09:21 – Our ready-to-ship stock of chemistry kits had dropped into single figures yesterday, so I decided to raid my carefully rationed remaining stock of polypropylene beakers to make up another batch of ten chemistry kits, which was all I had sufficient beakers for. We have 600 each of the 50 mL and 100 mL polypropylene beakers on order, which are supposed to ship the end of this week or early next. I’ll just continue building more finished kits this week, except they won’t have the beakers in them. It’ll be easy enough to drop in the missing beakers when they finally arrive. And UPS showed up at dinnertime yesterday with 11 large boxes of stuff from another wholesaler. I had the UPS guy stack them down in the basement, so Barbara had to run an obstacle course this morning to get to her car when she left for work. They’d better not be there when she gets home, if I know what’s good for me.
We started watching a new-to-us series on Acorn streaming last night. It’s an Australian series called Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. The series is set in 1920’s Melbourne, and the lead character is a 40-ish aristocratic feminist James Bond analog. The (wo)Man with the Golden Gun, literally. It’s a fun series, with all the standard supporting characters one would expect. It’s not a parody, exactly, but obviously no one was intended to take the series seriously. At a million bucks an episode, it’s very high budget, particularly for Australian TV. I suspect they spent a large percentage of that on wardrobe and props, including the Hispano-Suiza that Miss Fisher drives. Netflix doesn’t have this series on DVD yet, let alone streaming. Barbara said maybe we should just subscribe to Acorn TV.
12:46 – In addition to being the chief cook and bottle washer for our company, I’m also the warehouseman. So I was just unpacking and checking in those 11 boxes that arrived at dinnertime yesterday. I’m getting too old for this. A case of 50 boxes of 72 microscope slides masses about 50 pounds (23 kilos), and is about the size of a shoebox. Those are dense little suckers.
13:44 – I see that the arguments about same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court are complete. Now we have to wait months for SCOTUS to make and publish its decision.
I honestly don’t see what all the to-do is about. The correct answer is obvious on the face of it. SCOTUS should rule that government cannot prohibit same-sex marriage in the same way that it ruled almost 50 years ago in the Loving case that government could not prohibit interracial marriage. Obviously, there are no arguments against same-sex marriage other than religious arguments, which the government is prohibited from considering. Those who support equal rights for gay couples are being reasonable; those who oppose those rights are utterly unreasonable. I’ve never heard any supporter of gay marriage insist that churches be forced to marry gay couples, nor even that religious bigots be forced to abjure their hateful beliefs. All supporters of same-sex marriage are asking is that the government not deny them the same rights that are taken for granted by heterosexual couples.
The truth is that the government has no valid interest in marriage, period. Government should be neither encouraging or discouraging marriage of any type, let alone requiring or forbidding it. If some gay people are offended that Barbara and I are married, tough luck. Their being offended should be of no concern to us, just as a heterosexual being offended by gays should be of no concern to gays. Offense is not injury, and attempting to use the force of government to require people to behave in ways you find inoffensive is intolerable abuse of power.
Do you ever record any of this stuff? I seem to recall that one of you likes to watch stuff over and over and the other doesn’t.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-26/knox-to-face-retrial-over-murder-allegations/4595982
I still don’t know what I think of the guilt/innocence of this woman.
No. There’s no way to record a stream off the Roku box without going to more trouble than I want to go to.
Barbara watches things once-only. She also very, very seldom re-reads a book. I spend probably a third of my reading time re-reading books I’d read anything from a few years ago to 40 years ago and more.
The only videos I rewatch consistently are Buffy (I’ve been through it four times, I think), Firefly/Serenity (four or five times), and Heartland (five times, I think). I’m about Buffied-out and Firefly’d-out, at least for the next few years, but I’ll continue watching Heartland straight through a couple or three times a year indefinitely. I’m waiting to restart at series 1 because I have all of series 6 except the last two episodes queued up for Barbara and me to watch. Those episodes air next Sunday and the Sunday following. We’ll binge-watch our way through series 6, and then I’ll restart with S1E1.
Our reading and viewing habits up here at Chez Retroville are similar to Barbara’s; we watch and read once, normally; I’ll watch “The Man Who Would Be King,” “Breaker Morant,” and “Barry Lyndon” once a year, maybe. I’ll also re-read poems from the last three-thousand years over and over.
As for the ongoing Knox case saga, here is my advice, gratis: Don’t get jammed up in a foreign country. Hell, don’t get jammed up here, either, but REALLY don’t get in trouble overseas. Or across our southern border.
I’ve never heard any supporter of gay marriage insist that churches be forced to marry gay couples, nor even that religious bigots be forced to abjure their hateful beliefs.
Well, there was the case where a church that was against gay marriage was forced to rent out a property for a gay wedding. They had allowed it to be used for straight weddings and the “public accommodation” rule was applied to them. The recent attempt to force church organizations to pay for contraception and other birth control services as part of insurance for laypeople has some church groups nervous.
I think SCOTUS will be silent on gay marriage (by one vote?). The real answer, as Bob says, is government should stay out of it. Gummit should only enforce legal arrangements people make. Congress critters should have the gumption to eliminate all legal entitlements that come with marriage. Let the humans (and animals) make their own legal pacts.
The non-religious problem with gay marriage is that all of the legal partnership rights are tangled up in heterosexual marriage. Specifically our tax laws, inheritance laws, ownership law (Texas is a community property state), child guardian law, etc, etc, etc. All of these laws will need to be visited and relitigated once gay marriage is common. I for one cannot wait! Oh wait, yes I can.
BTW, as soon as gay marriage is commonly allowed, group marriages are next. Just wait for the legal entanglements on those! The divorce of a woman from her seven husbands and eight wives will be very interesting.
The non-religious problem with gay marriage is that all of the legal partnership rights are tangled up in heterosexual marriage.
Not an issue. All it takes is a simple amendment to existing statues to state that all marriages/civil partnerships are identical under the law.
Not an issue. All it takes is a simple amendment to existing statues to state that all marriages/civil partnerships are identical under the law.
Not when you have politicians and lawyers involved. All will take what should be a one paragraph rule and turn it into 8,357 pages of text that no one understands.
I certainly hope so. As I’ve been saying for a long, long time, how people choose to live their lives is no business of the government. There are actually many benefits to group marriages, not least continuity and child raising/care. Not to mention financial stability. A group marriage could live indefinitely.
The non-religious problem with gay marriage is that all of the legal partnership rights are tangled up in heterosexual marriage.
Not an issue. All it takes is a simple amendment to existing statues to state that all marriages/civil partnerships are identical under the law.
Don’t you live in Texas? Can you imagine the state legislature doing anything like that without just “fixing” the existing statutes a little bit? Or, getting them to do anything all while they are on the important business of passing legislation honoring their campaign contributors.
The legislature in the Great State of Texas is in session until May 31, 2013. Lock up your daughters! Lock up your sons! They will meet next on Jan 2 of 2015 so we will be safe again in just a few weeks.
Wait. You used the words “simple” and “law” in the same sentence. Please don’t ever do that again, my ears are starting to bleed.
Our Nanny the Almighty State is already up to its hairy eyeballs in marriage, gay marriage, civil unions, etc., etc. and will no doubt plunge in further where it has no business being. Apparently the three-percent of the country that is gay, and by no means all of them, either, wants the same “benefits” of marriage that the rest of us allegedly have, whether financial or legal or to be licensed like a damn dog or cat, renewed annually at City or Town Hall. I have recently read several pieces by both gay men and women who say the others are absolutely crazy to push for this.
As a Roman Catholic traditionalist I am of course against the whole idea and as a semi-libertarian am for the State staying the hell out of it all anyway, and none of my business, just as my marriage is none of theirs. And meanwhile quit throwing used condoms at priests during Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral; quit trying to butt in on Southie’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade; and quit marching around in g-strings at your gay pride parades in front of families with little kids and babies. I won’t bother y’all with my rampant hetero breeder mentality nor will I discriminate against you in any matters or persecute you. Live and let live, I say. But get outta my face all the time in the media and forcing the State to make us worship you and your lifestyles.
BTW, as soon as gay marriage is commonly allowed, group marriages are next.
I certainly hope so. As I’ve been saying for a long, long time, how people choose to live their lives is no business of the government. There are actually many benefits to group marriages, not least continuity and child raising/care. Not to mention financial stability. A group marriage could live indefinitely.
Robert Heinlein used to push group marriages in his adult books, especially in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” where he had group marriages in response to the one woman living on the Moon for every ten men. People causing problems in these group marriages used to be thrown out the nearest airlock.
