The Gay Fray

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Jul 28, 2004.

?

I am . . . .

  1. Homosexual

    25 vote(s)
    9.2%
  2. Heterosexual

    201 vote(s)
    73.6%
  3. Bisexual

    31 vote(s)
    11.4%
  4. Other (I would have complained if there wasn't an "other" option)

    16 vote(s)
    5.9%
  1. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    I'm as straight as a flagpole, but I try very hard to stay the hell out of those states too.
     
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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Oh, for Fuck Sake!

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    Via Huffington Post↱:

    In what's been described as a crackdown on gays, government officials in Tanzania have approved a ban on the import and sale of sexual lubricants to local NGOs that service the LGBT community.

    Among those who believe that access to lube is directly correlated to how many locals engage in gay sex is Tanzanian Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu, AFP reports. The ban, she said, is intended to help "curb" the nation's HIV epidemic.

    "It is estimated that 23 percent of men who have sex with men in Tanzania are living with HIV/AIDS," she said.

    The money previously used to purchase and import lube for those NGOs, Mwalimu said, will now be repurposed for supplying hospital maternity wards with beds. "I have instructed stakeholders working with gay people to remove the products from the market," she added.

    Although it was initially reported that the ban applied nationally, Mwalimu told The Citizen that the ban was specific to NGOs working within the gay community. "One of the leading NGOs has heeded the directive and it has reported to me. And many others will follow suit," she said. "Next week, I'll carry out an inspection to confirm if indeed they stopped supplying the lubricants."

    It's worth noting that this is the same country in which it is illegal to be a gay male, but there is no ban against lesbianism.

    Prurience ought to be classified as a disorder. There is nothing quite like government devoting time and resource, amid crisis, to making things worse.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Wong, Curtis M. "This Country Banned Lube In An Effort To 'Curb' Gay Sex". The Huffington Post. 26 July 2016. HuffingtonPost.com. 28 July 2016. http://huff.to/2abBzdW
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    The Daily Fail


    The Daily Beast ran an article today, by a hack named Nico Hines, where Mr Hines condescendingly wrote about how he, a straight man, married with one child, wandered around the Olympic Village in Rio, on gay and heterosexual dating apps, to see if the rumours are true and that athletes do have a lot of sex. After not getting too many hits on Tinder, Mr Hines decided to go on Grindr, the gay dating app (along with several others), to see how many would respond.

    Titling his article "I Got Three Grindr Dates in an Hour in The Olympic Village", Mr Hines then proceeded to mock the gay athletes who responded. He did not advise on Grindr that he was a journalist, and advised he was very open once the gay athletes contacted him and then met him... By which I mean that he did not out himself immediately as being a heterosexual journalist who is married with a child, unless the gay men who met him asked when meeting him.

    If that was not bad enough, Mr Hines then proceeded to out the gay athletes who responded and met him. Not by name mind you, but by giving descriptions, their height, weight, what sport they competed in, facial description and the countries they represented. As anyone and everyone who read the article noted, it was distinctly easy to find out who these athletes actually are.

    Amazingly enough, this disgusting human being was not done... Some of the athletes he outed in his article are from countries where homosexuality is illegal and deemed criminal acts.

    Because Hines is not gay, you might find his use of Grindr a bit dishonest. But not to worry: “For the record,” Hines writes, “I didn’t lie to anyone or pretend to be someone I wasn’t—unless you count being on Grindr in the first place—since I’m straight, with a wife and child.” This sentence reflects a stunning amount of ignorance, because, in Hines’ situation, of course being on Grindr in the first place is a lie.Grindr is an app for men who wish to hook up with other men. That is its purpose! To be on Grindr when you do nothave that goal, and when you could not possibly have that goal because you are straight, is itself a mendacious deception.

    This misrepresentation might be excusable had Hines noted in his profile that he was a journalist on assignment. But naturally, he did not. Instead, he “confessed to being a journalist as soon as anyone asked who I was.” As soon as anyone asked who he was? Who asks that on Grindr? At the Olympics? In the Olympic Village? Hines seems to expect his marks to immediately divine that he is a straight journalist, and if they don’t, too bad for them. He also believes his targets have a fair chance of catching wise because he “used my own picture.” (“[J]ust of my face…” he adds coyly.)

