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NO justice for gay pride?

 
 
Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
The DOJ pays for private parties? My tax dollars at work. Evil or Very Mad
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blueveinedthrobber
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
it pays for the RIGHT peoples private parties...or should I say they decide who's right and we foot the bill......
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Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
As much as I hate lawsuits... the parties that aren't sponsered should sue on the basis of discrimination--hopefully leading to NO GOVERMENT FUNDED PARTIES!

<growling over taxes>
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ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
I'll second that one, Sofia.



(and it'll help with my bugbear of any kind of worktime party)
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Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
Disclaimer: Rant Ensues.

How many Girl Scout cookies have I bought from co-workers for their kids? School fundraising projects? Secretary's Day? Bosses Day? This one is new--have a party? This one's pregnant? Dead grandpa? This one's leaving-- Engaged? Wedding present? Sick? Come to this-- Go to that-- Husband left, no money--

People have four grandparents!!! The funeral flowers multiply exponentially!!

OK, I took up money for the 'husband left, no money'--but I must have spent half of what I earned on all this ****.

We had a meeting to discuss whether or not we should continue all these parties and gift buying. I said no. They looked at me like I'd farted.

It is inappropriate!!

<breathing returning to normal....>
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ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
I managed to get the whole christmas gift exchange kiboshed at work last year. I didn't know it, but the director has a rule that if one person says no to ideas like that - the whole thing is dead. So - he sent out an email - who wants to participate (no clues that it's all yesses or not at all) - no and yes buttons on the top of the email. I hit no - and kaboom!

I felt a teeny, tiny bit bad. Mostly, I felt verra verra glad.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
Hooray for office party/gift victims everywhere!!
You did good!

<How did you know you were the only one? Did Boss tell you? Or give a scary e-mail..."We had one dissenter..." Did you have to endure the "Who did it" conversations of co-workers?>
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ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Wed 11 Jun, 2003 06:00 pm
He sent an email just saying there wouldn't be a gift exchange. I asked someone why ... 'oh don't you know - 1 no and it's out'. I found out a few weeks later that he'd said there'd been 1 no vote.
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Wilso
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 07:59 am
We have a dinner every year, but I don't remember anyone ever buying a present for a work colleague. Ever. But then I've withdrawn from the gift game completely. The best I do these days is a lottery ticket.


How did a gay pride discussion morph into this???? Confused
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 11:28 am
Sofia wrote:
But, this is where I agree so strongly with JerryR. The 'flamboyant sex in your face' is not the way I would go about it. Because it hurts my cause and wrecks my case that gay people are normal citizens.


Well, there's a point, though I might be taking it into an unintended direction. The Gay Pride Parade is a demonstration, and a party. These two elements may well bite each other. As a demonstration, its meant to invoke the equal rights to equal recognition of a group that should be accepted as as 'normal' as any other. But hey, if you're going to be out on the street with 20,000 men, you're gonna want to have a party, no?

I used to think that demonstrations - considering they're supposed to express anger and condemnation - should consist of sternly faced protestors marching with clenched fists in the air and chanting slogans, expressing in every solemn or determined gesture that they are ANGRY! Instead, you go to a demo and it's full of happy families and rowdy teenagers, dressed up in funny clothes, carrying balloons and singing songs and all the time flirting with one another and just generally having a grand time. Nothing like those socialist-realist paintings of the thirties. I guess there's always going to be a divergence between the intention of the gathering and the actual experience - people just wanna have fun, too, y'know?

Actually, I do think there's a point to the more 'in your face' things at such a parade. It is a gesture of defiance. If you're a persecuted Christian (to take just any sideroad), and you feel you need to challenge society to accept you, you can do one of two things. Stand by the side of the road carrying a modest sign saying: please accept me, I'm Christian but human too, I have the right to be myself. Or you can carry your blasted big cross down the boulevard and carry it high: we are not going to let this be taken away from us! You'd better believe it!

There's always people who are going to tut-tut about the latter kind of thing and say, is there really reason to risk causing offence like that? Wouldnt it be better to just behave and not provoke? Just like some Black mothers migt still admonish their sons to not sport dreadlocks or anything that overtly Black - to not cause offence - and to "just" seek acceptance as "any other normal" person. And it is in that latter reasoning that their counterparts will see the confirmation of why they need to carry that big cross / et cetera: to show they are not prepared (anymore) to "behave" and "not provoke" - they just wanna be. They dont want to merely seek acceptance as "any other person" - they want to celebrate their difference - as something as positive as anyone else's difference. And once they've acquired the right to "be" at their most extreme on one day a year, they can feel reassured that in the rest of the year they can safely be themselves in their average way. Its a way fo setting clear pickets.
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 11:47 am
Concerning the "fantasy" of the 'free-butt' leather trousers and so on, I think it was obvious that the talk had shifted from the specific event to Gay Prides in general - board'ers like much better to talk generalities everyone knows about than specifics you have to read up about, its nature.