My comments for gay marriages and group marriages are limited to the legal aspects only. Personally, I think that they are a bad idea. But as a neophyte libertarian, I believe that whatever you do that does not hurt another person is no business of the government. Legally, group marriages are going to be a freaking disaster.
A group marriage could live indefinitely.
Sounds like a Corporation.
The case could be made that marriage is the government’s business – social stability, the good of the children, and so on. I don’t believe it to be the case, and certainly not within the US federal government’s remit, but the case could be made. But that’s not the case that is being made. People are up in arms … because God, you heathens, and that’s all there is to it.
Not that I expect The Powers That Be to make the case that it’s their business to encourage marriage and discourage non-marriage, on account of it would open a whole can of worms they want to leave alone. Just for the most obvious example, the policy of paying women to have babies with no father in sight would come under strict scrutiny.
“A case of 50 boxes of 72 microscope slides masses about 50 pounds (23 kilos), and is about the size of a shoebox. Those are dense little suckers.”
Geez! I just took delivery of a new 1000 VA APC SmartUPS. That sucker had a mass (I almost said weight) of 21 Kg and it was the volume of about 10-15 shoe boxes. I would have thought glass was lighter than what is basically a bunch of car batteries.
“Obviously, there are no arguments against same-sex marriage other than religious arguments…”
Well, tell that to the lovely Julia Gillard, atheist, and Prime Minister of Australia (until September 2013). She opposes gay marriage, I assume on pragmatic political grounds. She’s copping a lot of heat from people in her party over this, but is standing firm.
“I’ve never heard any supporter of gay marriage insist that churches be forced to marry gay couples…”
There’s such a thing as analogy. Back in 1973 when a couple of ALP backbenchers tried to liberalise abortion laws in Canberra they explicitly stated that medical people who did not want to be involved in abortions would have their right to not be involved protected under their bill. But I’ve read pro-choice people, you included, say that health care professionals who don’t want to do abortions should be disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. Private religious schools should be able to hire teachers and other staff of their own religious persuasion, yet I often read liberals saying that those rights to discriminate should be taken away. When I’m reassured that churches, clergy and other people won’t be forced in to facilitating gay marriage I get very skeptical.
Like you, my solution to this is to get the state out of regulating marriage. I’m not an anarchist so I do believe that the state has a legitimate role: it could regulate “domestic partnerships” on a purely commercial/property basis. Participants could include any number of males and females over 16 years of age, dogs, cattle, perhaps even cats, with their owner’s permission. This wouldn’t be called marriage by the state so I wouldn’t care. I am part of the state so I wouldn’t want it (and by extension me) to be seen to endorse gay or plural marriage. If people enter a civil contract they can get a secular marriage celebrant, or clergyperson if they wish, to have a ceremony. Just so long as I am not forced to acknowledge it as a marriage.
One of the ministers in the A.C.T. government is openly gay, and would like to marry his long term partner. Opponents of gay marriage say that it’s the thin edge of the wedge, next will be plural marriage. The minister has said that’s not on the agenda, and that he wouldn’t support plural marriage. I wonder if he’s serious or just being pragmatic. If gay marriage is legalised I don’t see why plural marriage shouldn’t be too – they seem to me to stand or fall together.
“As I’ve been saying for a long, long time, how people choose to live their lives is no business of the government. There are actually many benefits to group marriages, not least continuity and child raising/care. Not to mention financial stability. A group marriage could live indefinitely.”
It might be necessary to have several “marriages”. Suppose you, Barbara, Paul, Mary and Colin decided to get married. Paul’s always struck me as a fairly conservative sort of guy so he may not want to be married to Colin. So you’d have to have two marriages: One that has everyone but Paul, and a second one that has everyone but Colin. That way Paul and Colin wouldn’t have to be married to each other. Of course, Colin would need your and Barbara’s permission to marry.
Speaking solely for myself, I’m in favor of plural marriage on pragmatic grounds. I mean, one wife isn’t nagging me to death fast enough, so what I really really need is two or three wives. I figure that three wives would have me dead and sold to black-market organleggers before my next birthday.
Tom Lucas wrote:
‘Wait. You used the words “simple” and “law” in the same sentence. Please don’t ever do that again, my ears are starting to bleed.’
Amen brother!
There’s a clause in the Australian constitution along the lines of “trade between the states shall be absolutely free.” There has been endless litigation and debate about that clause, inserted at the insistence of non-lawyers. They thought the meaning was obvious, but lawyers say they should be allowed to draft laws and constitutions to prevent ambiguity. Yeah Right!
SteveF wrote:
“Speaking solely for myself, I’m in favor of plural marriage on pragmatic grounds. I mean, one wife isn’t nagging me to death fast enough, so what I really really need is two or three wives. I figure that three wives would have me dead and sold to black-market organleggers before my next birthday.”
Nah, just play them off against each other and let them have the coronaries.
I just noticed the new WD 4 TB Black hard drive:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WD4001FAEX/dp/B00A2IM76K/
Sweet! Now I need a reason to buy one of these bad boys! Not cheap at $303 though.
4 TB? When I got my first PC in 1997 it had a 3.6 GB HDD (Quantum. Anyone remember them?) A cow-orker said he was glad to see that I wasn’t pissing around with small drives… 🙂
Do those things work natively under XP or later? What about the 2 TB limit? What about if it’s connected by eSATA or USB2/3?
Here’s today’s English lesson. Capitalization rules for song titles. Even if record companies capitalize the first letter of every word—they’re lazy and WRONG!
http://aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly/midi/help/caps.html
Got a good speaker system? (Yes, thank you Henry Kloss–RIP)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=018B1BBN-8w
Wow! Don’t try that link at home boys and girls, unless you have a decent sound system connected.
“Gay marriage” is of course purely and simply a political device, and anyone who promulgates it is of course a gay politician, or at least a politician for the homosexual cause.
The “gay” political lobby is just that – political, and an attempt at political lobbying.
In fact, even “gay” is an example of their political actions. “Gay” was a perfectly good and useful word, with no reasonable substitute – just ask archie and mehitabel. However, the homosexual political lobby launched a takeover bid and subsumed the word, destroying its utility.
“Marriage” and “marry” are words that mean a lot to a lot of married people. The homosexual political lobby is trying to take over the term with no respect – in fact, with active disrespect – for the millions of people and thousands of generations who have been married. They want a legal right to march into the church hall, piddle in the soup, and force everyone to sup and say “Uhhm. Yummy!” And there are people who buy into their bullshit, climb onto their bandwagon, and peddle their agenda.
The answer is simple. Allow everyone a “civil union”, but separate that from the word “marriage”. Rational people would have no problem with that. Of course, the homosexual political lobby finds it unacceptable, because it doesn’t allow them to achieve their aim of polluting eveyone’s traditional understanding of the term “marriage”, and forcing their viewpoint on everyone – much like the Nazis, the Communists, and on and on.
And yes, I’ve had homosexual friends – many female, some male. I don’t disrespect people who respect me, but the homosexual political lobby doesn’t respect my right to my opinion.
SteveF writes: “The case could be made that marriage is the government’s business – social stability, the good of the children, and so on. But that’s not the case that is being made.”
To which I agree wholeheartedly. This is an argument that one could legitimately make. It may even be correct (though SteveF says he thinks not). What I find odd is that the religious right is so blinkered that they cannot even realize that this is the stronger argument.
I suppose they get away with it, because the whole American political scene is deeply impregnated with religion, and everyone takes it for granted. From a European perspective, I can say that listening to American politicians give domestic speeches is really weird. They always find an opportunity to mention God and religion, no matter what the topic is. This is just really weird. Sort of like if Angela Merkel were to work in a comment about her sex life. It’s an off-note, something completely out of place.
Do those things work natively under XP or later? What about the 2 TB limit?
Yes, if you partition the drive as two partitions. You can use a single partition if you use a different formatting system such as GPT system. And that requires a 64 bit operating system I am told. There are also issues with the MB not recognizing such a single large partition as the boot drive. Such large drives are best relegated to storage and not booting.
My first PC, from IBM, came with a 5 MB hard disk. I wondered how I was going to fill up all that space.
I agree with Brad that the US is insanely occupied with religion. Worse, it is a hypocritical occupation. My fairly close ties with Europe through family there, indicates that Europeans—most of whom are Roman Catholic—actually attend church far more than those around me now, but never make a big deal about it, and seldom discuss it—certainly not in political agendas. Incredible that Ronald Reagan started signing off all his speeches with “God bless America,” and no President since has been able to quit doing that, which I never heard before Reagan. If Americans would quit talking about religion and just live their beliefs, like the Europeans, we would be in far better shape, and I would have less reason to believe that Americans as a whole are actually stupid for believing such wholly unfounded and unprovable fiction.
