Re: OT/ Being Gay Is NOT a Choice

On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 19:53:29 -0400, Dana Carpender
<dcarpend@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Shirl wrote:

Of course you should demand your civil rights. Respectful
dialogue, even in a demand, generally carries more weight and
is more apt to be heard.

And that's why peaceful civil rights protesters had firehoses and police
dogs turned on them, and why Martin Luther King was assassinated. Gotcha.

Dana, I reside in the community where the firehoses were turned on
children and so I am pretty well versed in the history. The
television news shows carried the story throughout the nation, and the
fact that it was a *peaceful* protest, and TPTB reacted with violence,
changed the nation. The four little girls who died at church due to a
KKK bomb changed the nation because they posed no threat to anyone.
Those two events were pivotal.

It was the message of peace that made the difference. That's what MLK
preached, and he was a student of Gandhi. Both were assassinated, as
was JC. But it doesn't negate the validity of their messages.

Had angry black men with baseball bats marched in Birmingham, and had
firehoses turned on them, white folks across the country would have
thought it was a reasonable means of keeping the peace and yawned.

I think I understand that DonnaB feels very intensely when someone
says that homosexuality is a choice. I can't find the right word for
it, where you respond on a physical level to something you hear.
(upon re-reading later: visceral.) I guess, as we said in law
school, "them is fighting words!" and were once justification in
Alabama for someone to hit you if you uttered them. The words have a
different connotation to her than they do to me, because they aren't
about me.

I also understand that words like "bull***" and "bigot" are
emotionally charged words that, for some of us, slam some figurative
doors. There's not a lot of difference on an emotional level between
being told that one is a bigot and full of bull***, and that one's
comments are bigoted and full of bull***.

-------------->
<------------

That's my picture of the dialogue. Just not meeting on common ground.
I have heard Shirl say that the "choice" position is not her own. Now
I'd like to hear Donna say that Shirl is not a bigot. So, Donna, do
you think Shirl is a bigot, and/or full of bull***?

Just trying to make peace; probably will end up like MLK, Gandhi, and
JC!

MsLiz
.