And yes, in Amsterdam the Gay Parade does feature enough of those, no fantasy needed there. Like I said, demos turn into parties. Gay Parade earns Amsterdam a lot of money - tourist attraction! And the gay parade has blazed the trail of what street parties can look like nowadays.

Cause thats the other side of the argument - yeh, the Gay Parade does look like that, but so do the Dance Parade and the Summer Carnival in Rotterdam. Same in Berlin, the Gay Pride thing looks flamboyant enough, but no more flamboyant than the Love Parade. So I dont quite get how these are supposed to be different, how Mardi Gras, for example, is 'different' because you "can stay away from NewOrleans during Mardi Gras ... but sometimes you can't avoid a parade". I mean, how many of the in-your-face kind of gay parades are there? One here in Holland, one in Germany ... If you live in Amsterdam, Berlin or London you can't avoid them, just like in New Orleans you cant avoid Mardi Gras. If you dont live in these cities they are all equally easy to avoid.

Somehow the "children have to see this stuff" argument seems to crop up quite specifically (not especially in your post, Sofia) re: the gay parades than re: carnival-like things, and thats where the sensitivity re: equal rights/acceptance would (obviously, and justifiably) come up again.
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sweetcomplication
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 07:15 pm
I just ran across this thread and finished reading every post in the 12 pages. 2 comments:

1) Frank Apisa wrote:

"The gay pride day apparently is their way of saying "We are here -- and we are humans -- so get the hell off our backs."

Sort of like the days when we saw black men holding signs saying "I am a man!"

Anyone who truly cannot empathize with what the gay community is trying to do with these "gay pride" events really ought to have their empathy button checked."

and I say that has got to be, IMO, the best statement in the entire thread;

and

2) I am so relieved, after reading a variety of posts by Steissd and noting his location as Israel, I am absolutely thrilled to learn he is not a Jew (with apologies to Sofia who tried to get me banished from this board early on for being sensitive and reactive on that very issue; ie my touchiness on the whole subject of Jewishness...).
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Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 07:19 pm
Why on earth would you be happy that someone is not a Jew? I am sure I must be missing something.
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sweetcomplication
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 07:29 pm
Craven de Kere wrote:
Why on earth would you be happy that someone is not a Jew? I am sure I must be missing something.


Craven, dear, I guess I have to be more blunt: I AM a Jew, am concerned when Jews show any lack of empathy, considering what we have been through for 2000 years or so, have been upset to see many of Steissd's rather unkind posts and, earlier in this thread he asserted more than once that although his location is in Israel that he is a Christian. Please advise if you still don't understand my feelings. Thanks.
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Sofia
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 08:55 pm
Apology accepted.

edit--
Since I respond to a comment, interwoven with negative opinion about another member, I feel compelled to state that I respect steissd, and do not think I've ever seen a statement of his I would categorize as unkind.
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Craven de Kere
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 08:58 pm
Told ya I was missing something.
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BoGoWo
 
  1  
Reply Fri 13 Jun, 2003 11:51 pm
Craven; just a friendly suggestion; run your hands under warm water before you go searching! Laughing

But seriously folks; here in Canada the Ontario Court (of appeal?, jeese, I don't even know what court, whatever) has just thrown out objections to same sex marriages as being contrary to our human rights code (seems obvious, but took a scant century).

I find it humerous that gay people, in their efforts to be perceived as normalized into society, are now going down the "institutions for institutions sake" route that will eventually clap them in the same mainstream irons that they, up to now have been avoiding.

It is, to me, sad when a group in society is so abused that they must embrace outdated systems to be considered (and to view themselves as) "acceptable"!
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steissd
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Jun, 2003 01:27 am
Sweetcomplication, if you are concerned with legality of my living in Israel, then I must inform you everything is quite OK. I have a mixed ethnic origin with my mother being a Jewish woman. I have not been formally baptized, therefore I immigrated in full compliance with the Returning Law. I pay taxes, serve in the IDF reserves and abide law, and I consider myself a better citizen than the 150 percent Jewish ultra-Orthodoxes that abstain from the Army service and permanently milk state budget of Israel.
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dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Jun, 2003 02:20 am
BoGoWo - why do you speak of legal acceptance of gay marriages as "institutions for institutions' sake"?

Do you not understand the problems in areas like inheritance (especially in relation to things like superannuation), taxation, legal ability to make decisions in times of serious illness etc that the lack of legal status of gay relationships causes people?
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Frank Apisa
 
  1  
Reply Sat 14 Jun, 2003 06:24 am
Sweetcomplication

Thank you for that nice comment.

Empathy is, in my opinion, the most valuable emotion.
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