Pretty much what Don just said, more succinctly and abrasively than I did, but hey, I try to be a nice guy. I won’t bash people for their sexual “preferences,” within limits, of course, and will not support those who do. OTOH, I don’t want the 3% in my face all the time with wack demands and telling the State to force me to bow down and worship them. Not gonna happen.
“Civil unions” are also a creation of the state and were the foot-in-the-door for the gay lobby, as we saw first-hand here in Vermont a few years ago. And the political hacks and media ran around portraying themselves as ‘profiles in courage’ and compared thmselves favorably with the civil rights activists of the Glorious Sixties. Bullshit. No one’s been setting German shepherds and fire hoses on them and lynching them.
If some couplea wanna live together and have sex and all that, then go do it, whatever, I don’t give a shit. As a Catholic I believe that they’re living in sin and endangering their salvation, without benefit of marriage in the Church, or maybe they’re ex ecclesia all the way around, which is another problem. But leave the State the hell out of it. And those who wish to get married in a church, synagogue, mosque, whatever, should just go do it and not have to worry about rushing down to the city clerk’s office for a damn license.
And the State as it is currently constituted is not such that I want to see it exercising its power to allegedly take care of “social stability” and the “good of the children,” we have seen where good intentions all too often end up and we have also seen that the State turns to shit everything it touches. I’m with Bob on that; reduce it to the absolute minimum; he may want total anarchy but I think we still need some vestiges to provide for the collection of fair and minimum taxes to support for a common defense, if nothing else.
Do those things work natively under XP or later? What about the 2 TB limit? What about if it’s connected by eSATA or USB2/3?
No on Windows XP. Yes on x64 versions of Windows Vista, 7 and 8 IF you have a motherboard that supports the new GPT / GUID drive partition table. “Note: Windows only supports booting from a GPT disk on systems that contain Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot firmware.” I think that the GPT / GUID / UEFI motherboards just became available in 2012.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/hardware/gg463524.aspx
MS killed off the old MBR partition table since it was limited to 2 TB partitions and is moving to the GPT/GUI partition table. This was first in Windows Vista but I think that drive manufacturers have a backdoor solution for Windows XP. I would not use it myself.
I do not know about USB hard drives greater than 2 TB on Windows XP. I have two 3 TB USB hard drives now but I have not tested them with Windows XP. I suspect that they will work just fine. I do know that they come formatted as NTFS instead of FAT32 but I always reformat before using them anyway.
I do not know about eSATA since I have not used it.
No one’s been setting German shepherds and fire hoses on them and lynching them.
That can be arranged if necessary. If your Great Default happens and the people flood the streets in protest since their Mastercards and Food Stamp cards no longer work, it may be necessary in some peoples minds.
Chuck, blaming Reagan for adding “God bless America” at the end of his speeches is a bit disingenuous. I submit the closing from FDR’s inaugural speech: “In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.”
I suspect I can find similar from almost every single president. However, I do agree that a preoccupation with religion is often dangerous, and not just so for the US of A. Europe is hardly excluded from idiotic preoccupation with religion.
You anti-gay-marriage folks are doomed. In California the percentages have reversed since 2008 when Prop 8 was passed. Today, it wouldn’t have a prayer of passing.
And even Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has come out in support of same-sex marriage.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/27/oreilly-blasts-same-sex-marriage-critics/?hpt=hp_t2
O’Reilly sums things up:
“The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals,” O’Reilly said Tuesday on Fox. “That’s where the compelling argument is. ‘We’re Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.’ That’s a compelling argument, and to deny that, you have got to have a very strong argument on the other side. The argument on the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”
I think gay marriage is wrong. But I really don’t give a rat’s ass what people do with themselves as long as it does not affect me. A gay marriage will not affect me in the slightest. If a couple of guys want to play house with each other’s privates and call it a good time, go for it. Just don’t push their agenda on me. Don’t flaunt their gender choice around my kids by fondling each other in public just because they want the shock value. Their right to play pocket pool with someone else’s balls does not give them the right to do it in public.
Ah, but no doubt some gays are offended by flagrant heterosexual exhibitions in public. Again, offense does not equal injury. Get over it.
Public displays of affection are not limited to gays. Personally, I dislike PDAs regardless of the sexes of the people involved. But it’s not my business, so I just ignore it.
Ah, but no doubt some gays are offended by flagrant heterosexual exhibitions in public. Again, offense does not equal injury. Get over it.
Some of the gay crowd are calling wedding rings on a man and woman holding hands an offense to them. That is crazy.
I suspect they’re trying to make a point. I seriously doubt that many gays are actually offended by a straight couple holding hands. Unfortunately, the converse is not true. I’ve actually witnessed, on more than one occasion, a gay couple accosted verbally by someone who was offended because they were merely holding hands.
Furthermore, most of these bigots (I’m tempted to say all…) are religious right, and claim to oppose political correctness in all of its facets. They clearly don’t, since they seem to believe that their being offended gives them the right to dictate other people’s innocent behavior.
O’Reilly is a Faux Nooz media buffoon, regardless. But hey, maybe he can run his argument by his audience and get them to bite, whatever.
If some of the three percent wanna get “married”, let them do so in a religious institution or with a JP or however they wanna do it, but let’s get the State out of the transaction as it applies to ALL of us, regardless.
And for entertainment value we can do a pay-per-view show where the condom-throwers and public fondling gays are in a straight-razor match with the rabid cherry-picking Bible thumpers and neo-Nazi maniacs. Maybe the rest of us can live and let live in the meantime.
It must be tough living in fundamentalist Protestant/Calvinist regions of the country; you won’t see gay couples being accosted for holding hands here in New England nor will anyone be rushing you with their super-Chrisitan bag in your face all the time. Only ones who do, and that only once in a blue moon, are Witnesses and Mormons.
It’s the nutcases in both groups who keep throwing the red meat (and condoms) at each other; the rest of us should be able to “just get along.”
I worked for several years in a company that had a couple of lesbians. They were open about it and everyone knew. No one really cared, nor did I. I went to their house several to resolve some computer issues and one time to help them move some stuff as I had a pickup truck. They left my lifestyle alone, I left their lifestyle alone.
The irritating ones are the ones that flaunt their gender choice. I could not help looking a guy who was gay although I did not know he was gay. Almost immediately he jumped down my throat because he said I did not like gays. I said, “No, that is not the reason I am looking at you. It is the pink shoes, green shirt, purple pants and orange hat. Your gender selection is not the problem, it is your dress code. You are not Elton John.”
When they wear a T-shirt that states “I am Gay and Proud of it” that is flaunting the shock reaction. They would be offended if I wore a shirt displaying “Gay is Goofy”. There is the problem. You can state your preference about gay people and they get offended. Yet they can state their preference and you are supposed to ignore it. It is about the shock factor, getting people to notice.
If they would just quietly live their lives, no displays about their gender preference (I don’t care if they hold hands in public, but feeling each others nuts in public is out, same applies to M/F couples), it would be much easier on everyone. Unless I am on a hill overlooking a nudie beach with my long lens and extender.
It’s the nutcases in both groups who keep throwing the red meat (and condoms) at each other; the rest of us should be able to “just get along.”
What he said.
“It is about the shock factor, getting people to notice.”
And what *he* said.
There it is; it’s a blatant sign of purile immaturity; “hey everybody, look at ME! Hey, I said LOOK AT ME!!!!” “You bastards; you won’t look at ME??? I’ll make the State FORCE you to look at ME and LIKE it!”
There are a couple of other groups who wear spastically goofy clothes, too, with that same motivation.
Outside of certain events in San Francisco, where is it that you all encounter these super-hostile gays who put you down and tell you how you and those in your church should live your lives?
I worked my entire career in an industry—probably disproportionately—chocked full of gays all around me. NEVER was I ever approached by any of them inappropriately—or with even the subtlest query if I were queer. In fact, it was the opposite: I worked with heteros who would openly make fun of, and verbally abuse, those we all knew were gay, when the opposite never occurred. I worked closely,—and had outside-of-work friendly acquaintances,—with a couple of the gays and their partners, and they were always respectful of my choice and referred to it as ‘being a family man’.
Sin is in the mind of the beholder, and neither some guy in Rome nor another guy who made a trip to a mountaintop when nobody was watching, can dictate to me—or should dictate to anybody else—their fabrications that cannot be proved. Nonetheless, you are free to believe anything you want, even if it completely lacks foundation, with only the backing of others erroneously believing the same fantastical and unprovable stuff.
