From: spencer@shade.Princeton.EDU (S. Spencer Sun)
Subject: Re: ok, let me try this again
Reply-To: spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu (S. Spencer Sun)
Organization: Live Organ Transplants
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:53:25 GMT

In article <1drj46INN8l4@alice.cs.purdue.edu>, berninge@cs.purdue.edu (James Berninger) writes:
>
>Soc.motss is the group I try to read more of, but there are a
>*large* number of topics here that quickly go into my KILL file.
>I can't possibly keep up with 200+ articles a day, and I know the
>volume of this group alone has turned away a number of people (in
>particular, my SO and at least one mutual friend).

Let me echo this... long background story coming up here.  The gist is
that the incredibly high volume has kept other people from reading this
group, and these people were heretofore, shall we say, sheltered,
thought they didn't know any gays until I told them I was, and I
recommended that they read soc.motss since they'd learn a lot more and
be exposed to a lot more opinions than simply listening to me, because I
have only recently come to terms with my orientation and am
unquestionably less experienced than lots of other motssers.

Several friends and I often mail the entire group of friends whenever
mailing one, and often forward interesting USENET articles to the entire
group of friends.  I forwarded the news of CO#2 passing with the title
"This is very distressing news" and to my dismay, one friend currently
living in Colorado mailed back saying "I thought it was great" and meant
it (he voted for it).

After picking myself back up off the ground, I started pointing things
out (and forwarding lots of other opinions from soc.motss) to try and
explain to him how CO#2 was actually pretty bad.  I think he voted for
it through a combination of misunderstanding exactly what its
implications were, and also he's pretty naive when it comes to weighty
issues (he graduated from Princeton last year and I think he's 19 now.
Disgusting how academically intelligent some people are, eh?).

I think I'm gradually bringing him around (at the time, only one person
of the group of friends knew I was gay, although in the ensuing
discussion above, I told the entire group... he mentioned that the day
before, a co-worker asked him "___, how many gay people do you know?"
"None."  "Wrong, none that you KNOW of," which was a very interesting
coincidence because my outing message showed up the next day).

But anyway I mentioned that for better arguments against CO#2 and other
reasons mentioned way back in my first paragraph, that they should read
soc.motss.  Well, the traffic was so high that they don't want to read
it.

Their loss, yes, but in some sense I think that, especially if lots of
other heteros fitting a similar profile are turned off from reading
soc.motss, then it's OUR loss as well.  Someone proposed education as
being a useful tool (not necessarily the only one, but A useful tool
anyway) in combating bigotry and ignorance... reading soc.motss would
definitely be educational for my friends, but if I can't get them to
read it, well.

-----
sss/PU'94 Dept of CS (spencer@phoenix.princeton.edu)/JvNCnet (spencer@jvnc.net)
"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more
divine means of consumption.  Let us give praise to our Maker and glory to His
bounty, by learning about... BEER..."  [Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves]

Newsgroups: soc.motss,alt.politics.homosexuality,misc.legal