From: vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alan Williams)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Gay Homophobia (was Re: Too straight looking to be gay???) (was re: UNGAY GAY)
Date: 21 Aug 92 15:45:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: camelot.vanyel.714411916
Distribution: usa
Organization: Bradley University

In <1992Aug20.185004.9890@microsoft.com> bobsarv@microsoft.com (Bob Sarver) writes:
>Defending bizarre practices by calling them freedom of expression,
>and then mysteriously wondering why gays are still oppressed.

>It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this shit out, Elf.

No, but it takes more intelligence than *you* have, apparently.

Here, let me address this from my area of study--English:
Ever hear of the Romantic Period?  It's a time in at least British--and
later American--literature in which the big thing on people's minds was the
right to express *themselves*.  Romanticism was, more often than not, a
kind of escape from traditional forms and subject matter, and it laid the
groundwork for the future.  Some well-known romantics: Keats, Shelley
(Percy *and* Mary), Wordsworth, and Coleridge on the British side; Emerson,
Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Whitman on the American side.

The Romantics celebrated the variety of the human experience.  They reveled
in their emotions, unbridling their passions and letting the depths and
heights of their feelings take them to new heights and lows.

The Romantics, simply put, lived life to the fullest.

What does this have to do with this discussion?  Lemme show you.

Ever read _Song of Myself_?  It's a rather extensive (I don't really like
it, personally) long poem by Walt Whitman.  You remember Whitman, don't
you?  The father of free verse?  Good.  Because Whitman and the other
American Romantics (esp. in latter years of the period) celebrated the
*individual*, accepting each individual on that individual's merits,
celebrating nonconformity like a lifelong holiday.

That's *not* what you're doing, Bob.

You're attacking the flamboyant "queeny" types, probably because you don't
personally like the way they live their lives.  I'm not sure why you're
doing it--perhaps it's an identity problem, perhaps it's just personal
distaste.  It doesn't matter.  What *does* matter is that you don't just 
acknowledging their existence and choosing not to associate with them
because of your *individual* (remember that word?) preferences regarding
your choice of friends.  Instead, you choose to *attack* these people,
justifying your unreasoning personal vendetta with a rationale that
displays an alarming dearth of either original thought or thorough
consideration of the matter.

That's pathetic.

I have no problem with you choosing to stay in your closet, hiding behind
lies and deceptions because you have some kind of personal problem with one
group of homosexuals.  That's your choice.  My choice is to be out, and to
simply be me--who I am, what I am, etc.--even when being me sometimes means
not knowing what "me" is.  I also choose not to get involved with people
who fit the kind of negative stereotypes you're talking about--at least not
on a romantic level--because that behavior makes me uncomfortable.  No one
said we have to welcome everyone with open arms, y'know.  If you just don't
like the "queeny" type, that's your prerogative--just as it's my
prerogative to avoid cooked broccoli like the Red Death.  (Did I mention
Poe was an American Romantic too?)

So what's the difference between you and me?  For one thing, I'm not in the
closet.  (In fact, I apparently have a tendency to blow those negative
stereotypes out of the water.)  But even if I were in the closet, I
wouldn't dream of rationalizing my status as a result of the actions of
"queens."

As much as I care about people in general, and about my close friends in
particular (check one of my other posts about how long my week has been), I
don't care for your attitude, because people like you keep adding hate and
hurt to the world when I'm trying to get rid of it.

Do us all a favor: Turn that hurt into help.  No one is "all bad" or "all
good," no matter how much we'd like to believe that.  I think you just need
to stop and really *think* about what you're saying, but I don't know the
words to make you do that.  I think you're hurting, too, Bob, but I don't
know what to do to help make the hurting stop.  That first step is up to
you.

Please, for your sake more than anyone else's, take it.

Think of it this way:

"It is easy in this world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in
solitude to live after our own; the but the great man is he who in the
midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude."

--
 ________________ Alan Williams  vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu ___________________
 \/ A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an         \/
    _Enterprise_ security team, who always get killed soon after appearing,
    and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of
    a planet?                 	--Tom Galloway