As far as the criticism of people being naked in public, whatever you do, if you don’t like it, do NOT go near the water in Germany. A good third of all the people swimming and sunning there will have no clothes in sight, and those people will not be relegated to some distant and unseen sector of the environs to somehow protect the sanctity of those who do wear clothes. They will be right there openly among those who choose to wear clothes. Baffling that Americans are still so Puritan and Calvinistic that the body given to them by their supposedly divine and faultless maker is such an evil that seeing his creation as it was made offends them.
It’s whatever percentage of the measly three-percent who make all the noise and melodrama and gain a way-disporportionate share of media attention. Just like the Westboro Baptist Church gets it. Both groups should be locked up together somewhere.
I will tell our daughter, who is leaving for a working summuh in Berlin in May, not to go near the wottuh.
Where do you come up with this 3% figure? I suppose the percentage depends on how you define it, but I think 3% is much too low by any definition, particularly since many gays for one reason or another are still in the closet.
Even if you limit it to actively homosexual people, I think an absolute bottom estimate would be 5%, and 10% to 15% is much more likely. And that’s among men, who tend to be either pure straight or pure gay. If you take 0 as pure straight and 9 as pure gay, the vast majority of men cluster at peaks at 0 and 9, with very few in between. Women are on a continuum. Probably at least half of all women are either 0 or 9, but that still leaves a huge number in the middle somewhere, from the 8’s (predominantly gay women who sometimes have sex with men) to the 1’s (predominantly straight women who sometimes have sex with women).
Many women also seem to be able to move back and forth at different times in their lives. It’s extremely common for teenage girls to have sexually-active lesbian relationships with other girls, but then abandon sex with women and become exclusively straight, at least in terms of their physical activity. They marry and have children. Then they’re divorced or widows, and go back to having sex with women again. How do you count them?
My guess is that if you count boys/men and girls/women who have ever had a physical sexual relationship with a member of the same sex, the percentage would be 50%, give or take. If you rule out teenage exploration and count only those who have had at least one ongoing homosexual relationship, that might drop to 25% or so. If you count only gays who regularly engage in sex, maybe 15% overall.
As far as the criticism of people being naked in public, whatever you do, if you don’t like it, do NOT go near the water in Germany.
Having encountered such behavior while on a trip to Spain I just ignored it. It is their country, their rules, I am intruding on their space. They ignore me, I ignore them. I could not care less if people run around naked in their own space. As long as the dudes don’t point and wave at me without using their hands.
I don’t have the source at my fingertips just now, but the actual percentage I give is twice that of a percentage publicized by a gay and lesbian research organization in southern Kalifornia a few months ago. They were saying the number of permanent, active homosexuals in the U.S. is about 1.8 %, despite what all the media and other hoopla has claimed since the Glorious Sixties.
Alright, here’s a couple of sites, just off the cuff here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/americans-have-no-idea-how-few-gay-people-there-are/257753/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/7/study-sees-gays-as-17-percent-of-population/
And:
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/08/137057974/-institute-of-medicine-finds-lgbt-health-research-gaps-in-us
So that’s data from two left-wing media outlets and one allegedly right-wing outfit, all homing in on that lower figure, which even activist gay people now finally admit.
I don’t think so. I’ll stick with my own estimates, which I think are much closer to reality than any of the sources you mention.
Remember, I have no dog in this hunt. I don’t like or dislike gays simply on the basis of their sexual preferences. I’ve had gay friends and gay enemies. I’m not gay. My only interest in gay marriage is that we have to stand up for everyone’s rights if we expect to keep our own.
And I believe they have the same rights you and I do under our existing laws. If there is a violation of those laws that negatively impacts their rights, then let us rectify the situation forthwith. I do not believe we need to pile up more laws and regulations and ordinances to ensure that every single tiny allegedly aggrieved minority gets to trumpet its victimhood and receive special treatment.
Where does it end?
Gays have nothing close to the same rights we do. For one thing, they can’t marry in most jurisdictions. For another thing, the federal government explicitly discriminates against gay people under DOMA.
Here’s an article from FoxNews that I agree with completely:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/03/27/when-it-comes-to-marriage-government-should-divorce-itself/
Agreeing with that article, then, if the State got out of the issue entirely, jurisdictions as such, regarding “marriage,” wouldn’t matter; would be moot, in fact. And the Fed Leviathan should also explicitly be taken out of the equation altogether. Gays, groups, animals, whatever, could all do whatever they want in whatever they deem loving and caring relationships, etc., etc. No, strike the animals; they have no sentient say in the matter; sorry Kiwis, Jocks and Aussies.
Would also agree with the article regarding the protection of children, to a point, while noting that the State’s performance in that area has been highly unsatisfactory, to say the least. How would that work in my preferred minimal government or total anarchy? Could we rely on each others’ goodwill as human beings to make sure that no harm or suffering comes to the most vulnerable among us? And that sort of leads to whatever role religions might play in such circumstances. Many here would abolish all religions completely.
One good thing about religion in Europe is that this weekend is essentially a 4-day holiday. I sure miss that.
Can’t have that here; must have total separation of Church and State. Always. Even though they deliberately cherry-pick and lie about the provenance of Jefferson’s words.
I should be able to take the days off with pay just as others could choose which ones they’d like to do that way. My ten holidays per year: Good Friday. Memorial Day. Independence Day (2). Leif Erikson Day. Thanksgiving (2). Xmas Eve, Xmas, and Boxing Day.
Thank you.
And I want what the Euros have for vay-cay; a minimum four paid weeks a year, and at my age I should have twice that.
Six weeks in Germany. Better ask for 6 or more and maybe you will get 4.
RBT wrote:
“You anti-gay-marriage folks are doomed.”
Yeah, I know it. But I don’t like the re-interpretation of marriage, just as you don’t like the re-interpretation of the Second Amendment or the availability of PhDs from degree mills.
RBT wrote:
“Ah, but no doubt some gays are offended by flagrant heterosexual exhibitions in public. Again, offense does not equal injury. Get over it.”
I am over it. I don’t care what these people get up to behind closed doors but I hate it when they flaunt it in public. I even get annoyed when I see hetro couples all over each other in public. I always think “Save it for the bedroom, will you?” I think holding hands, hugs and brief kisses in public are nice and I don’t object. But I don’t want to see people, hetro or gay, spending 10 minutes with their tongues down each others throats.
I also object to people using public toilets as pickup places or places to have sex. I just ask that they keep it private.
RBT wrote:
“I’ve actually witnessed, on more than one occasion, a gay couple accosted verbally by someone who was offended because they were merely holding hands.”
I wouldn’t accost them but I don’t like it and try to filter it out. I just look the other way. The thought of homosexuality between men completely grosses me out. Women, of course, are different. As Bill once said of lesbians “We have some of the same interests.”
RBT wrote:
“Where do you come up with this 3% figure?”
Ceiling Cat ™ told me last week in a vision… 🙂
Seriously, I’ve read estimates as far back as the Seventies between 2-20%. Who knows.
Back in the Seventies I read an article saying that by the end of high school 95% of guys are still virgins and 95% of girls aren’t. I don’t think I believe that figure, or the difference between the sexes. If it’s true a small number of guys are getting very VERY “lucky”.
OFD wrote:
“And for entertainment value we can do a pay-per-view show where the condom-throwers and public fondling gays are in a straight-razor match with the rabid cherry-picking Bible thumpers and neo-Nazi maniacs. Maybe the rest of us can live and let live in the meantime.”
Dave, I broadly agree with your sentiments but suggest you read and internalise George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.
OFD wrote:
“I will tell our daughter, who is leaving for a working summuh in Berlin in May, not to go near the wottuh.”
Don’t tell her that! I’m on my way out now to get a plane ticket to Berlin… 🙂
Ray wrote:
“No, that is not the reason I am looking at you. It is the pink shoes, green shirt, purple pants and orange hat. Your gender selection is not the problem, it is your dress code. You are not Elton John.”
Perhaps he didn’t realise that the Seventies were over. I’ve still got a shirt from the Seventies that not even I would wear in public. But I still love it.
Long Live the Seventies! All Hail Barry Manilow!
Chuck wrote:
“Baffling that Americans are still so Puritan and Calvinistic that the body given to them by their supposedly divine and faultless maker is such an evil that seeing his creation as it was made offends them.”
Better stop talking that way Chuck, people might start thinking you’re an *th**st.
