonderfully revealing statement.
Therefore what?
ward
>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:00:16 -0600, gsp...@nohate.poboxes.com (Rainbow
>Christian) wrote:
>
>>In article <80ei27$1r...@edrn.newsguy.com>, Bruce Garrett
>><bgar...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>- "Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Log" <chri...@earthlink.net>...
>>-
>>- s'matter with your kill file chris? Need some help getting
>>- it to work...?
>
>It works fine. Posts from you go straight into the toilet.
>
>>- cf> Grief over Matthew Shepard? Wow, Bruce, what a font of compassion you
>>- cf> are, feeling PERSONALLY the grief over every tragedy in the news!
>>-
>>- I can still recall the feeling I had when I read this:
>>-
>>- "There was abundant evidence to use to formally charge McKinney, said
>>- prosecutor Calvin Rerucha as he opened the hearing with an emotional
>>- statement and recounted the witnesses he planned to call. Rerucha
>>- briefly described the grisly crime. Shepard was covered with blood,
>>- he said. Only one clean spot was found on his face "where tears had
>>- run down." He powerfully described how Shepard remained tied to a
>>- fence, with the "constant Wyoming wind as his companion," for 18
>>- hours before he was found."
>
>Oh, please, Bruce, tell us how you felt! Please describe the emotions
>that went through your mind. Get poetic. Fondle a daffodil and walk
>slowly about the room as you speak. Gaze into middle distance ...
>pause ... get a catch in your voice ... cue the tear ....
>
>What contemptible pathos.
Speaking of "contemptible'" -- what a thoroughly contemptible
star-turn of swinishness -- some days, Fox, you really out-do
yourself.
ward
You know, i read SP quite a few years ago (although i don't remember
much of it), and i saw Paglia on TV a couple times (agin, quite a few
years ago), and i recall being favorably impressed. But then recently i
heard a lot of negative stuff being said about her, so i went and read
some of her more recent work, and i have to agree with you that she has
made some kind of transformation (for the worse, i'd say). I used to
think that she was very independent minded; that she called them as she
saw them, regardless of which 'side' that put her on. Now it seems to
me that she is basically marching in lockstep with the conservative
right, but since she's a lesbian and something of an artsy-fartsy type,
this makes for good publicity. In any case, i think that her
*independence* has been lost; she's just like the mindless, PC types she
criticizes, only in reverse.
zoe
You really should go back and take another look -- fascinating,
iconoclastic and saucy as hell.
She was an acolyte of Harold Bloom's and was tapping the very roots of
the most informed of modern literary criticism and study. While there
she made all sorts of wonderful new connections and assessments.
She drew a line from Sappho to Dickenson and entertained at every step
along the way.
ward
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
"Love, like a mountain-wind upon an oak,
Falling upon me, shakes me leaf and bough."
Sappho of Lesbos
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
>years ago), and i recall being favorably impressed. But then recently i
>heard a lot of negative stuff being said about her, so i went and read
>some of her more recent work, and i have to agree with you that she has
>made some kind of transformation (for the worse, i'd say). I used to
>think that she was very independent minded; that she called them as she
>saw them, regardless of which 'side' that put her on. Now it seems to
>me that she is basically marching in lockstep with the conservative
>right, but since she's a lesbian and something of an artsy-fartsy type,
>this makes for good publicity. In any case, i think that her
>*independence* has been lost; she's just like the mindless, PC types she
>criticizes, only in reverse.
>
>zoe
>
>
>
>> ward
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>> The 1964 Civil Rights Act is "the single most dangerous piece
>> of legislation ever introduced in the Congress"
>>
>> He later opposed a national holiday for that
>> "pervert" Martin Luther King Jr.
>> Who but? Jesse Helms
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
"We must be getting back to Alice. If I am
away from her long, I get low in my mind."
