Posted on 01/14/2005 7:57:27 AM PST by madprof98
Woo hoo! I've made the big time. Last month, the website Free Republic featured a thread about my Nov. 18 column, "Queers Who Don't Act Right." You probably don't know much about Free Republic unless you are a right-wing lunatic. Free Republic is so far right that wing-nut gay muckraker Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, one of the architects of the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky brouhaha, both left the site in 1999 because it was too extreme, even for them.
In the years since, the site has become the contemporary version of a marathon meeting of the old John Birch Society and the KKK. Most recently, Free Republic was in the news when John Corsi, one of the Swift Boat Veterans who authored a book attacking John Kerry, turned out to post embarrassingly racist messages there. (Of course, he argued his racist insults were all "a joke." Talk about your Clintonian rhetoric.) The site also was in the news recently because someone correctly posted that Dan Rather had relied on phony documents to impute President Bush's National Guard service.
Free Republic is so extreme that it's a blast to read. Don't bother to explore the site with the idea of posting an alternative perspective or to correct facts. Your post will simply be deleted, despite its owner's celebration of freedom of speech. The site has no hesitation in reprinting copyrighted material, like my column, even though the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both successfully sued to stop such theft. In other words, as is generally true of the lunatic far right, the truth, free speech and the law only matter when they support their point of view.
Of course, Freepers, as the creepy wing-nuts on the site are called, were not alone in being outraged by my column. I received quite a lot of mail, mainly from other gay people, questioning my argument that LA Fitness at Ansley Mall overreacted when it closed its sauna because of some occasional sex and reopened it with a new picture window overlooking the locker room. As an update, I might add that the window has effectively eliminated unseen sexual interactions inside the sauna and made room for another, more open form of sex between people on either side of the window: exhibitionism and voyeurism.
Most of my correspondents argued that the occasional discovery of sex in the sauna merited involvement by the police and the health department, reconstruction of the sauna and a report by one of the local TV stations. And, as usual, they concluded that because I called that overreacting, I must favor sex in public spaces. No matter that I said I find the behavior annoying. To be righteous, I must find it -- what? -- criminally actionable.
I wasn't surprised by the reaction. Sex troubles people more than anything. That's why Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob, while Bush was re-elected despite lying about a war that has killed thousands. Gay people's oppression is the result of their sex lives, so it's not surprising that they are hypersensitive to anything that might add to the picture of deviance. But it has become obvious that the very effort to make all deviance disappear and to assimilate -- to marry, for example -- increases prejudice.
The Freepers, of course, took outrage over my column to dizzy heights, fabricating arguments I did not make. This began with the man who posted it, "madpro98." He said that I dismissed "all sexual conventions, including common decency, as so much homophobia." Actually, I wrote no such thing. Then, of course, the Freepers concluded that the case of LA Fitness means every gay man is a sauna whore. For example, "Sender" writes: "Does anyone else think it's strange that gay men often have sex in a public toilet stall? ... Even if we had unisex public restrooms, somehow I can't imagine a man and a woman eyeing one another while washing their hands, then just jumping in the stall for a go."
The writer obviously has never been to Buckhead on a Saturday night. But what cracks me up is that the Freepers are so anxious to bash someone like me that they don't even realize when they are supporting a contrary argument. For example, "buffyt" quoted my statement that I don't like "stumbling upon any sex scene to which I have not been invited." Then she riffed obsessively about heterosexual couples at Mardi Gras "coupling all over the place" while the police ignore them. Exactly. Heterosexuals spoil the view with public sexual interactions every bit as much as homosexuals, arguably more, when they can find a place to do it. Nobody followed up on that post, of course.
I'm not going to quote the mind-boggling illogics and endless sophomoric fag-bashing (despite arguing they aren't homophobic). But I will thank "Jack Black," who wrote: "I think this was very well written. He is writing for the audience of radical homosexuals as one, so I have trouble twisting my thoughts enough to get to his point of view, but I still think the writing is good." Kiss me, dude!
Cliff Bostock holds a Ph.D. in depth psychology. Write him at cliff.bostock@ creativeloafing.com.
Actually for men it comes down to selecting which female will be asked "will you marry me". They have multiple choice.
For women the question is simply "yes, i will marry you" or "no, i will not marry you." A yes or no question.
For homosexuals, its a multiple choice question of who to have sex with and their answer is all of the above regardless of the consequences.
Think I posted to the original thread, too BUMP!
PhD - Piled Higher and Deeper.
Ooh, good catch.
"The spirit of depth psychology is closely associated with literature, myth, spirituality, alchemy, and mythic traditions. In classes, depth psychology's ancient roots and interdisciplinary identity are explored and examined."
S/he almost certainly means 'impugn' here, but hey, what's one little inaccuracy in a sea of inaccuracies?
A cross between John Birch and the KKK? A facile, feeble slur, to be sure, but wildly inaccurate. Those kooks are roundly laughed off this site within minutes.
Bordering on libel there. We must be on target to be generating such hatred.
If he really wanted to inform his readers as to just "who" FReepers are, he would have mentioned that we were the "nuts" who took down Dan Rather, Mapes, and others at CBS.
This is not a commercial site, we are employing our fair use provisions of the first amendment. Teachers can copy whole books and circulate them to classrooms.
BTW Rush Limbaugh and GG Liddy are able to read entire articles from the Washington Post on their radio shows. Why is there no requirement to excerpt news articles there? Those hosts do as we do, provide commentary on someone else's work.
He talks of correcting mistakes on FR yet frequently we correct mistakes and expose bias in "news" articles. THIS is why the media does not like FR; there is no "editor" to screen the letters to the editor.
He did mention that (in as little emphasis as possible).
Interesting read. I wonder if he knows Garrison Keillor.
In 15+ years of political activity I've seen plenty of nasty people, but the homosexual activists are the only ones I've ever received death threats from.
And that was for a simple letter to the editor that defended Concerned Women for America from one of their rhetorical attacks.
But, that's what you should expect, I suppose, from those who have so thoroughly debased themselves and seared their own consciences.
When I grow up, I want to be libeled as an uber-cryptofascist.
Bostock knowing Keillor?
Maybe.
I laugh in the face of FReepers who told me that "Big Brother" should stay out of bedrooms. The lavender mafia wants their public sex okay too.
Big Brother is in America's bathrooms dictating that we have crappy low flow toilets and there is barely a peep.
Now it does. Thanks.
;O)
Oh. He's a Jungo-Freudian Adlerite. Now it all makes sense.
Right wing lunatic?
No WAY!
I'm a gun nut!
(I think JimRob is filtering my FR experience, I never see the KKK threads)
Bill Clinton was impeached for lying in a court of law under oath, that is a crime known as perjury. His defenders said "everybody does it".
Throughout his professional life he was pursued by charges that he sexually harassed (and even raped) some of his co-workers/understaff women. He tried to deny Paula Jones her day in court and when he was unable to postpone the trial several years he lied.
The sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky showed the pattern of behavior of Bill Clinton; he had sex with those who reported to him (consensual and non-). The Clinton Cronies offered Monica hush money through a job.
Watergate was a low grade break-in, it was the cover up (and media) that made it a scandal.
Bill Clinton had his fingers in far more criminal enterprises than just Monica's thong but there was a lack of will to go after him for hosting Chinese Communist coffees at the White House to transfer military secrets for campaign donations.
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