I’m not bothered by nudity, even male nudity, but in public I’d prefer that it be restricted to agreed upon places. Certain parks or beaches could be nude, some topless, some clothed/swimwear. But I don’t want to see naked people downtown for all the obvious hygiene and other reasons. Plus, where the hell do these people carry their wallets, compacts, tampons, etc. etc. etc.
Chuck wrote:
“One good thing about religion in Europe is that this weekend is essentially a 4-day holiday. I sure miss that.”
Amen Brother! We have Good Friday and Easter Monday as holidays too. In Victoria they had an extra holiday for Easter Tuesday. Don’t know if that still happens. Come to Australia Chuck! No one will bother you for your godlessness and you can spend your days on Bondi Beach checking out the topless sheilas. Your only problem will be learning to drive on the correct side of the road and tolerate people passing you on the inside lane. EVERYONE here does it.
“Dave, I broadly agree with your sentiments but suggest you read and internalise George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.”
Been there, done that, and….taught it. Standard reading in many freshman English courses, sometimes high school. But does anybody in this country internalize it? Not that I’ve seen yet.
Chuck, blaming Reagan for adding “God bless America” at the end of his speeches is a bit disingenuous. I submit the closing from FDR’s inaugural speech: “In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.”
I suspect I can find similar from almost every single president.
Hmm. From 1966 through about 1994, I sat through all evening Presidential TV broadcasts (usually only a couple a year) as part of my job, including State of the Unions, and prior to Reagan, no President invoked God’s blessing on America as his sign-off. Trust me. It started with Reagan and has not stopped. FDR’s inauguration was not carried on national TV. That started with Ike in 1953. I don’t want anybody’s god to be called upon publicly to bless my country.
As far as how many gays there are, Kinsey is my favorite sex researcher, since my folks had his books in the house ever since I could remember, and I got through both of them before I was 13 (and they were very thick books). Kinsey supports our host’s theory about the continuum—for both men and women. Lots of people who have reexamined Kinsey’s figures claim his data significantly underestimates the number of people who have experienced repeated same sex relations over a period of at least several years—primarily because his samples were exclusively white subjects.
His figures were also primarily of the college educated, and in that sample alone, 10% of males were exclusively same sex for at least 3 years; a whopping 37% of males had at least 1 same sex experience to orgasm—and this research is from 1948 for males and 1953 for females. Numbers for females were about half that of males. Add to that what must be similar figures outside of the college educated, and I suspect the actual figures would be staggering to those who believe they are only in the area of 3%. My guess would be that at least 20% of males in the US have had long periods of same sex experience, and it could be even higher than that, because many are not inclined to discuss their past sex life with anyone, including researchers. I personally know 2 guys who revealed to me during university that they had same sex relationships, but never told their prospective female partners about that, for fear of their being rejected by the girls. I am long since out of touch with them and have no idea whether they ultimately told those who later became their wives about those relationships, but my guess is that they have not.
I also have personally known men who maintained simultaneous relationships with other men, while married to a woman. Now I am just an average guy who does not intentionally seek out any contact with gay men, but if I encounter these people in daily work and life, then I know others have, too.
Since the advent of the Internet, I am also convinced that the number of young people from puberty through college who experiment with same sex sex has likely increased dramatically because they now have such free access to information about what their peers are doing.
Those of you who believe gays or gay experiences are limited to 3% of the population, seriously—and I mean seriously—underestimate the prevalence of same sex relationships, IMO, and it sure appears that males lead the pack by far in the numbers race.
Speaking of sex, here is the story of a high school couple—he 18, she 16—who were having sex at her house, when her older brother discovered it, told the stepfather, and the stepfather and brother beat the penetrator.
http://www.indystar.com/article/20130327/NEWS02/303270056/1001/NEWS
As to tolerance of gay men and lesbians, I think there’s a natural tendency not to tolerate amongst straight people.
I had a pretty innocent and naive upbringing and wasn’t even aware of what homosexuality and lesbianism actually was until my late teens. Even then I loathed male homosexuals and tolerated, even liked lesbians. Some of the latter were obnoxious as people, but some were quite pleasant and not man-haters.
In the mid Nineties I got into a discussion about homosexuality with some guys at work. Without exception the guys loathed homosexuals and homosexuality but had varying degrees of tolerance for lesbians. They said their wives were the opposite: they loathed lesbians but tolerated male homosexuals. (One of these guys may have been a Christian, the others weren’t to my knowledge, so it’s probably genetic, not religious.) Another friend had a theory that women like to socialise with gay blokes because they know they won’t be pressured to go to bed with them. He said that some guys consciously act gay to put women at ease so they can bed them later on.
Like my sister, and unlike my niece’s husband (an ex cop), I don’t have GAYDAR. Unless a someone tells me or makes it completely obvious in some other way I have no idea about anyone’s preference. I don’t like it but am happy to live and let live so long as it isn’t in my face.
Chuck W says on 27 March 2013 at 23:04
Kinsey is my favorite sex researcher…
Totally discredited source, Chuck. Later information revealed he was a covert but extremely active bisexual practitioner. He had (and used to his personal advantage) an interest in promulgating fiction about how “normal” homosexual activity was. Now, it may be common, but he was using his perverted, inverted depiction of HOW common it was to turn young men and boys his way. Only later research, uncorrupted by Kinsey, has any possible claim to validity.
Chuck wrote:
“I also have personally known men who maintained simultaneous relationships with other men, while married to a woman.”
That’s just evil. If people do that and their partner knows and agrees then it’s none of my business, but having sex, hetro or gay, outside of marriage without your partner’ s knowledge and approval is a betrayal.
Years ago I heard stories of men who’d ring the Red Cross blood bank while their wives were on their way there to donate blood, telling the Red Cross not to use the wife’s blood because the husband was also in a relationship with a guy/s and the wife was unaware. It was good that they warned the blood bank but evil not to tell the wife. May guys like that rot in hell.
What hell? Everyone is free to believe what they will, and form their own opinions about what is evil and what is not; and boy do many here believe the unsupported, with most of the views presented here just plain and stridently anti-homosexual. The Kinsey Institute still resides at my alma mater and is supported by them. Kinsey died about 10 years before I went to school there, however, I was acquainted with people there who knew him very well. He was openly bisexual and both he and his wife had an open marriage. What business is that of yours? If that automatically means anyone who is homosexual is unqualified in your book to conduct studies about sexuality and homosexuality, then so be that your belief. Sounds like bigotry to me. Over the years, the University has investigated the Institute heavily, Kinsey’s raw data has been sifted through by others, probably more so than any other data on sexuality ever has, and has never been invalidated by anyone, although it has been heavily criticized by those who felt the sample was not broad enough. Great for arm-chair quarterbacks to criticize, since it was the first study openly conducted about sexuality. It is therefore not surprising that it was done by a small group with modest means and simple objectives. By the way, I had a coffee cup in the kitchen cabinet with the Kinsey Institute’s name emblazoned on it until my son took it with him a few months ago, when he moved back to Bloomington—home to Kinsey’s Institute.
Now excuse me while I believe people who actually knew the man, rather than Internet criticisms of him by people who do not know what they are talking about, because those I know who actually knew Kinsey well, have said he was no abuser of anybody, did not use his position to promote a homosexual agenda, did not need to use his position to find partners of either sex, and was himself surprised at the results of his own studies that showed a much wider occurrence of homosexual tendencies than he had at first imagined. I could just as easily say that any straight person who conducts studies on sexuality has an agenda and must be disbelieved as evil because of their natural bias.
Not only is Kinsey’s Institute not discredited, it lives and works on.
“What business is that of yours?”
What business is that of whose?
Calm down a bit please Chuck.
Anybody’s, outside of Kinsey’s and his wife’s.
Who is not calm? I am just stating facts such as they are.
Alfred Kinsey was a pervert and a demented out-of-control pimp and serial sexual harasser; a leading figure in the wonderful “Sexual Revolution” of the Glorious Sixties vanguard that has done so much to further the beauty and wonderfulness of contemporary Western civilization.
As for the percentage of regular active homosexuals in the U.S. I have further revised my figure downward, to probably less than one-percent, basing it in part on my own anecdotal history of knowing any of them, maybe a dozen at the outside, over half a century in the urban/suburban, college-educated Northeast. Where one might expect, based on the endless breathless media and academic accounts, to find hordes of them.
We’ve been sold a bill of goods.
As with the wonderfulness of affirmative action, the worship of the Goddess Diversity, and worldglobalclimatewarmingchange. Dissent at your peril.