Gertrude Stein
--------------------------------------------
> >How do you feel about people like Tom Keske and Ezekiel
> >Krahlin, expressing hatred of heterosexuals? Do you
> >feel that the situation of gays in society excuses their
> >behavior? I don't hear you protesting Krahlin's irritating
> >little signature.
>
> Oh, I have in the past. I got into quite an argument with Krahlin
> before on that issue. It's silly.
Only dimwits confuse my outrage and disgust against hetero-supremacy,
with hatred of heterosexuals. My "irritating" signatures are but jokes
about heteros...since they have so many about "faggots" and other
minority stereotypes. Why should we spare heteros from such jokes? Are
they sacred, untouchable, too Godly or something?
As for Tom Keske: he is working very hard to research the recent history
of homophobia, and how it ties in with AIDS, genetic warfare, and gay
rights.
If so many heteros did not regard me as inferior because of my sexual
preference, I wouldn't be so angry at them. What you, and some others,
are doing, are dumping the onus of homophobia on me, who speaks out
against gay hatred, and hetero dogma. You are afraid to look at the
truth of heterocentrism, and how it has poisoned every aspect of our
society's perception of life, and how everyone is *supposed to behave.
Gays are the major target of their dogma...more so since the advent of
AIDS, and exacerbated by our "gay friendly" president who signed
DOMA...which curiously enough is one letter short of DOGMA.
A Democrat president authorizes a decree that declares, in essence, gays
to be a threat to the sanctity of hetero marriage and family values. Yet
you prefer to see *me as hateful towards hets, and paranoid! I have met
many gays who are, in every meaning of the word except in bed,
essentially heterocentric. It is a shame that it is this way, and that
proactive gays are suppressed and attacked by these assimilationist
"brothers"... who really care more about their Mommy's money and how it
can benefit their own material comforts, than about anyone's civil
rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Permission granted by author for anyone to distribute this
writing free of charge (including translation into any
language)...under condition that no profit is made therefrom,
and that it remain intact and complete, including title and
credit to the original author.
Ezekiel J. Krahlin
ezek...@my-deja.com http://surf.to/gaybible
--------------------------------------------------------------
SEVEN LITMUS TESTS
Š 1997 by Ezekiel J. Krahlin
(Jehovah's Queer Witness)
So, you have straight friends--even family members,
perhaps--who are so very understanding and accepting of your
homosexuality. Or are they, really? Take a second look and
see how they stand up to the seven litmus tests I describe
herein:
1) Of course, if they accept your homosexuality, they are
most likely "liberals". And--being the good liberals they
are--they proudly wear T-shirts and decals proclaiming their
support of black people's rights, women's rights, ecological
causes, anti-nuclear slogans, et cetera. But where are their
T-shirts that say something like "Another hetero for gay
rights"? If your straight friends do not display pro-gay
icons on a regular basis--as they do for other causes--then
they are not truly supportive of your sexual civil rights.
Just as in the past, many white folks did not vocalize support
for black people from fear of being called "nigger
lovers"...many liberals are afraid of being labeled "faggot"
if they display support for gay rights. (Their loss, and your
holocaust.)
2) Your "progressive" hetero friends love to chew the fat
over political issues (see above)...yet they never seem to
come around to discussing the gay dilemma. Unless, of course,
you yourself interject that topic, with resulting token
responses by your "supportive" chums. But if you're silent, or
not there, homosexuality is never a part of their progressive
agenda. If they donate to liberal causes, have they ever
included a contribution to some lesbian or gay organization?
3) If your "loving" family members say they support you...how
far will they go in defending you before a bigoted relative?
Or do they avoid the topic of homosexuality altogether, in
order to never be in a position to defend you?
4) If you lost a lover from AIDS or other tragedy: how many
family members rush to your side in loving concern, to ease
you through your passage of grief...as they clearly would for
their heterosexual kin? Or do they give you a cursory nod of
sympathy, then go on their own selfish way? (Implying, of
course, that no one can really take a homosexual relationship
seriously...it is, at best, a joke; and certainly something
one can get over in a few weeks or less.)
