Exposing the Heterosexual Agenda

[MaxVel]

I have read a number of accounts of the gay rights movement in this country, listened to a couple more, and met a couple of the people involved. Some of those resources are available online, for example the NZHistory website has an article on the subject, and Radio New Zealand has made many of its historical audio archives available. I may not have been alive during the whole thing, but I can still read about what the people then were doing, and listen to the original news broadcasts on the subject.

Then you would be aware that in the 80s there was a lot of heat and emotion in the debate; and I assumed you'd be aware enough of human nature to realise that it wouldn't be confined to one side of the debate. I assume you're also aware enough to realise that people (on whatever side) aren't going to come out and publicly acknowledge everything they did, especially if some of those things were less than honourable or honest. Add to that the 'winning side' gets to write the records of what happened and it should be no surprise that they look like the white hat good guys, who honourably fought for right.

I knew personally several people who were public figures involved in aspects of the debate, plus members of their immediate family in one case. So I heard directly from them what they had experienced, and saw an incident of gay rights activists (from America) obtaining a meeting with a public figure under false pretenses - they pretended to be Christians, secretly recording that meeting without permission, and releasing out of context soundbites to a NZ TV channel, which were then used as an ambush in an interview with the person concerned. Is that anti- enough for you?

So when you come along and start saying things that run completely contrary to everything I've ever heard and read, you can understand why I might be a little bit skeptical.

Yes, I could understand if you were a little skeptical.

At first, I assumed you were telling the truth, and that you were referring to some rare and extreme incidents that I hadn't heard about, and that you were simply misrepresenting those rare events as being common.

What did I say that led you to think that I meant that such incidents were common? Please quote me, or recognise that you've misunderstood, because that was not what I meant to imply or say.

So I searched for any news articles about the sorts of things you mentioned, expecting to find maybe a couple of isolated incidents... and nothing. I was unable to find the least shred of evidence to support the idea that such things had ever happened even once.

You talked of 'AIDS syringes' yet what I found was that no gay-rights activist in the history of the world has ever deliberately infected an opponent with HIV.

What I said, in context, no quote mining now was: "...acts like mailing human faeces and 'AIDS syringes', threats to close family members,...".

You'll note that I prefaced the syringes with "acts like", meaning not necessarily exactly that; and I used scare quotes around the words 'AIDS syringes', indicating that they were not necessarily really containing AIDS-infected blood, just intended to convey that possibility to the recipient. You'll also note that I never said anyone was infected. The people I knew had received all sorts of hate mail, including packages containing various unmentionable and horrible things

The whole thing is an urban myth. This is one of those cases of Christians fear-mongering among themselves about how they think the gays must be out to get them all. It's classic projection - a "we're out to get them, therefore they must be out to get us" mentality. So when you start claiming to have made 'personal observations' of things that have never happened in the history of the world,

You can stop there, because I never claimed that anyone was infected by syringe mailed in the post. So that's your own reading comprehension failure that you're blaming on me.

Again, how would you know that these things "have never happened" unless you know every gay rights activist everywhere, and everything they ever did or said? Agnosticism or even skepticism is rational, but this is blind faith on your part.

and totally failing to supply any evidence at all for your claims despite repeated requests for it, then I move from treating your claims seriously but with skepticism, to nominating you for the Bill O'Reilly and Brian Williams award for "I was totally there in person when it happened, honest!".

I'm not in a position to release more details than this as I am (I don't know why ) reluctant to release info that might reveal who I am on a public forum. I was never trying to convince you, but simply showing that there is more to these things than one meets in a media narrative, there's plenty of hated on all sides, and extremists to drown in, and people who don't agree with you on the ethical purity of the gay rights movement may well have good reason for doing so.

[Starlight]

Then you would be aware that in the 80s there was a lot of heat and emotion in the debate; and I assumed you'd be aware enough of human nature to realise that it wouldn't be confined to one side of the debate.

Yes, I imagine quite a few people had some very strong feelings.

I assume you're also aware enough to realise that people (on whatever side) aren't going to come out and publicly acknowledge everything they did, especially if some of those things were less than honourable or honest. Add to that the 'winning side' gets to write the records of what happened and it should be no surprise that they look like the white hat good guys, who honourably fought for right.

Sure, although at the same time it's worth considering that in general the media tends to try and report the most extreme things that occur, because extreme events generate more interest than the mundane. So I can be reasonably sure that nothing too extreme happened or else the media would have been all over it.

I knew personally several people who were public figures involved in aspects of the debate, plus members of their immediate family in one case. So I heard directly from them what they had experienced, and saw an incident of gay rights activists (from America) obtaining a meeting with a public figure under false pretenses - they pretended to be Christians, secretly recording that meeting without permission, and releasing out of context soundbites to a NZ TV channel, which were then used as an ambush in an interview with the person concerned. Is that anti- enough for you?

Um, it's yawn-worthy enough for me, certainly. I'm bemused that you seem to think that sort of occurrence was an event that proved the gay activists were terrible.

You'll note that I prefaced the syringes with "acts like", meaning not necessarily exactly that; and I used scare quotes around the words 'AIDS syringes',

Uh, right, so you didn't actually mean what you said and I shouldn't have taken your words at face value...

The people I knew had received all sorts of hate mail, including packages containing various unmentionable and horrible things

Sure, don't be too specific.
I think I recall hearing some of the gay activists saying that the hate mail they were receiving got to be a problem for them, as they were starting to get some explicit death threats and things like broken glass sent to them, but I'll have to check my facts on that.