Not a lot of TVs in 1933 Chuck. Of course it wasn’t televised. Nor was it twitted about the interwebs. You’re getting more disingenuous, not less.
How about this one: “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” – John F. Kennedy.
If the US had true separation of Church and State, you guys wouldn’t have “In God We Trust” on your money, or require “So help me God” as the ending of the inaugural oath of office for the POTUS (and others).
All this hoo-hah about “separation of Church and State” generated over the decades by lefty academics and media goofballs needs to be re-examined in its historical origins and context and author. These people take historical facts, twist them to their own ends, and then run like crazy with them; it was done with Roe v. Wade; affirmative action; Vatican II; “inclusive” language in various texts; and finding all kinds of interesting shit in the ether that isn’t really there and just winging it anyway and getting away with it. It’s been a regular feature of what passes for study in college and university humanities and social “science” departments.
Jefferson, in a letter, discusses a church in Rhode Island. The contemporary bozos on this bus take that and screech about Xmas trees in front of the town hall and publik skool kids singing carols.
Oh, come on. You’ve probably known at least a dozen gay priests.
Possibly one or two gay Episcopalian clergy over three or four decades? In urban and suburban Northeast parishes. Maybe one or two RC priests who may not have actually been gay but had/have some kind of psycho-sexual issues.
Maybe two guys in the AF back in Kalifornia a few miles north of….yeah…San Francisco.
Of course I don’t get out much; no social life to speak of and don’t go to clubs or bars and haven’t for thirty years anyway. When I drank, I drank at home. I guess I probably saw a few more gay people during my two years of grad school at Rutgers twenty years ago and they were pretty “out” about it. They were if not actively hostile to me, mainly for political reasons, indifferent. When I say “political” I mean they were hardcore Left and knew I was hardcore Right. I was clearly the ‘odd man out’ in that environment and it was like walking on eggshells daily; the visceral hatred and hostility were palpable. Sorta like dropping Pat Buchanan by parachute into Pyongyang.
I’ll let you come down here and argue it out with the few left who actually knew Kinsey. Not sure how you could know he was a pimp, having never known him or even lived around here to get a sense of how people felt about him. There is no one I know who did know him that holds(/held) your views.
Bill, I am not meaning to be disingenuous at all. I am talking strictly about major Presidential public speeches covered in lock-step unison live by the media—such as State of the Union, and the very few special ‘message to the nation’ speeches like those LBJ and Shrub gave during/after Vietnam and WTC. I am NOT talking about any other speeches, like those to small groups or given to special subgroups of Congressional committees, or even to Girl Scouts in the Rose Garden, that have no live media coverage at all—or even reflective writings, all of which are what you are quoting from. You won’t find those major live national speeches prior to Reagan signing off with “God bless America” as they all do now. From 1966 to about 1994 I sat through all of them, as we almost always followed them with special news analysis programs. I am not maintaining that no President ever mentioned god or religion during their tenure; but rather ONLY that—prior to Ron Reagan—they did not sign off their special live national speeches to the nation with “God bless America” as all of them have from Reagan on. I also pointed out that national television coverage of such speeches did not begin until Eisenhower. Thus I am talking primarily about Eisenhower to Reagan, although I suspect that major national radio speeches to the nation prior to television, also did not end with “God bless America.” Again, I am not talking about ANY OTHER references by Presidents to a god or religion.
This board is really turning right-wing religious reactionary and stridently anti-gay, in addition to playing loose with the facts about people I actually know something about. Sorry to see that.
From the Wiki:
“Kinsey’s research went beyond theory and interview to include observation of and participation in sexual activity, sometimes involving co-workers. The data published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) remains well-regarded in the scientific and psychiatric communities. He justified this as being necessary to gain the confidence of his research subjects. He encouraged his staff to do likewise, and engage in a wide range of sexual activity, to the extent that they felt comfortable; he argued that this would help his interviewers understand the participant’s responses.[17][18] Kinsey filmed sexual acts which included co-workers in the attic of his home as part of his research;[19] Biographer Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy explains that this was done to ensure the films’ secrecy, which would have caused a scandal had it become public knowledge.[20][21] James H. Jones, author of Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, and British psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, amongst others, have speculated that Kinsey was driven by his own sexual needs.[22]
So he engaged in sexual acts with his subjects/patients (the line is murky, isn’t it?) and his co-workers and staff, no doubt to “further his research” (and thus profit financially and otherwise from it) and for frosting on the cake, to jolly himself. This to me seems the very definition of a pimp. If the people who live/d there think and believe differently, I have no help for them. One might question their motivations as well. Meanwhile the rest of the psychiatric industry goes along with the program and thinks he’s a swell guy.
We live in a pretty librul state up here but I doubt many communities would want this guy and his krew living in there with them and conducting his “research.”
Pervert? You be the judge:
“The meeting took place in June 1944, when the pedophile, said to have been a man named Rex King, was 63. Before and after the meeting, Kinsey wrote to King, coaxing him to send his detailed diaries of his sexual exploits, including those with children. Jones reports that on Nov. 24, 1944, for example, Kinsey wrote, “I rejoice at everything you send, for I am then assured that that much more of your material is saved for scientific publication.” Kinsey published much of King’s data in “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” where tables summarized King’s attempts to bring to orgasm boys between the ages of 2 months and 15 years, in some cases over a period as long as 24 hours. Kinsey attributed the data not to one source but to many. But in 1995 John Bancroft, who was director of the Kinsey Institute until this spring, discovered that all the data came from King. In a forthcoming article, Dr. Bancroft suggests that Kinsey might have wanted to shield King from public attention.”
He rejoices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/movies/03crai.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0
OFD, thanks for the NY Times link. I always wondered about the source for the controversial data which was evidently provided by Rex King. I have to wonder about anyone who could read King’s diaries and not have their first thought to be reporting King to the authorities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/movies/03crai.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0
“A year or two before he died, Kinsey circumcised himself with a pocketknife.”
OOOUUUCCCHHH!!!! Dude, warn a guy before pointing to that!
I hope it was really dull and rusted. What a piece of shit. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Chuck wrote:
“Anybody’s, outside of Kinsey’s and his wife’s.
Who is not calm? I am just stating facts such as they are.”
Well, I wasn’t sure who you were replying to, or if it was an amalgam. Your first sentence seemed to me to be referring to me, then you made the “whose business” comment. I also think that it’s just the business of the people involved, and I thought I made that plain, but I *am* allowed to have a private opinion. I think people should be allowed to cheat on their spouses/significant others, but I still think it’s contemptible. People should keep their promises or ask for a divorce.
“Oh, come on. You’ve probably known at least a dozen gay priests.”
Hopefully he hasn’t known them in the biblical sense…
Chuck wrote:
“This board is really turning right-wing religious reactionary and stridently anti-gay, in addition to playing loose with the facts about people I actually know something about. Sorry to see that.”
Chuck, has OFD been sending you mushrooms or are you harvesting your own?
Seriously, this board is a mix of conservative and libertarian and I haven’t noticed the shift you claim, which I think isn’t actually there. Try reading PZ’s board, or Jerry Coyne’s, where the pit bulls come out to play, That’s what I like about this place – 99.9% of the time people are ultra civil.
Dave B wrote:
” I have to wonder about anyone who could read King’s diaries and not have their first thought to be reporting King to the authorities.”
My first thought would be to reach for a carving knife, axe, shotgun, or similar.
Lynn wrote:
“A year or two before he died, Kinsey circumcised himself with a pocketknife.”
OOOUUUCCCHHH!!!! Dude, warn a guy before pointing to that!’
Aw Lynn, that’s nothing. After the Israelites had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years and not circumcising all the guys had to be “done” at once before they could enter the Promised Land. Think about all those guys, some as old as 40, being in a fair amount of pain and completely vulnerable to military attack.
Also, I seem to recall an account in the NT of a guy circumcising himself so that he’d be accepted by the Jews. Ouch!
“This board is really turning right-wing religious reactionary and stridently anti-gay, in addition to playing loose with the facts about people I actually know something about.”
I would hazard a guess that I am exactly the person who most fits that, at least the paht about “right-wing religious reactionary.” Yep, that’s me, made and make no bones about it, neither. “Stridently anti-gay”? I dunno where that was; me and a couple of others just opined that we preferred live and let live and otherwise get out of our faces all the time. A tiny minority has made a tremendous amount of noise since the much-ballyhooed Stonewall riots in the late Glorious Sixties.
This is what has always bugged me; you express a bit of dissatisfaction or dissent about the “conventional wisdom,” in recent times super-PC, and you instantly and automatically become anti-gay, racist, misogynist, sexist, etc., etc. It’s a nifty way to shut down arguments and discussions and spread FUD.