5) Has any close relative (such as a brother, sister, or
parent) ever voluntarily approached you to ask your opinions
of what it's like to be gay, and how you cope with an
intolerant society? Does any relative take the kindness to
recognize your humanity during Lesbian/ Gay Pride Week? (Or
do they all pretend they don't even know of its existence,
even when you remind them of the upcoming event each year?)
Has any one of them actually read a book about
homosexuality--just as they read about racism, Viet Nam,
etc.-- that they may better understand the issue? (Are there any
books in their homes about gay people...along with their books
on women's rights, racism, and other progressive topics?)
6) Are your "understanding" hetero buddies often
rationalizing society's homophobia with statements like:
"Well, heterosexuality is so deeply ingrained in our
culture...it will take some time yet for society to come
around." Though they would never dream of saying the same
thing for other issues of oppression; such as black people's
rights, child abuse, job discrimination towards females, etc.
(Yet those negative aspects are just as ingrained in our
society, as is hatred towards homosexuals.)
7) Do your relatives go all ga-ga over conventional "het"
weddings within the family...and pretend to never comprehend
why you might feel a little less eager to celebrate these
breeder unions, than they are? ("Oh, cousin Peggy, I'm so
happy you're getting married to the man of your dreams! I'll
dance with all the bridesmaid's and sing, and play piano, and
in general, be the life of the party. Then when it's all over,
I'll go back to my little queer closet, where I can brood to
my heart's content over never being able to celebrate a
marriage with the partner of my dreams, as you, privileged
hetero, can so freely do.")
Note: Would you consider refusing to attend hetero weddings
until the time when gays can also marry...and mail a written
declaration to this effect to your closer relatives? Or are
you a slave to your family's every demand...and/or afraid of
losing certain fringe benefits, such as paid college tuition,
generous birthday and graduation gifts, family business loans
and donations, and a sumptuous inheritance or two? If so,
then you must also bear some guilt for perpetuating
homophobia. Mama's boys just don't cut the mustard when it
comes to defending homosexual civil rights at the cost of
making their mothers happy.
Many of us live in delusion as to the assumed "stalwart
support" from our heterosexual kith and kin. So I hope the
examples above will wake up some of our sisters and brothers.
I must also point out that if you do have family members and
straight friends who pass these litmus tests, then you are a
lucky soul, indeed.
I am a Christian who believes that Jesus is homosexual, and
whose lover is of course, God. And it is also my belief that
Jesus had the homosexuality/family issue in mind, when He said
(Matthew 10:35-36):
For I have come to set a man against his father, a
daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes will
be those of his own household.
President Clinton's signing of the so-called "Defense Of
Marriage Act" is clearly this prophecy on the way to
fulfilling itself. Best prepare for the revolution about to
come, and beware of family and most of your hetero
buddies--for they may kill you with "friendly fire."
---finis
---
Allah is gay, Allah is good!
http://surf.to/gayislam
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Oh...so you *do agree with me on my claim that the U.S.
is still largely homophobic. Thanks for your own
comment, as this verifies what others here have been
verbally bashing me...insisting that the country is
*not as gay hateful as I claim...and that I am merely
paranoid and hateful. Thanks for your affirmation to
my own claim (albeit indirect and unacknowledged by
yourself).
I see: when you go to work, leave your individuality, your freedoms,
home. Since when is the workplace an entity independent of the Bill of
Rights? You have your right to present your beliefs wherever you are,
work or otherwise. Gays, unless they are particularly flamboyant or
effeminate, are assumed hetero...unless otherwise informed. Wearing a
gay button, sticker or T-shirt is a handy way to assure others that they
will not mistake you for hetero.
The real problem here, is the usurpation of individual rights by
corporate warfare and small minded peons. They only gays they could ever
accept, are those who "know their place". Can you imagine? Having your
job or life threatened just for wearing a gay-positive slogan? Who has
the real problem here? A society where it takes real courage just to let
people you work and live among, know that your gay...is a society that
is absurdly homophobic.
