Having just turned 21, I sympathize with the gentlemen that got raided by the police at the Stonewall Inn some forty years ago. I rather like having a brewsky (or two or several) at the local pub and would prefer to enjoy the company of my fellows or frauleins without the long arm of the law coming crashing in. (Indeed, if the officers were inclined to come in peacefully, I might even be inclined to buy them a drink.)
What I don’t understand is why an event many years ago encourages the Athenaeum to spend money for three speakers to come and discuss so-called homosexual rights.
I’m inclined to let anyone who wants to serve openly in the military do so, especially as our allies do so too. Call me old fashioned, but I subscribe to the Chris Rock school when it comes to gays in the military.
But, as best as I can tell, no one has died in recent years for being gay and those gays that have been the victim of thuggery, pale in comparison to the millions that have died under leftist regimes. As President George W. Bush put it,
The sacrifices of these individuals haunt history -- and beind them are millions more who were killed in anonymity by Communism's brutal hand. They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin's Great Famine; or Russians killed in Stalin's purges; Lithuanians and Latvians and Estonians loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Arctic death camps of Soviet Communism. They include Chinese killed in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Cambodians slain in Pol Pot's Killing Fields; East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin Wall in order to make it to freedom; Poles massacred in the Katyn Forest; and Ethiopians slaughtered in the "Red Terror"; Miskito Indians murdered by Nicaragua's Sandinista dictatorship; and Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny.So why don't we have a speaker to talk about the cold war on the 20th anniversary?
3 comments:
Charles wrote: "As best as i can tell, no one has died in recent years for being gay."
First of all, I could give you a list of dozens of people who have died in recent years for being gay in America. Then I could give you a list of hundreds more who have died in other countries, if you want to bring that into the picture. And then I could give you a list of thousands of gays who died in concentration camps in Germany if you want to go back even further.
But my own thoughts on why the Ath is bringing in speakers to talk about the gay rights movement today (and by the way, could you explain why you always refer to it as 'so-called'?) is two fold. First, gay rights are a current issue relevant to many students at the colleges. Just on Tuesday I was told (again) that I shouldn't be allowed to have the same rights as you. I imagine that, yes, while millions have died by "Communism's brutal hand" there are far fewer students effected on a day-to-day basis by this than the number of students effected by LGBT rights (or rather, the lack of LGBT rights). And second, the LGBT rights movement is one of today's hot button social issues. It would be irresponsible and embarrassing if the Ath did not have anyone speaking on the issue.
But Lowell, what you are stating are facts -- and facts aren't really that important here.
What is more important is how it affects one personally.
For example, because Charles hasn't been a victim of a homosexual attack, then, for him, homosexual attacks are an irrelevance.
So therefore, because this is an issue that does not affect / appeal / or speak to him personally, in his mind, he doesn't understand that these speakers might appeal to other students at CMC.
It's really not that unusual a concept, and people like Charles exist everywhere -- just ask any born-again christian and they'll explain it to you.
For the most part, the best thing is just to pat them on their heads when they get angry and try and keeo them away from sharp objects.
Hey Lowell,
That's exactly my point. Dozens, not millions. Obviously I condemn the lawlessness against gays, just as I would lawlessness in general.
The reason I call it so-called is because the definition of a right is something accessible to all people -- which is why I support the natural right of someone to self-defense (and by extension) join the military, but not the privilege to get married.
You have a solid point about the issue being relevant to many students on campus, but so too are political freedoms in China for a lot of Asian students and the crimes of the USSR for [insert European student group here.]
The second poster isn't capable of thought or to abstract and see the larger point I was making, so isn't going to get a response.
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