Letters to the Editor
LeCastor
Published Letters: 1916 Editor's Choice: 86
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So, the press shouldn't publish anything that would ruin someone's relationship with their children, or destroy their careers?
[Read the article: Open the closets on Capitol Hill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I brought up the Duke article because spreading that story in this forum won't do any more damage to the man's career (nothing could) and to show how considering a real life example can change your mind on this touchy subject. Yeah Duke was a thieving scumbag -but would YOU out him and potentially cost him his relationship with his wife and kids? You might justify your actions by saying "his lies had already destroyed those relationships" but how are you competent to make that decision?
Well,
(1) publishing that someone is incredibly corrupt could ruin relationship with their spouse and kids. Should the press be in the business of censoring itself when it might cause such an effect? Should it be in the business of predicting which news will cause this kind of severing of relationships?
(2) The press doesn't hesitate to publish details about adultery and trips to strip clubs, etc., even though that kind of news can also ruin the relationship between spouse and kids. So why not publish that someone is gay, when there is no hesitation in publishing that someone is cheating on his or her spouse?
(3) If we only think about whether the news will ruin a relationship between the politician and their spouse and children, then we will be unfairly treating those who are not lucky enough to have a spouse and children. Foley doesn't have a wife or kids (he apparently does have a long-term significat other). So it's okay to out politicians with no family, but not okay to out those with families? Seems kinda wrong to me.
However, in the current climate it seems likely that outing other closeted gay Republicans would destroy their careers before they got any chance to change their voting habits. Just today, Jim Kolbe, the House's only openly gay Republican, admitted that he'd heard of complaints about Foley from a page all the way back in 2000 but did little to address the problem. Kolbe is retiring, but any GOP congressman who get outed in the next few weeks will almost certainly be found guilty by association and forced to resign or lose at the ballot box.
Well, i say "tough cookies." Lots of revelations and associations can ruin someone's career -- if you chose to associate yourself with such an anti-gay party, and you are infact gay, you knew what you were doing, you made that choice, you took the risk, so sad too bad.
We need to start outing people because this taboo on outing is a vestige of the sentiment that gay is "bad" or a "career-ruiner" or "a private choice that should stay private." Gayness needs to come out into the mainstream, and it won't happen if the press keeps treating it as a "special" issue.
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Boulanger:
[Read the article: Dude, where's my cross?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All this Satan and end-of-the-world nonsense was cooked up by demented, power-hungry church leaders 1600 or so years ago as a way to scare people into joining their church, and keeping them, and their money coming back for more. There's no basis for any of this in the actual words of Jesus, a fact that somehow never seems to give these lunatics pause.--Rohidas
"And the Lord said, 'Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren' " (Luke 22:31-32).
If you're going to try to talk about Christianity, Rohidas, at least make a minimal effort to know what you're talking about instead of just mindlessly repeating Christo-phobic talking points.
-- Boulanger
Now call me stupid, but it seems to me that your quote from Luke doesn't talk about the end of the world or the apocalypse or the anti-Christ. I don't think anyone claimed that Jesus didn't talk about Satan -- he sure did. The claim is all of this nonsense about the end of days isn't very related to Jesus.
Of course, to a secularist like me, whether or not the tooth fairy.. i mean, Jesus, actually talked about something or not is irrelevant. It could have been Jesus, or Nebediah of Sodom, i don't care -- these people are basing their beliefs, very aggresive and judgmental ones, on what someone supposedly said 2000-4000 years ago. Someone who didn't even necessarily exist, and who allegedly had superpowers, was immortal, could fly, cure people, and was very anti-establishment and kind of arrogant.
Now, i could come up with many more things that one shouldn't base his or her beliefs on, like talking rats and Santa Claus's manifesto, but i think you know where i'm going with this.
It'd be similar if you said "well, if you're gong to talk about dungeons and dragons, get your wizard casting spell powers straight." :)
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Hastert & Hillary
[Read the article: Open the closets on Capitol Hill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the case of Hastert, some may argue that he is a hypocrite and deserves to be outed because his party opposes full legal normalization of homosexuality. In the case of Clinton, I'd argue that she deserves to be outed because she and her husband have for so long capitalized on the phony notion that they are an American married couple, instead of a vicious political partnership.
1) Hastert pretends to be part of an American married couple as well.
2) Why do the Clintons need to pretend? Because that's what the lumpen wants -- home, mom and dad, kids, picket fence, dog. Just like everyone else, including Hastert, they have to paint a bucolic Rockwellian image of themselves, which often includes their spouse and children, to be electable. Just remember what kind of outcry there was over Howard Dean's wife not following him around the campaign trail, in pastel suits and smiling. And what kind of ourcry there was about John Roberts and the fact that he and his wife didn't have children until very very late.
3) If they are gay, out 'em! It will hurt at first, but if the press agrees to out everyone, for the next 50 yaers, then eventually, it won't be a bad thing.