P.S.: I have a suggestion for a gay button: I BASH BACK.
No doubt you also can't distinguish between
Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler...or
between Martin Luther King and Jerry Fallwell...
or between your elbow and your asshole.
Pinheads are like that.
There's passive homophobia, which rarely results in more than
avoidance, and then there's the xtian variety, which seeks
out targets to harrass.
> ---
> Allah is gay, Allah is good!
Allah way down! BAby!!
>There's passive homophobia, which rarely results in more than
>avoidance, and then there's the xtian variety, which seeks
>out targets to harrass.
It is this large surplus of the majority, non-Christian-fanatic
populace, whose passive homophobia gives tacit permission for violent
homophobes to get away with their crimes. They do not speak out
against homophobic slurs and laws (such as DOMA)...they do not vote
for gay rights or gay politicians...they do not feel outrage when a
gay person is bashed, murdered, or denied housing.
But there is also active homophobia beyond the ranks of Xian
bigots...some of whom are atheist, as well as Muslim, Jewish, etc.
But in this country and many others, the main source of violence is
among KKKristian sects and neo-KKKristian sects such as the Aryan
Brotherhood.
>> ---
>> Allah is gay, Allah is good!
>
>Allah way down! BAby!!
Muhammed's Marbles!
Q: How many heteros does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Don't know yet; they're still trying to breed enough
brains to meet the challenge.
---
Allah is gay, Allah is good!
http://surf.to/gayislam
---
My toll-free voice/fax mailbox (USA only):
1-888-830-5746 (ext. 8275)
<Snip> I have met
>many gays who are, in every meaning of the word except in bed,
>essentially heterocentric. It is a shame that it is this way, and that
>proactive gays are suppressed and attacked by these assimilationist
>"brothers"... who really care more about their Mommy's money and how it
>can benefit their own material comforts, than about anyone's civil
>rights.
Don't you think you are denying people the right to select their friendships
and lifestyles but declaring their behaviour to be "a shame"? For some
people this is how their lives work, and it should merely be regarded as
their preference or sometimes simply the luck of the draw in how they get to
meet people in the course and scope of their chosen activities.
I don't think that the sexual orientation of the friends of one's choice
necessarily makes one a better or worse person, any more than I believe that
one's own sexual orientation makes one superior or inferior to anyone else.
Moira de Swardt
Straight, but not narrow.
>In article <382eb134...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
> gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>>I agree, though. That is why as a Queer activist, I
>>seek to change a culture that has been pretty
>>homophobic, with a slight change only recently.
>
>Oh...so you *do agree with me on my claim that the U.S.
>is still largely homophobic. Thanks for your own
>comment, as this verifies what others here have been
>verbally bashing me...insisting that the country is
>*not as gay hateful as I claim...and that I am merely
>paranoid and hateful. Thanks for your affirmation to
>my own claim (albeit indirect and unacknowledged by
>yourself).
You're more than welcome.
My only objection to your views is that you seem to feel the only way
to solve the problem of homophobia in the U.S. (or elsewhere) is by
creating some sort of separatist state. First, it just ain't gonna
happen logistically. But if you've got the money and actually can get
the real estate, etc., and do it, I'll be curious to see how it works
out.
But while I might visit, I wouldn't live in such a place. Cause some
of my best friends are str8!
George M. Carter
>Don't you think you are denying people the right to select their friendships
>and lifestyles but declaring their behaviour to be "a shame"?
No, I don't think that at all. The points you are making have nothing
to do with the points I'm making. I am expressing a disgust at the
hypocrisy of many gays who, if they're affluent, often are also
elitist, right-wing, and prejudiced in many ways. This is a similar
situation to certain affluent African Americans who vote Republican,
and look down their nose on their less fortunate brothers and sisters.