    With his dubious premise established, Hines proceeds to out athlete after athlete, providing enough information about each Olympian he encounters for anyone with basic Google skills to uncover their identities. (After several minutes of Googling, I surmised the identities of five of the gay athletes Hines described.) I’m not going to repeat his descriptions, because—as Hines himself acknowledges!—some of them live in “notoriously homophobic” countries and remain closeted at home. Yes, the Daily Beast updated the article a few hours after publication to remove personally identifiable information (while insisting that outing gay athletes was “never our reporter’s intention.”) But really: Anyone who has heard of Grindr has also heard of the Wayback Machine. Nothing on the internet can be reliably deleted.

    Shortly after Hines’ article published, openly gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy tweeted that the author “basically just outed a bunch of athletes in his quest to write a shitty [Daily Beast] article where he admitted to entrapment.” That is correct, but it’s worth exploring why Hines embarked upon this weird, sleazy quest in the first place. I count two reasons. The first is that Hines simply enjoys tittering with condescension at all the gay athletes who take the bait and engage with him—a straight dude, as Hines emphatically reminds us.Why else zero in on Grindr? The second reason is more repulsive: Hines appears to take pleasure in luring in these Olympians then outing them to all the world.

    But the offensive purpose of Hines’ article is really the least of its problems. Far worse is the actual damage it will likely cause to real, live human beings—inevitable consequences that Hines blithely ignored. Several athletes who are closeted at home (and possibly to their own teammates) will wake up on Thursday morning to the news that the Daily Beast has outed them. Their teammates could ostracize and alienate them; their families could disown them; their countries could imprison them. And for what? A homophobic article about how a straight guy conned gay Olympians from anti-gay countries into hitting on him through Grindr? Hines’ article is a dangerous disaster, a wildly unethical train wreck that should be taken down immediately for the sake of its duped subjects. Hines may view his Grindr-baiting as all fun and games. For the victims of his unprincipled journalism, however, his nasty little piece has the power to ruin lives.

    It is hard to put into words, just how god damn fucking stupid and dangerous Nico Hines' article happens to be. I am trying to wrap my head around the malicious intent behind his stunt and article.

    While everyone is correctly angry at Mr Hines and his literally luring gay athletes in the Olympic Village, the one place they should have felt safe in, The Daily Beast, in choosing to publish his piece of malicious filth, are equally to blame.

    Once the flood of protests threatened to flood The Daily Beast for their abhorrent article, they then set about attempting to alter it, to remove some of the parts that clearly identified who Hines was talking about and outing after what can only be deemed to be entrapment. In doing so, The Daily Beast refused to acknowledge just how terrible and awful this was and most importantly, how they had endangered the lives of athletes who were outed by Hines after being lied to and lured by him in his zeal to get his gossip. As Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon notes:

    As of Thursday morning, The Daily Beast was quietly altering the piece without initially making any acknowledgment it was doing so. It changed the title of the story to “The Other Olympic Sport in Rio: Swiping.” It changed two lines that identified the home country, physical description and language of a “friendly gentleman” — a man from a country that has been cited by Human Rights Watch for its “homophobic” treatment of the LGBT community. It also altered the height and weight specifics of one black and one white athlete.

    Then, in an editor’s note posted later Thursday morning, John Avlon writes:

    “We take such complaints seriously because a central part of The Daily Beast’s mission is to fight for full equality and equal treatment for LGBT people around the world. Publishing an article that in any way could be seen as homophobic is contrary to our mission…. The concept for the piece was to see how dating and hook-up apps were being used in Rio by athletes. It just so happened that Nico had many more responses on Grindr than apps that cater mostly to straight people, and so he wrote about that. Had he received straight invitations, he would have written about those…. Some readers have read Nico as mocking or sex-shaming those on Grindr. We do not feel he did this in any way. However, The Daily Beast understands that others may have interpreted the piece differently. Accordingly, we have made some editorial changes to the article, responding to readers’ concerns, and are again sorry for any upset the original version of this piece inspired.”

    Seriously? So you ran a piece by a self-identified straight writer that’s entirely about gay hookups, that included identifying details about male athletes from “notoriously homophobic” nations, and you’re saying some people “may have interpreted” it as “mocking or sex-shaming?” You sent a guy to write a jokey piece about a community he claims he doesn’t belong to, a community whose safety and dignity and human rights are under attack every day, in every country, and you’re sorry if it “upset” anybody? For the Beast to run it in the first place was awful — but to stand by it in such a way is delusional, ignorant, and unbelievably cynical.

    She left out unethical, malicious, dangerous, lacking in any integrity (journalist or othrwise)..

