I'm a gay man, I'm openly gay and I'm somewhat 'post pride', I simply want to live my life openly and have the fact of my homosexuality be no more important than my head being bald or my eyes being blue.
On Facebook I've been having recurring discussions with Christians that may believe my sexual orientation can be changed and are certain it's an awful sin and damned lifestyle. Challenging.
There exist Gay Christians. Jesus after all, when preaching to the Eunuchs (in Jesus time eunuchs were more commonly homosexual, not yet castrated as policy), Jesus didn't feel his magical powers were required to heal, did not suggest there was a sin to do no more. Flirting with Christianity myself I once did have a dream of Jesus who corrected my interpretation of Leviticus' awful law by demanding of me "have you slept with a woman?" knowing the answer is 'none' and therefore how could I sleep with any man as with a woman? It is possible to be gay and Christian.
But not just any Christian agrees. Locally Ithaca NY is a liberal place, and Christian churches here that are not anti-gay place visible information outside their church to affirm that is the case.
Understand that means the Churches themselves know one thing: if they accept homosexuals and do not believe God demands homosexuals be anything else, they must promote that fact openly and publicly or they may simply be assumed to bastions of righteous anti gay intolerance and hate.
I just completed an online academic poll, that I qualified for by being a person that identifies as homosexual. What did they want know? Some questions posed asked these kinds of things:
That's not all the questions presented. And I do hope almost no one answers any of those questions positively.
The poll has a peculiar challenge; I'd imagine anyone that really would rather be dead than gay, they're unlikely to participate in this poll.
I know most of the anti-gay baggage comes from and is legitimized by religion, in America, the Christian religion. And whatever the poll results suggest, that baggage justifies bullying and violence that kills gay people or drives them to suicide.
So would I desire law such as Canada has? To ban 'Hate Speech'? In Canada there are Christian Bible chapter and verse that are illegal to speak out loud, probably just Leviticus. It calls for the death of homosexuals, pure hate to read that, yes?
The recent Gabrielle Gifford assassination attempt has led to condemnation of heated political rhetoric. And speaking as someone that only found Sarah Palin interesting because she actually would do stuff like imply death threats with her metaphors and get away with it, let me suggest that an attack on hate speech could be an attack on free speech if the solution is imagined to be enforced by law.
In America we handle Hate properly, with shunning. Racist people have a very small number of people they can be racist with, the point of view alone will lose you your job, your friends....
It's a slow process, defeating prejudice with shunning. And I understand it is possible to argue for a ban on hate speech to protect the victims of that speech. Be they children perceived to be gay by their peers, be they a congresswoman fighting for her life after being shot in the head.
But America, we chose to experiment with free speech. It's a big deal because no other nation has free speech as we do. America has pubic Neo Nazi marches - they are small marches and they are almost always outnumbered by counter-protesters. As the Nazis preach racist hatred and death threats against Jews and African Americans, they are protected by the civil police, their right to say as they please, it is a constitutional right.
It is a noble experiment, Free Speech. When speech is banned, it is empowered. Any subject you cannot talk about, cannot be contested or challenged either.
Free Speech is a grown up right, it's not for children. Which is to say the culture that permits free speech much be mature because we cannot count on every speaker being mature. The villain that tried to kill Congresswoman Gifford, he had been told he must see a psychiatrist. He did not, likely because he could not afford it. Arizona had just cut mental health spending in half just a month earlier.
People may point fingers at Sarah Palin for distributing posters with Democratic representatives with gun sight targets painted over them, but the reality is that be that in bad taste or not - she has the right to express herself as he pleases, no one reasonably should interpret that as permission to kill anyone.
But you can't make your speech crazy proof! Crazy people are sick, so just maybe the problem is a healthcare issue. If all mentally ill people had prescriptions for meds that help them, and had no barrier likeexpense standing in the way of getting that help. Maybe our culture would be mature enough to have freedom of speech and demand no legal limits on hate speech?