This is not a matter of one's freedom to choose your associates and
friends. This is a matter of glorifying an attitude that is hateful,
small-minded, selfish and ignorant. Sure, people do have the choice to
become Nazis, or not become Nazis. Does this mean I must respect such
a choice, and just shut up about it?
>I don't think that the sexual orientation of the friends of one's choice
>necessarily makes one a better or worse person, any more than I believe that
>one's own sexual orientation makes one superior or inferior to anyone else.
Good for you. But it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
Q: How many heteros does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Don't know yet; they're still trying to breed enough
brains to meet the challenge.
---
Allah is gay, Allah is good!
http://surf.to/gayislam
>My only objection to your views is that you seem to feel the only way
>to solve the problem of homophobia in the U.S. (or elsewhere) is by
>creating some sort of separatist state.
Not so. I believe that if more gays cultivated separatist notions,
we'd have a much larger body of aggressive dissent...and thus
accelerate the winning of our rights...without ever, literally, having
our own country. Having separatist sensibilities will allow us to more
clearly discern where are friends and enemies stand, for any given
issue. But as it now stands, our minds are muddied with heterocentric
dogma that defines who and what we gays are...without ever respecting
our own notions based on firsthand experience.
>First, it just ain't gonna
>happen logistically. But if you've got the money and actually can get
>the real estate, etc., and do it, I'll be curious to see how it works
>out.
I would like to see gays create the first nation (and/or independent
enconomy) in cyberspace. But with attitudes like yours, some other
group will get that first. You might not understand the importance of
this now, but the time will soon come when dissenting minorities are
able to create their own economies and governments without needing any
particular geographical location, or buildings.
The same way people in oppressive cultures can now freely communicate
with anyone, anywhere--thanks to the slippery nature of the
Internet--oppressed people will also figure a way to advance this
medium to garner substantial support and finances...no matter how
scattered across the globe they may be. This is most suitable for gay
people, whose population is completely scattered about every single
culture that exists.
But without a separatist philosophy, we will never get it together to
create a true community across the world...one with its own economny,
government, and freedoms denied us in heterocentered cultures.
>But while I might visit, I wouldn't live in such a place. Cause some
>of my best friends are str8!
That is beside the point. If you were offered a place in such a new,
gay society, I'm sure you'd at least think about it. There is no
reason you couldn't regularly visit your hetero friends...and thanks
to the Internet, you can keep in constant touch, anyway. It is only
heterocentric stereotyping that makes the idea of a gay nation seem
"silly" and "impossible"...because, of course, we all know how much
*better heteros run things, and how *dizzy all of us queers are,
right?
FYI: I have recently discovered such an attempt to create the first
cyber-nation at:
Cyber Yugoslavia
http://www.juga.com/
I quote from their home page:
This is Cyber Yugoslavia. Home of Cyber Yugoslavs. We
lost our country in 1991 and became citizens of Atlantis.
Since September 9, 1999 this is our home. We don't have
a physical land, but we do have nationality, and we are
giving CY citizenships and CY passports. Because this is
Atlantis, we are allowing double and triple citizenships. If
you feel Yugoslav, you are welcome to apply for CY
citizenship, regardless of your current nationality and
citizenship, and you will be accepted.
Needless to say, I have subscribed for membership, and requested the
title "Secretary of Homosexual Equality". It remains to be seen, yet,
whether or not they accept me. Certainly, this is a good test to see
how the idea of Cyber-Nations takes off...and how liberal (or not)
they will be.
So, when you are ready to step into the 21st century as a gay-relevant
citizen, I will welcome you. Meanwhile, I must leave you behind, for I
shake the dust off my shoes, and strive towards freedom and
cyber-nationality. In fact, I have already proposed the name for our
first gay nation: Athenia.
>On Sat, 27 Nov 1999 14:57:25 GMT, gm...@ix.netcom.com (GMCarter) wrote:
>
>>My only objection to your views is that you seem to feel the only way
>>to solve the problem of homophobia in the U.S. (or elsewhere) is by
>>creating some sort of separatist state.