    The Daily Beast have been forced to remove the offensive article, after dragging their feet and making excuses for several hours. How this got past, how they allowed this to be published, remains to be seen. But this was and is an absolute failure by The Daily Beast. A dangerous one at that.
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #standspeakfightwin | #thankyou

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    Richard and Mildred Loving, ca. 1965. Photo by Grey Villet.

    It is still "Loving Day" where I am. Thank you, Richard and Mildred. It is our honor.

    Loving v. Virginia, 12 June 1967​
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    Australia!
    Marriage equality passes Parliament; first weddings slated for January


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    The word on the east side of the Pacific:

    Australia's Parliament has voted to approve same-sex marriage following a protracted and often bitter debate that was finally settled in a nationwide referendum last month that overwhelmingly backed the move.

    In the capital Canberra, applause welled up from the House gallery after the chamber on Thursday followed Australia's Senate in approving the Marriage Amendment Bill of 2017.

    "What a day! What a day for love, for equality, for respect! Australia has done it," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a speech following the vote.

    "It's time for more marriages, more commitment, more love, more respect," Turnbull said. "This belongs to us all. This is Australia—fair, diverse, loving and filled with respect for every one of us. This is a great day—it belongs to every Australian."

    Australia's Attorney-General George Brandis described the vote as "a truly historic moment."

    Marriage in Australia is now defined as "the union of two people" instead of "union of a man and a woman."

    Lawmakers had tried and failed some two dozen times in the past to make the change.


    (Neuman↱)

    Congratulations, Australia, and thank you.

    And a special shout-out to Nick and Sarah↱: Yeah, that's what we thought. Good luck, ye crazy kids.

    In the end, it turns out what was most divisive about marriage equality in Australia was a simple question: What, we have to talk about this again?

    And then a postal survey answered the question, and then it was over.

    The next episode is just fabuluous.

    Good show, Australia.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Neman, Scott. "Australian Parliament Approves Same-Sex Marriage". National Public Radio. 7 December 2017. NPR.org. 8 December 2017. http://n.pr/2ka1Dv4

    Smith, Lydia. "Christian couple withdraw vow to divorce if Australia legalised same-sex marriage". The Independent. 8 December 2017. TheIndependent.co.uk. 8 December 2017. https://ind.pn/2AJ8khF
     
  9. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    Well done Australia. Hopefully this will start a wave of new, common sense legislation (could we, perhaps, see the Coral Reefs saved from the bleaching crisis?) that results in an overall positive change in the world.
     
  10. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
    I wholeheartedly support the Australian people's choice and wish them the best in the future.
     
  11. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,133
    Why do you have the word "choice" in italics?
     
  12. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
    Because they made a choice, a group decision.
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,884
    You're asking the wrong question.

    Don't worry, there isn't a right one. There isn't supposed to be.

    This kind of trolling behavior has been particularly protected over the years apparently according to the tacit but evident pretense that we must lower standards for certain ranges of perspective in order to present an outward appearance of fairness; it is, in fact, nothing more than a cheap excuse for normalizing bigotry according to the sympathies of those in charge. Our neighbor's manner of antisocial behavior is particularly cultivated as a specialty of will. The staff has protected this sort of behavior over the years, ensuring its place in the Sciforums community, because that is what the Administration wanted.

    The only thing people are supposed to be allowed to do about it is ignore it, because if nobody responds, the bad faith eventually goes away. True, that's never actually worked at any point in human history, but if we're going to be rational about it, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, and it's true, as much as I'm laughing at that sleight, I can actually defend it even while constricting myself to the Sciforums delusion. And as stupid or arrogant as that sounds, the fact that it is possible should tell us a lot about what we're dealing with. Sciforums has over the years transformed from an intended "intelligent community" of discourse into more of a place for people to come seeking cheap empowerment fixes by being rude to one another. For instance, questions have arisen lately about the nature and purpose of Sciforums, and we've finally put the "science site" bit to rest; pretenses of alarm in the community have given way to a general bacchanal of bad faith—what people generally want, it seems, is to be rude to each other but not suffer the rudeness of being called rude.

    I get the abstract idea, for instance, of wanting a place like this to constantly be on the verge of a tavern brawl, but we're not even doing that.

    The bottom line is that our neighbor's manner of pretentious ignorant provocation is approximately what Sciforums has been for over the course of the last eleven years or so.

    And the best advice anyone can give you, even if we put on our mod hats, is to not waste your time on such shite.

    You're asking the wrong question; there is no right question; he says dumb shit like that so someone will ask; it's a cheap thrill for people like him.

    Apparently, losing his Culture War left a mark; he actually used to be capable of trying.
     
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