From: peterk@polari.online.com
Subject: Re: Female wanted (let me explain myself)
Organization: Seattle Online Public Access Unix (206) 328-4944
Distribution: seattle
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:22:12 GMT

>I'm afraid that a lot of people have misunderstood what I said above.  
>It was rather blunt and poorly worded.  I'm also afraid I have half 
>the department thinking I am a homosexual-hating bigot.  Also, if I've 
>offended anyone, I sincerely apologize.  My intent was not to offend, 
>but to make a point.  I really shouldn't have singled out any particular 
>group out in my posting.  Anyway, I'd like to clarify what I tried to say
>before.

I have been watching this thread with interest, because I think it
points up a problem we've been having in society in general,
college/intellectual communities in particular, and Internet in utter
absurdity. Some folks just love to lie in wait and jump on anyone for
the slightest deviation from the Absolute Correct Truth. I must admit
that when I was a college sophomore, I thought I knew everything, too.
But at least I was willing to discuss things rationally, and learned
that I really didn't know everything.

I think you have a perfect right to choose whoever you want as a
babysitter. Folks like the people who jumped down your throat after
your first post need to grow up. If they don't, they may turn America
into another Yugoslavia within a generation. And that would be a pity: 
this is one of the few places in the world where ethnicity or
ideological purity do not define one's class of citizenship, no less
one's right to be alive. Sure some people try to make it so--but it's
not anywhere near as much a part of the underlying rules of society as
it is in many other places. 

Bigotry is an awful thing. I ought to know, as six million of my people
were sytematically murdered in a particularly virulent outbreak during
the 1930s and 40s. Including several close progenitors of mine and my
wife's. Ask any nonwhite person what bigotry feels like. Political
purity is also pretty destructive--ask anyone who came from the former
USSR, or China, or some of the nastier right-wing dictatorships in
Central/South America or Asia.

The problem comes when people start to use any pretense of an incorrect
attitude to do worse unto the offender than the offender ever had
intention of doing unto the protected classes. In other words, when the
cure is much worse than the disease. 

On the other hand, answering the Thought Police by juxtoposing
"homosexual" with "child molester" created potent flame bait! It may
have been an innocent mistake, or a Freudian slip. I have no basis to
judge, so I will not.

As Rodney King said:  "People, can we get along?"

>I think we all choose friends that have similar interests and values as 
>ourselves.  I hold traditional, Christian, family-oriented values, and so 
>do most of my close friends. . . . 
>I think its normal for a person to choose friends that have 
>similar moral values.  My values may be different from most people's, but 
>that isn't wrong. . . . 

Here's a question: do you think that people who aren't traditional
Christians really hold different *values* from you? You don't say this,
I'm just asking. I'm politically liberal, Jewish and have no children.
You might be surprised to learn how many basic values we had in common.
Not all our *views* might coincide, but as for basic *values*, I
suspect many of them do. 

My comment to the group in general: just because the Republicans are
trying desperately to win an election by painting everyone who isn't a
laissez-faire Conservative and totally opposed to abortion as valueless
and un-American doesn't make it right. And just because the P.C. crowd
is painting everyone who doesn't live in a communal house with at least
one member of every ethnic group and sexual preference as a bigot who
must be converted, silenced or destroyed before he/she infects
others--that doesn't make it right either.

Hoping for a little tolerance, and rationality, and donning flame-proof
suit :-)

--peter
-- 
--Peter (Peter A. Klein)
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