And I do not find the words “reactionary” or “right-wing” necessarily pejorative, as most librul Dems and progressives clearly do.
So blame me for the right-wing reactionary stuff on here; like I say, I make no secret of it. But not the “stridently anti-gay” b.s. Like I also say, live and let live. But don’t expect me to fall to my knees and genuflect when some hairy bastard swaggers by in a g-string and multiple tattoos and piercings with my grandchildren standing there.
“…and stridently anti-gay, in addition to playing loose with the facts about people I actually know something about.”
The years I’ve been here only Jeff/Geoff met the anti-gay part. Don’t know where you are coming from.
So blame me for the right-wing reactionary stuff on here; like I say, I make no secret of it. But not the “stridently anti-gay” b.s. Like I also say, live and let live. But don’t expect me to fall to my knees and genuflect when some hairy bastard swaggers by in a g-string and multiple tattoos and piercings with my grandchildren standing there.
I have a vivid image that goes along with this. Several years ago, the wife and I were walking around downtown Austin, Texas for exercise. The wife is now a 7 year cancer survivor with a full mastectomy and reconstruction. At the time, she was going through chemo and having a tough time of it. We had shaved her head because over 2/3rds of her hair had fallen out.
Anyway, we are just walking along, enjoying the stores, etc and this guy is walking toward us. He sees my wife and just gives her the hard unblinking stare the entire time we are walking towards each other. She was feeling a little nervous already because we had shaved her head that week and she was too warm for the wig that they had given her at the cancer center. So, I was about ready to kill this guy but passed on it. Did not even say anything, I just gave him a nasty look as we passed each other. All this time, my wife is just about ready to cry since he would not stop staring at her.
You should have seen this guy. Barely any shirt, sleeve tattoos on both arms and up his neck and on his face. Piercings all over the place and A FREAKING BULL RING IN HIS NOSE! Yes, a three inch bull ring in his nose. Hung from his nose to below his bottom lip. And yes, his head was shaved also.
Afterwards, we laughed about it. No one else stared at my wifes bare head like that the entire time that she was going through chemo. So, not only do these people look weird for stuff that they have done to themselves, they have no manners for the sick and ill in our society.
Well we probably can’t extrapolate and generalize from that one asshole; maybe he was a damn nut or on dope or drunk or something.
For weird fashions and dress you gotta see the freaks we see in the state’s capital up here all the time; they’re mostly hardcore lefties and progs and they deliberately go out of their way as much as they can to look weird and act weird, and then revel in it and the reactions they hope to get, I guess. And don’t get me started on the way les Quebecois dress; holy crap, what a nightmare! Lousy food up there, too. Hope it’s better out in Ontario and BC.
OK, let me go back to my hardcore right-wing reactionary reading; usually Chronicles, The Wanderer, The New Oxford Review, and stuff by the great American historian, Dr. Clyde Wilson, of South Carolina. If I see any gay people swishing by the house I’ll throw rotten bananas at them to keep up my image.
“No one else stared at my wifes bare head like that …”
Women I know in this situation often wear a scarf over their head.
My elder nephew’s wife (for the moment) has one of the BRCA gene mutations. Her mother and one or two of her mother’s sisters died fairly young from it too. She had the test and found that she has a mutated gene that greatly elevates her risk of breast cancer. She’s been going through the necessary counseling and has decided to go down the mastectomy path. In December she said it would be happening in March (that is, now) but I haven’t heard anything. To add to her problems she and my nephew are divorcing and they had to sell the house. Something like that is my worst nightmare.
Women I know in this situation often wear a scarf over their head.
She tried a wig for a while and did not like that. Then she found a little hat that she liked and wore that for many months. But it was hot that day and she decide to go bare as we were walking about 4 miles. I was proud of her, I had been going bare on top for decades…
I watched my 140 lb grandfather grab a 2000 lb bull by the nose ring once. That bull had been kicking and he got real docile then and just followed Grandad around like a pony. Then he got his bucket of oats and was real happy.
My elder nephew’s wife (for the moment) has one of the BRCA gene mutations.
My wife has both major gene mutations and both minor. And she had estrogen positive cancer. She turned up with a 3 cm by 2 cm tumor at the age of 45, stage 2B because there was a secondary tumor in her lymph nodes. She is watching the remaining breast and not arguing with me anymore about yearly mammograms.
I am now advising my daughter to go get digital exams since she is 25 and probably has the gene mutations. She has refused so far but she is still fighting off the Lyme disease which is consuming her life.
Doing some composite images for senior basketball players. I get paid for creating the images. Not much as it is for the school. I enjoy doing it for the school. This is what I have so far with one image to go.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Seniors
“I watched my 140 lb grandfather grab a 2000 lb bull by the nose ring once. That bull had been kicking and he got real docile then and just followed Grandad around like a pony. Then he got his bucket of oats and was real happy.”
I’ll have to try that with my sister… 🙂
I’ll be selling up here soon and moving to Adelaide. I’ll start looking for my own digs straightaway but in the meantime I’ll be dossing down at my sister’s place. It’s okay in short bursts, but if I don’t get my own place quick one of us will end up in a pine box and the other as a guest of Her Majesty at Yatala.
The years I’ve been here only Jeff/Geoff met the anti-gay part. Don’t know where you are coming from.
There has been plenty of derogatory stereotyping of gays here within the last week or so, and when I point out those have never been my experience with anyone I have ever known who was gay, they just keep being repeated, again with no specifics, just generalized deprecating stereotyping. If your religion does not approve of gays, keep that information and any feelings of agreement to yourself.
I could not disagree more with the charges here against Kinsey. Kinsey himself denied the truth of many while he was alive, but the misinformation just keeps getting repeated. And that fits right in with the gay bashing. We are still in the dark about the basis of homosexuality, and along comes a guy who wants to investigate the broad topic of sex that has been taboo for eons, and happens to be bisexual himself, and what goes on here? Vilify him, of course,—to an extreme,—with religious-based moralizing as the grounds.
A pimp arranges encounters for money. Kinsey did not do that. My understanding from reports by those who actually worked at the Institute and participated in the movies, was that most came with their own partners, but if they had none and wanted, Kinsey would arrange to provide a partner for them. Heck, I have introduced at least two sets of individuals to each other who later got married. Am I a pimp? Maybe so.
He chose his home rather than at the Institute for the filming, figuring the University would escape criticism were it not involved directly in that part of his work, should controversy arise. That statement that it was sure to cause controversy if ever discovered—implying that the films were some kind of secret—is a ridiculous charge, because those films were no secret; they were used for training by the Institute staff and a whole raft of people were involved in producing, filming, developing the film, and creating training sessions around them. Some secret. In the end, Kinsey was right on that one. He is the one charged here with being a pimp, not the University.
Turn that pedophile in and throw him in jail! Geez, you obviously have never been close to dealing with those kinds of situations like I have when I was in journalism management. A pedophile with lots of encounters comes to you, a researcher seeking data. What do you do? It’s the same as when a serial killer, a government whistleblower, or someone in international espionage comes to a journalist. What do they do? BTW I have had to deal with two of the three of those (not the serial killer, FYI).
And this is also the hard stuff I continue to see people struggle with, in the work that I currently do. I cannot comment on specifics, but here’s a made-up example that is similar. A person is dying a medically predictable and inevitable death. They request of their doctor to do anything unusual that might save them or help find a cure for others. The doctor knows of a drug treatment that is being used in another country for this person’s malady. But the drug is banned in the USA. If the doctor uses it, and it does not work and a law suit results, his insurance company will not defend him against losing his license nor provide compensation if someone sues. Nice easy dilemma.
Ever watched the end of that movie about Kinsey? Lynn Redgrave’s character says it all. Because of him we no longer have unmarried teachers teaching lies as sex education in Health class, like I was taught, when I had already read both Kinsey books and knew better. My classmates didn’t, though.
You are way off-base on this one. But it is entirely representative of the religion vs. science issue frequently discussed here. Castigate the researchers and scientists as immoral bastards and dangerous to society—reprehensible ogres that ought to die horrible deaths from rusty pocket knives. Unbelievable intolerance.
I stand by my estimate of the number of active, practicing homosexuals as a percentage of the U.S. population being tiny and not enough to warrant the decades of sound and fury signifying not much.
I also stand by my characterization of the late Kinsey as more a pimp and pervert than serious research scientist; maybe he started out as the latter, but it went downhill fast. I find it interesting the people in our history who are chosen by media and academia as heroes and heroines since the Glorious Sixties.