As the age of the internet has shown us, however, hate mail and death threats are a pretty common go-to for almost anyone. One of the news channels on youtube I enjoy listening to makes the hate-mails they receive into a quite amusing segment by getting a professional voice actor to read them out (grammar mistakes and all).

I was never trying to convince you, but simply showing that there is more to these things than one meets in a media narrative, there's plenty of hated on all sides, and extremists to drown in, and people who don't agree with you on the ethical purity of the gay rights movement may well have good reason for doing so.

I take it for granted that where there is a certain level of strong disagreement, there will be some or even many people on both sides who will take things a bit further than perhaps they should, and individuals who will take actions that their side as a whole would not condone.

That said, the gay rights movement worldwide has been characterized virtually universally by peaceful and non-violent activism. There haven't been killings, there haven't been arsons, and apart from Stonewall 50 years ago there haven't been riots in the streets. The sort of non-violent dialog that has been an almost universal characteristic of the gay rights movement worldwide, has been quite different in nature from, for example, the violence often associated with the civil rights movement for blacks in the US or the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

For the most part, Christian opposition to the gay rights movement has also been often characterized by non-violence (France, and some African countries being obvious exceptions).

That is not to say that threats of violence were never made by individuals either side, just that nothing came of them, and words (even ones that threaten violence) are quite different to violence itself.

[Starlight]

Interesting new study out today that finds strong opposition to gay people is often linked with a personality trait of strong "hostility, anger and aggression toward others" in general. I don't know about anyone else, but I immediately thought of Darth Executor and his posts in the first couple of pages of this thread (and on this board more generally) when I read that...

[Jichard]

Interesting new study out today that finds strong opposition to gay people is often linked with a personality trait of strong "hostility, anger and aggression toward others" in general.

I saw that paper as well. I found this quote from the paper to be rather interesting:

"Psychoticism, Immature Defense Mechanisms and a Fearful Attachment Style are Associated with a Higher Homophobic Attitude"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...jsm.12975/full

"A recent European survey highlighted the diffusion of homophobia throughout Europe and the social perception of homosexuality among the different populations [4]. This diffusion of homophobia inspired the researchers to investigate the psychologic and social motivations that cause homophobic attitudes and actions. For instance, latent homosexuality, i.e., a subconscious or unconscious attraction toward persons of the same sex, has been related to homophobic behaviors [5,6] [emphasis added]."

"[5,6]" is a citation to the following references:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...99.2012.690111http://files.rsdn.ru/37054/h_art.pdf

This is an instance of what's known as Haggard's Law:

"Haggard's Law is an Internet adage or epigram named after Pastor Ted Haggard that is typically stated as:

The louder and more frequent one's objections to homosexuality are, the more likely one is to be a homosexual."

It is used as either a purely sarcastic musing that people who strongly object to homosexuality have been scientifically demonstrated to be more likely to engage in homosexual activities,[1] or in a reflection of the probability based on the numerous public scandals[2][3][4][5] of famous figures in the opposition of homosexuality and homosexual behavior."

Still the results on Haggard's law are rather mixed, as shown in study 6 above.

I don't know about anyone else, but I immediately thought of Darth Executor and his posts in the first couple of pages of this thread (and on this board more generally) when I read that...

Haggard's Law springs to my mind, when I see how vociferous/hateful some people are in their objections to homosexuality.

[Starlight]

I'm wondering if this study isn't a bit pointless though, because its conclusions seem somewhat self-evident.

Consider the group of people who have a general personality trait of strong hostility, anger and aggression toward others in general. Is it at all surprising to find that that group of people tends to quite often have strong hostility and anger towards gay people? Not really. What about if we consider the group of people who are generally quite fearful of others in general. Is it surprising to find that this group tends to be quite fearful of gay people? Not really. What about if consider those people who in their own lives are struggling with unwanted homosexual desires. Is it surprising to find some of them externalizing this internal struggle, and fighting in the public sphere against the 'gay demons' that they can't manage to banish from their private lives? Not really.

The more I think about it, the less convinced I am that this study says anything very useful. Although it does strongly suggest that people can be vehemently anti-gay for a few quite different reasons, and hence if anything it undermines Haggard's Law.

It's also important to remember that people with vehement anti-gay views - eg people who think most or all of: that gay people are destroying society, that they must be kept away from children at all costs, that they should be put in prison for life or executed, that gay sex should be illegal etc - and who just can't stop expressing those views over and over because it's really important to them, are quite different from your average conservative Christian who simply says (on forums like this one) "well I read the bible and I saw it say doing gay things is bad, so I'm against that."

[Jaecp]

Yeah, man, the difference there is that there are really good odds that person is in the closet

[seanD]

Julie Bindel:

Fantasizing about putting patriarchal men in camps and eradicating heterosexuality... now that's an agenda.

[Jichard]

Julie Bindel:

Fantasizing about putting patriarchal men in camps and eradicating heterosexuality... now that's an agenda.

This is the interview, in-context, so people can see whether Bindle is joking in order to make a point, literally intends to place men in camps, or something else: https://web.archive.org/web/20150904...h-julie-bindel


Linking to context is better than quote-mining.

[seanD]

This is the interview, in-context, so people can see whether Bindle is joking in order to make a point, literally intends to place men in camps, or something else: https://web.archive.org/web/20150904...h-julie-bindel


Linking to context is better than quote-mining.

Yup, that's where I quoted it. No indication she was "joking" as far what I can see. It's so freaking loony it's understandable you want to claim she was joking.