Fitz is as little a representation of straight people as he is of real Christians, so we just need to keep in mind that more and more so you three are the ideal that more and more straight people are aspiring to in terms of seeing us LGBTQ people as as boringly screwed up as everyone else :)

In one of Margaret Cho’s concert films, at the end, she talks about the right of all people - specifically including fat people - to be free of the self-loathing society teaches us. I shocked myself by crying.

Seeing Jon Stewart enranged at the casual gay-bashing that passes unnoticed on mainstream news is important. It might be the most important thing he does all year.

There’s a sense in which mainstream media is against the “outsiders” - the queer, the fat, the people of color, the gender outlaws and misfits, the disabled, the foreign, and probably others I’m forgetting. It’s not an active thing, a lot of the time; it’s more like an unconscious belief that what happens to outsiders simply isn’t important enough to be shown in any sincere way.

And insofar as outsiders are allowed on TV, they’re never angry, they’re never political; they live in easy harmony with their straight, thin, pretty, white masters. They’re happy just to be included as secondary characters supporting the lives of the important characters. Prejudice never impacts their lives (at least, not for more than a single “very special” episode).

In that context, a passing moment of real inclusion can matter a fuckload.

Anyway, I’m rambling.

My point is, I’m thrilled, Sarah and Trey, if you think of me as friends and allies. Like Adrienne said.

And hugs are definitely appropriate on a blog like this one!

*slaps* bad antigone

I don’t know if you’ll read this given a few days have gone by, but I wanted to post a comment to reiterate what you said.

People like Fitz are the reasons I got thrown out of my home by my parents when I first started college because I couldn’t stop being a lesbian, had my mother hit me in my mid teens when she found out about me, had letters call me a freak turn up in at my apartment for my roommates to find from my loving parents, that contribute to the fact that my partner can’t take me with her to family gatherings back in MO, that one of my friends got her soul ripped out when her partner had to chose between her and her family and had to go with the latter, that an ex gf of mine had to cut herself to deal with the pain of her high school experiences where she was raped, repeatedly because she was a queer, that a friend broke down in front of me she was THIS close to making all the pain go away, forever, and on, and on …

People like Fitz are responsible for th above, and yet hides his hate behind his claims to being a Christian … well, you know what? My girlfriend is a Christian, and it is nothing like Fitz in any shape or form. I may never understand it myself, because for me religion will always be about hate and violence, but for her its about love and acceptance. Imagine that.

Thank you Adrienne and Amp for banning this hateful person. You are the kinds of people we proudly call Allies.

You can use any “definition” you want, but the fact remains that you’re using words incorrectly. Being a dogmatist does not mean that you push your opinion on others. So, when you say that “liberal, pluralistic people CANNOT be dogmatic, by definition,” well, that’s just untrue.

But aside from the minor semantic issue, I think we agree about the quote, so probably just best to leave it, yes? :)

thanks, i do know that we’ve got LOTS of allies.. this blog is proof of that.. just people like Fitz sometimes….

Words cannot express my sadness for the verbal/physical/emotional abuse you and other members of the LGBT Community have suffered at the hands, words, and laws of bigoted, viciously homophobic and dangerous people like Fitz. Amp and I are going to ban him because of all the venom he has spewed at everyone here on ‘Alas’. I’m so sorry Trey. I can’t imagine the depth to your pain and others who are like you. Things will hopefully change for the better in the coming. It’s a movement after all. African-Americans and women went through the same kind of horrors as the LGBT activists are going through now. Don’t give up the good fight. And remember that Fitz is not the representative of all us hetero people. Some of us know better and aren’t full of hate. And we are on your side. Once again, you and other LGBT people who have suffered have my deepest and most sincere sympathies.

BULLSHIT.

how’s that for eviserating debate Fitz? I am so sick of this calling good evil and evil, good stuff you are do in the name of ‘debate’.

YOU are what is causing harm and suffering Fitz. You. F$%^ YOU.

It’s your hatred of homosexuals, your promulgation of damn lies, made up and twisted facts and innuendos, your twisting of the truth that is causing harm and suffering. It’s YOU that caused me to be beaten to a pulp when I was 16 because I was a fag (or so they decided), it was YOU who caused my first love to slit his throat at the young age of 18 because his father called him a pervert and kicked him out of the house, it was YOU made me wish I were dead after years of change therapy, it was YOU who made my life miserable till I was 30, it was YOU forces us decide not to be able in my or my partner’s home states because of fear, it is YOU who forces us to spend thousands of dollars and hours and hours of time trying to legally and financially protect our family, its YOU who forced my friend from to marry or be ostracized from church.. and then live a life of desperation and loneliness, it is YOU YOU YOU YOU who cause the suffering and harm.

You and your ilk and your damn lies, innuendos, fraudulent studies and hatred that cause suffering and harm. That ilk would be the first to believe that porn causes rape and harm…

but no.. not your pornographic lies of hate hiding behind your false reading of the Christian message. No, those never cause harm and suffering.

You call good evil and evil good.

God, when will the lies stop?!

WordNet
dogmatism: the intolerance and prejudice of a bigot [syn: bigotry]

Neither of which is quite the definition I was using. Neither of which should be the point, anyway, since I explained what I meant by “dogmatism” quite clearly.

Your definition is off. A dogmatist is someone who holds their own views as true. It does not necessarily imply pushing them on others.

As for faith in general, my point was that not all religious-minded people are dogmatic or right wing. The quote Ampersand posted seemed unfairly biased against the religious.

However, I do think that religious beliefs, with their unfounded ideas about metaphysics, tend towards abstract ethics, which are ultimately harmful. Note “tend” and “ultimately.” This amounts to my saying, really, that I think religious belief is mistaken, and I disagree with it — this doesn’t mean that I dislike or distrust everyone who expresses religious belief.

A liberal, pluralistic religious person will try to figure out what their duty is, and will still not push it on others unless it’s one of those universal things like not murdering people. Liberal, pluralistic people can be dogmatic themselves. I know many very religious Jews who you would consider dogmatists, but who, while they feel their own duty is clear, will not push it on others.

And again, I’m still not sure what any of this has to do with faith in general.

Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment (sodomy, marijuana use, homosexuality, the killing of blastocysts, etc.).

Its to bad guys. I had a brilliant post the eviscerated the above thinking.
It came with appropriate links showing that (sodomy, marijuana use, homosexuality, the killing of blastocysts, etc.). really do harm people. (of coarse they do…duh?)
But the moderator saw fit to stifle debate.
Its not unlike the modern academic atmosphere. Unpleasant truth is disallowed, if it impedes on liberal orthodoxy.

[The post in question consisted of nothing but links. The first link was to a site with nothing but photographs of post-abortion embryos and fetuses - the same stuff we’ve all seen a thousand times.

I think people know by now that I let real debate through, even when I disagree with it. But a post like that is not about rational debate, it’s about trying to gross people out. –Amp]

ADS, no one sees questions of duty as more clear cut than a diehard dogmatist.

See, I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re confusing “duty” with “forcing others to also do your duty.” Religious people, even religious leftists, still know what their duties are, religiously. They just a) may not agree with others about what those duties are, and b) know that others aren’t necessarily also obligated to their duties.