>
>Not so. I believe that if more gays cultivated separatist notions,
>we'd have a much larger body of aggressive dissent...and thus
>accelerate the winning of our rights...without ever, literally, having
>our own country. Having separatist sensibilities will allow us to more
>clearly discern where are friends and enemies stand, for any given
>issue. But as it now stands, our minds are muddied with heterocentric
>dogma that defines who and what we gays are...without ever respecting
>our own notions based on firsthand experience.
Hmmm...please clarify what you mean. As it is, I like a lot of
different kinds of people, regardless of sex, orientation, race,
ethnicity, etc.
>>First, it just ain't gonna
>>happen logistically. But if you've got the money and actually can get
>>the real estate, etc., and do it, I'll be curious to see how it works
>>out.
>
>I would like to see gays create the first nation (and/or independent
>enconomy) in cyberspace. But with attitudes like yours, some other
>group will get that first. You might not understand the importance of
>this now, but the time will soon come when dissenting minorities are
>able to create their own economies and governments without needing any
>particular geographical location, or buildings.
I don't entirely object to this, but again find it unlikely that it
would maintain it's "purity." Besides, I like transgendered,
transvestite and bisexual people.
As to dissenting minorities otherwise creating their own economies in
cyberspace, this is more than possible. There are already
queer-related web sites. Some have overlap with other issues I find
important, like environmental issues. But there--see? It gets a bit
sticky. A lot of the other minority issues are filled with men who
don't have sex with men and women who don't have sex with women.
>The same way people in oppressive cultures can now freely communicate
>with anyone, anywhere--thanks to the slippery nature of the
>Internet--oppressed people will also figure a way to advance this
>medium to garner substantial support and finances...no matter how
>scattered across the globe they may be. This is most suitable for gay
>people, whose population is completely scattered about every single
>culture that exists.
I agree with using the internet to advance the rights of gays and
lesbians worldwide! I think somewhere in here is a very valuable idea!
>But without a separatist philosophy, we will never get it together to
>create a true community across the world...one with its own economny,
>government, and freedoms denied us in heterocentered cultures.
Economy I can sort of understand. Freedoms are expressed within the
local context. I.e., my freedom to hold a lover's hand on Christopher
St. is a lot greater than it is perhaps for someone in Des Moines or
Kabul.
But government? That won't work I don't think. How could I earn
income in the U.S. and pay taxes to some separatist queer nation?
>>But while I might visit, I wouldn't live in such a place. Cause some
>>of my best friends are str8!
>
>That is beside the point. If you were offered a place in such a new,
>gay society, I'm sure you'd at least think about it. There is no
>reason you couldn't regularly visit your hetero friends...and thanks
>to the Internet, you can keep in constant touch, anyway. It is only
>heterocentric stereotyping that makes the idea of a gay nation seem
>"silly" and "impossible"...because, of course, we all know how much
>*better heteros run things, and how *dizzy all of us queers are,
>right?
Oh, don't be such a dope. You just got done saying how all the rich
gays are right wing assholes. So how do you expect to ever get it
practically started?
At the moment, whether anyone would live there or not is purely
speculation and all kind of silly for those of us stuck living in the
quotidian world.
>FYI: I have recently discovered such an attempt to create the first
>cyber-nation at:
>
> Cyber Yugoslavia
> http://www.juga.com/
>
>I quote from their home page:
>
> This is Cyber Yugoslavia. Home of Cyber Yugoslavs. We
> lost our country in 1991 and became citizens of Atlantis.
> Since September 9, 1999 this is our home. We don't have
> a physical land, but we do have nationality, and we are
> giving CY citizenships and CY passports. Because this is
> Atlantis, we are allowing double and triple citizenships. If
> you feel Yugoslav, you are welcome to apply for CY
> citizenship, regardless of your current nationality and
> citizenship, and you will be accepted.