Other than that, I did not mean to cause such a ruckus but there it is.
Chuck wrote:
” A pedophile with lots of encounters comes to you, a researcher seeking data. What do you do?”
Call the cops, of course. If a paedo confesses to a priest what should the priest do? Call the cops, of course.
So, Dave, you say that you don’t particularly care for flagrant gay displays in public, but you also think the government should not discriminate against gays. Given that not allowing same-sex marriage most definitely discriminates against gays in literally scores of ways–from taxes to spousal rights and beyond–at the federal, state, and local levels, is it then safe to assume that you are in favor of the Supreme Court ruling that Prop 8 and DOMA are unconstitutional and that government at all levels is prohibited from denying gay couples the same rights that we straight couples enjoy?
Chuck wrote:
“You are way off-base on this one. But it is entirely representative of the religion vs. science issue frequently discussed here. Castigate the researchers and scientists as immoral bastards and dangerous to society—reprehensible ogres that ought to die horrible deaths from rusty pocket knives. Unbelievable intolerance.”
Who is way off-base on this one? MrAtoz? OFD? Me? Bob? You?
Scientists have to work within the law.
And I haven’t noticed too much gay bashing, not more than usual. Have I been indulging?
RBT wrote:
“Given that not allowing same-sex marriage most definitely discriminates against gays…”
I think most of us want the government out of regulating marriage. I’m pretty sure OFD has said that too.
Also, I confess that I don’t know the details of Kinsey’s “pedophile” source. Was that source in fact engaging in pedophilia in the literal sense? That is, having sex with pre-pubescent children? Or are we using “pedophile” in the sloppy sense when we really mean phebephilia (sex with pubescents) or even ephebophilia (sex with post-pubescents, say ages 14 to 18)?
Back then the age of consent was probably much lower in most places than now, so the paedo was probably a real one.
“Given that not allowing same-sex marriage most definitely discriminates against gays in literally scores of ways–from taxes to spousal rights and beyond–at the federal, state, and local levels, is it then safe to assume that you are in favor of the Supreme Court ruling that Prop 8 and DOMA are unconstitutional and that government at all levels is prohibited from denying gay couples the same rights that we straight couples enjoy?”
We’ve already established that we wish the State would stay out of the marriage business completely. Whether for straights or gays. As for “spousal rights” and taxes and suchlike, we should all be treated fairly under the same system, again, whether gay or straight. But I don’t need the flagrant displays and outrageous behavior and language and threats to tell me this.
And I’ve given up on the SCOTUS long ago as doing anything pertaining to their genuine responsibilities in regard to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, especially with the recent appointments of the last half-century.
But once again a tiny minority and its cheerleaders are attempting to use the State and its powers to force the majority into not only making legal matters fair and equal, but via the old give-’em-an-inch-and-take-a-mile strategy, or the camel’s nose under the tent, they’re pushing lots of other agendas at the same time across multiple fronts.
I’d take the State out of the equation altogether, for starters, and let reason and common sense rule the country for a change. Hopefully without being attacked as a discriminatory and strident gay-bashing right-wing reactionary, etc., etc., etc.
Well, it’s immaterial to me whether or not you particularly like gays or some subset of them. What matters is that you stand against the government discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation. If I understand what you’re saying, you’re in favor of government at all levels keeping their grubby hands off marriage and interpersonal relationships, and allowing those relationships, as they should, to remain a matter for contracts/agreements between or among the people involved. If that’s the case, I have no significant disagreements with you. Whether gays make up 1% of the population or 30% is a side issue that really isn’t applicable to anything.
As someone mentioned earlier, I don’t consider what’s been going on in this discussion to be gay-bashing per se. Not liking public exhibitions is one thing; not liking gays because they’re gay is quite another.
“Was that source in fact engaging in pedophilia in the literal sense?”
Yeah. Read the article again. And the other kinds you mention are wrong, too. Kids that age, i.e.. mid-teens, may well be hot to trot and have all their motors thusly running in overdrive, but that by no means indicates that they’re mentally and emotionally equipped, especially in this rotten culture, to handle it all responsibly. Hell, even older people can’t do that.
Again, this is the camel’s nose under the tent flap; let’s be fair to gay couples visiting each other in hospitals and renting apartments. OK. Check. Now let’s let them intrude on the largely straight, family-oriented St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Southie, nearly nude, with little kids along the route. (note: no straight Irish Roman Catholics show up nude at their gay bars and parties.) Check. (force a court action, if necessary, to make these straight old troglodytes knuckle under, goddam it!) Check.
OK. Now let’s make sex OK with teenagers sixteen and up (they’re thinking mainly boys, of course.) Check. (hell it’s consensual, ain’t it?) Now let’s lower the age to twelve. Good with that? Well hell, how about six? Is six good for you? What about two? How about in groups? Animals?
Yes, I realize this is just shameless hyperbolic gay-bashing stereotyping, etc., etc.
But over forty or fifty years it’s been this steady incremental encroachment of ideas and behavior that makes the admittedly dwindling majority’s hair stand on end. But the Left rejoices that this majority is in fact dwindling, and its assault on traditional and conventional lifestyles is winning out, mainly through a constant bombardment of agitprop in the school systems and media. They’ve won that part of the culture war.
” If that’s the case, I have no significant disagreements with you…”
That is indeed the case.
I think the answer is all of the above. The data covers the reactions of male subjects to being fondled when the subjects were between two months old and fifteen years old. Literally the data in question is relying on the judgement of a child molester to determine whether his victims enjoyed being molested or not.
“If your religion does not approve of gays…”
So nobody can have an opinion but you? Because you only post the facts.
“Because of him we no longer have unmarried teachers…”
This makes no sense. Nobody else but Kinsey could have done this? I’m 58 and never experienced anything but the truth in sex education. I was raised in a small town in Wiscosnsin without prejudice or lies on sex.
I understand the ethical conflict. From the NYT article, I really wonder if Kinsey was the least bit conflicted. Also, is someone (Russ King) who thinks it’s appropriate to sexually stimulate underage males capable of judging their subjective reaction to such stimulus.
“Nobody else but Kinsey could have done this? ”
The Left has its heroes. He’s one. Others are Rosa Parks, MLK, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, JFK, RFK, HILLARY!, et.al.
Without them we’d be living in utter moral squalor and darkness, Evil Incarnate.
““If your religion does not approve of gays…”
My religion tells me to love gay people like I should love all my brothers and sisters, which I try to do but find really, really difficult a lot of the time. We do not and cannot approve of their behavior and lifestyles on a religious and moral basis, not to mention that we find it unnatural. But we do not approve of the State and its laws treating them unfairly. Or other people in general treating them unfairly or discriminating against them on the basis of their sexual behavior, assuming it is not, in fact, behavior that involves minor children.
Now I suppose someone will cue up the Church’s rotten responses to the abuses and degradation discovered among a tiny minority of its clergy over the last fifty years. We’ve covered that.
Other than that, I did not mean to cause such a ruckus but there it is.
Pffftttt. We needed a little dissention within the ranks and some active discussion (arguments?). Everyone of us is opinionated and pig headed. Comes with having paid our dues to society.
My religion tells me to love gay people like I should love all my brothers and sisters, which I try to do but find really, really difficult a lot of the time. We do not and cannot approve of their behavior and lifestyles on a religious and moral basis, not to mention that we find it unnatural. But we do not approve of the State and its laws treating them unfairly. Or other people in general treating them unfairly or discriminating against them on the basis of their sexual behavior, assuming it is not, in fact, behavior that involves minor children.
Amen! Preach on brother!
I’ll even add another one. My religion teaches me (I just realized this at the age of 52 years) that God loves me and gays and straights and murderers (even child murderers) the same. He loves us all equally. God does not love our sin but he loves us all the same. Period. I came to this realization after reading the book “The Shack”. I had been taught all my life that some people were special in God’s eye and that is so wrong that I do not know where to start.
I’ll agree with you completely on that.
Also agreed, esp. in the sense that we cannot entirely know God’s mind and the extent of His infinite mercy.
So I read Lynn’s mention of “The Shack” and found the Smallville Library only has one copy which is checked out. I toyed with the buying a copy for my Nook Color, but didn’t. In the really unusual coincidence department, I went downstairs just before dinner and found a copy sitting on the bookshelf. Somebody gave my wife a copy sometime ago.
Here is my review of “The Shack”
http://www.amazon.com/review/R182FDKAJZT6U6/
There are 5,827 reviews of this book on Amazon. Amazing.