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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818
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Maybe I'm unusual, or specially tolerant and accepting, or more open hearted than most people, but I don't think so. But I am always surprised by the lack of understanding that we, a persecuted minority, can and do show at times for other people.
Are we so perfect that we can hurl rocks at others?
Back in the mid nineties, when I first had any courage at all to post online, I was abused because I was saying I was gay, but I was married. A few folk hurled rocks at me because their cosy little gay world had been turned upside down by a new paradigm - the married gay man - and they were not man enough to take it. Queerdom was reserved for the pouf back then, it seems. And anything else was a target.
There is a wartime cartoon in Punch with two random Englishmen:
First man: "Look, Bert, there's a stranger!"
Second man: "'Eave 'alf a brick at 'im."
And so we carry on today. Yet we make a great virtue of the fact that black men must no longer be called niggers "because that is derogatory", and we do not like, ourselves to be called poufs, fags, nancy boys, pansies. And still, when we see someone different, we seem to enjoy being seen with the lynch mob and lash out at the difference.
We attack Islam whether we understand it or not. We defend Christianity whether we understand it or not. We despise Israel over Palestine whether we understand it or not. We love to express our opinions, and boy do we have opinions!
And we must be right because one other person agrees with us, so then two are in agreement and they are right, and so a posse is formed. And then we saddle up and ride out to find a tree to hang the different guy on. Which is how Matthew Shepard died. Lynched, alone, and on a wire fence, because he was different.
And, except for fences and security, that is how Michael Jackson would have died, simply because he was odd.
We have opinions, you see. We have prejudices.
What we do not have is facts.
Why do I expect any better?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Why do I expect any better?
By: timmy on Fri, 26 June 2009 16:25 |
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Lord of the Flies
By: Macky on Fri, 26 June 2009 16:42 |
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Demonizing the Different
By: timmy on Fri, 26 June 2009 18:19 |
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Re: Demonizing the Different
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: acam on Fri, 26 June 2009 16:44 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: ray2x on Sat, 27 June 2009 04:52 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: timmy on Sat, 27 June 2009 08:31 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: Macky on Sat, 27 June 2009 17:29 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: timmy on Sat, 27 June 2009 17:58 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: acam on Mon, 29 June 2009 10:26 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: Nigel on Mon, 29 June 2009 18:25 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: arich on Sun, 28 June 2009 13:41 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: Macky on Sun, 28 June 2009 14:34 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: arich on Sun, 28 June 2009 15:10 |
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Re: Why do I expect any better?
By: ashley on Sun, 28 June 2009 22:27 |
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Perhaps, Timmy, because you can, and do.
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Re: Perhaps, Timmy, because you can, and do.
By: acam on Thu, 09 July 2009 08:02 |
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Re: Perhaps, Timmy, because you can, and do.
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Re: Perhaps, Timmy, because you can, and do.
By: Macky on Thu, 09 July 2009 14:52 |
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