Pay? And get what? I have to say, Serbian folk music is the coolest of
all what used to be Yugoslavia.
>Needless to say, I have subscribed for membership, and requested the
>title "Secretary of Homosexual Equality". It remains to be seen, yet,
>whether or not they accept me. Certainly, this is a good test to see
>how the idea of Cyber-Nations takes off...and how liberal (or not)
>they will be.
Go for it! I'm interesting in seeing how it works. But I think there
are a lot of real and practical issues that make most of what you're
talking about just silly.
>So, when you are ready to step into the 21st century as a gay-relevant
>citizen, I will welcome you. Meanwhile, I must leave you behind, for I
>shake the dust off my shoes, and strive towards freedom and
>cyber-nationality. In fact, I have already proposed the name for our
>first gay nation: Athenia.
You go, girl. Follow your dream.
>Q: How many heteros does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
>A: Don't know yet; they're still trying to breed enough
> brains to meet the challenge.
Hets are good for at least one thing, sweetie. They breed dizzy queens
like you and I.
George Mary Carter
> I am expressing a disgust at the
>hypocrisy of many gays who, if they're affluent, often are also
>elitist, right-wing, and prejudiced in many ways. This is a similar
>situation to certain affluent African Americans who vote Republican,
>and look down their nose on their less fortunate brothers and sisters.
True.
Worse, they provide a ready excuse for inaction.
"Well Joe's gay and he slobbers all over my dirty
crack with his tongue. That just proves that the *other*
Godless faggots are militant extreemists who want too
much!"
For a lot of us (maybe most? Just about all?), growing up
as gay means growing up as "different"... an "outsider."
No, not an "outcast" -- it can happen, but it's not
necessarily true -- but an "outsider." We're different. We
feel different. At a young age, with hormones brewing
and the other 90% of boys/young men thinking of nothing
but girls, we're dreaming of other guys. And, if that isn't
enough to set us apart, there's always the fact that you
had to be sheltered to *not* grow up learning words
such as "faggot," or "Queer" and even "Gay" as
insults. You can't suddenly figure out that those words
accurately apply to you and not feel different. If for
no other reason then because you're the only one who
really knows what they mean.
Being the "outsider" can be a gift. It gives you the distance,
the ability to step back and see the "group" as those within
it never could. A new perspective. Information. We're less
susceptible to peer pressure & group-think because we know
we're not ever going to be "just like them" even if we do
go along. And we had that enormous excercise we undertook
with rejecting everything we had always learned about gay
people to prepare us. For gay people, *not* accepting the
prevailing view is a survival tool while, for the hets, it can be
an almost unthinkable course of action. At least this is how it
usually was....
For some gay people, being outside the "group" meant the
challange was to get in. The sight granted, this new
perspective; to them it was only ever a measure of how
far they have to go before reaching their goal of inclusion.
They want to be "in," to "belong" and they will go to
great lengths to do so. What is "straight acting" but a
total surrender to the revailing views on homosexuals?
To use the phrase "straight acting" we must first
understand how this homophobic culture sees us and to
desire "straight" acting we must *value* it. And the suit
& tie crowd, their distaste with THOSE feminine queers,
not to mention the fear & shame they feel at a comparison
to them.... What is it but a throwback to youth, the same
"fag" and "queer" as insults, only the words are to be
applied to a more select crowd. Heck, I've even heard
"I'm a homosexual but I'm not gay." After all, "Gay" is
supposed to be a bad word.
Someone once said -- and I wish could remember who --
that all conservatism was born in shame. Or something
like that. Although I know this is a distinctly unpopular
stance, and some will violently disagree, I'd say that
the link is about as obvious as it can get with our
"conservative" right-wing gay & lesbian brothers.
John(thinking: Let the games begin!)
J At
T Netway http://members.spree.com/sip1/jtem
E Dot
M Com