On Facebook I've been having recurring discussions with Christians that may believe my sexual orientation can be changed and are certain it's an awful sin and damned lifestyle. Challenging.
There exist Gay Christians. Jesus after all, when preaching to the Eunuchs (in Jesus time eunuchs were more commonly homosexual, not yet castrated as policy), Jesus didn't feel his magical powers were required to heal, did not suggest there was a sin to do no more. Flirting with Christianity myself I once did have a dream of Jesus who corrected my interpretation of Leviticus' awful law by demanding of me "have you slept with a woman?" knowing the answer is 'none' and therefore how could I sleep with any man as with a woman? It is possible to be gay and Christian.
But not just any Christian agrees. Locally Ithaca NY is a liberal place, and Christian churches here that are not anti-gay place visible information outside their church to affirm that is the case.
Understand that means the Churches themselves know one thing: if they accept homosexuals and do not believe God demands homosexuals be anything else, they must promote that fact openly and publicly or they may simply be assumed to bastions of righteous anti gay intolerance and hate.
I just completed an online academic poll, that I qualified for by being a person that identifies as homosexual. What did they want know? Some questions posed asked these kinds of things:
- Would you change your gender if you could?
- Do you feel you would be better off dead than gay?
- Do you feel homosexuality is a sin?
- Do you worry others may perceive you as Gay?
That's not all the questions presented. And I do hope almost no one answers any of those questions positively.
The poll has a peculiar challenge; I'd imagine anyone that really would rather be dead than gay, they're unlikely to participate in this poll.
I know most of the anti-gay baggage comes from and is legitimized by religion, in America, the Christian religion. And whatever the poll results suggest, that baggage justifies bullying and violence that kills gay people or drives them to suicide.
So would I desire law such as Canada has? To ban 'Hate Speech'? In Canada there are Christian Bible chapter and verse that are illegal to speak out loud, probably just Leviticus. It calls for the death of homosexuals, pure hate to read that, yes?
The recent Gabrielle Gifford assassination attempt has led to condemnation of heated political rhetoric. And speaking as someone that only found Sarah Palin interesting because she actually would do stuff like imply death threats with her metaphors and get away with it, let me suggest that an attack on hate speech could be an attack on free speech if the solution is imagined to be enforced by law.
In America we handle Hate properly, with shunning. Racist people have a very small number of people they can be racist with, the point of view alone will lose you your job, your friends....
It's a slow process, defeating prejudice with shunning. And I understand it is possible to argue for a ban on hate speech to protect the victims of that speech. Be they children perceived to be gay by their peers, be they a congresswoman fighting for her life after being shot in the head.
But America, we chose to experiment with free speech. It's a big deal because no other nation has free speech as we do. America has pubic Neo Nazi marches - they are small marches and they are almost always outnumbered by counter-protesters. As the Nazis preach racist hatred and death threats against Jews and African Americans, they are protected by the civil police, their right to say as they please, it is a constitutional right.
It is a noble experiment, Free Speech. When speech is banned, it is empowered. Any subject you cannot talk about, cannot be contested or challenged either.
Free Speech is a grown up right, it's not for children. Which is to say the culture that permits free speech much be mature because we cannot count on every speaker being mature. The villain that tried to kill Congresswoman Gifford, he had been told he must see a psychiatrist. He did not, likely because he could not afford it. Arizona had just cut mental health spending in half just a month earlier.
People may point fingers at Sarah Palin for distributing posters with Democratic representatives with gun sight targets painted over them, but the reality is that be that in bad taste or not - she has the right to express herself as he pleases, no one reasonably should interpret that as permission to kill anyone.
But you can't make your speech crazy proof! Crazy people are sick, so just maybe the problem is a healthcare issue. If all mentally ill people had prescriptions for meds that help them, and had no barrier likeexpense standing in the way of getting that help. Maybe our culture would be mature enough to have freedom of speech and demand no legal limits on hate speech?
Hate Speech, Free Speech
![Hate Speech, Free Speech]()
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December 21, 2018
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