Wednesday, August 29, 2007

[not gay] only a little bit, occasionally

Republican US Senator Larry Craig of Idaho said today he was not gay and had made a mistake in pleading guilty to disorderly conduct after his arrest at a Minnesota airport men's toilet.

"I am not gay, I never have been gay," he told reporters in Boise, Idaho, and apologised to the people of Idaho for what he said was a "cloud" over Idaho because of the incident. "I did nothing wrong," he said.

Some wag also put words in his mouth, "All I did was play with another man in a public toilet cubicle and they call me gay. And it's entirely untrue that Matt McCoy and I ever met in a Des Moines carpark."

Incidentally, Senator McCoy has an interesting CV: Active in the Boy Scouts of America his entire life, his love for children can be seen from the photo and he is a parishioner of St. Johns Lutheran Church.

Just the sort of man to entrust your child to.

24 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Woah! The man may be a pillock, but since when has it been ok to equate being gay with being a child molester? However, it's about time a phalanx of American politicians came out and stopped this business of peeping toes out of closets and then whipping them back in again.

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  3. Cue the obvious line of "The only gay in the Senate..."

    He is not gay yet pleads guilty? Go figure.

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  4. You read the facts in the case James?

    Seems Sen. Craig actually didn't do anything 'wrong' and yet pled guilty to a lesser charge.

    (read the officers account and tell me on what point you would have arrested him)

    Mopsa: most people seem to equate gay men and pedophiles because of studies showing that most pedophiles are gay men (not that that makes it right, but that's why they do it)

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  5. Like Mopsa says, Whoah! Lord Nazh, if ever a statement needs some substantiation, yours does. James, I think you are on shaky ground here, as well.

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  6. Oh, and obviously: even if most paedophiles are in fact gay men - and I await the evidence for that assertion with interest - it does not follow that most gay men are paedophiles.

    I can't believe I'm having to write this.

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  7. Ian exactly. Lord N exactly how did you come by that- I suggest some evidence not assertion- especially if you think its ok from there to infer that someone is a paedophile- are all gay men paedophiles- please prove. James I too think you should be careful- you run the risk of saying something very stupid here.

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  8. ewwwww! I dont' mind it if he is gay, I do mind it if he is a bloody pedophile and not jailed or worse.

    The majority of pedophiles are straight men. I'm not sure I'd want a man exhibiting lewd behavior in the Senate.... the White House sure, but not the Senate.

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  9. Now this is all very interesting, ladies and gentlemen, how this particular issue seems to have raised ire and heated comments but an issue which is really important - namely the way the cabals are drawing us all in to the next war, gets merely a passing nod.

    I have no strong feelings on gays as such. I haven't particularly thought about whether they are paedophiles or not and I think it's a spurious argument - clearly paedophilia with boys is gay and paedophilia with girls is not, by definition.

    But I suspect the issue is my question about trusting your child with this guy. I wouldn't and I have every right to say that and this gets into an entirely different issue - my right to my opinion and my right to express it.

    Now when someone tells me I'm on "thin ice" with my comments or that I should "be careful", then I agree one should be careful with one's facts and base an argument on sound data or what appear to be clear trends.

    To say I'm on thin ice therefore presupposes that you see it as a big issue. I don't. I accord it a low priority, just as you accord a low priority to the dirt which is being done on the name of the Lord in the name of Reason today.

    In this latter case I feel the Lord is a big enough Boy to handle Himself and doesn't need me to go in to bat for Him.

    So I don't.

    I'm a subscriber to the Voltaire [who was very foolish, by the way] Maxim. I may think your view is utter balderdash and even mischievous but I don't say to you "be careful what you say" because it's a veiled threat to take action if you say something I don't like and I should hope that that is something up with which thou shalt not put.

    I go further than this and state that this is perhaps the key issue in the west today - the desire for certain people to dictate to others and the word derived from dictate is dictatorship.

    Another name for that is tyranny.

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  10. "stopped this business of peeping toes out of closets and then whipping them back in again."

    This was what Mopsa said. I prseume you mean, Wekshcakes that if they're gay, they should just come out without pretending to be? Correct me if I'm wrong.

    "I can't believe I'm having to write this."

    This is what Ian wrote. Well yes - there are all shades of opinion, of course.

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  11. ...I'm not sure I'd want a man exhibiting lewd behavior in the Senate....

    Yes, Lady M - I agree. It is a place, above all places, where decency should be shown.

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  12. gracchi and Ian, did you even read my whole comment? The part in the parenthesis would be helpful.

    On the crime, again, tell me what crime he committed, any of you?

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  13. James, this is your blog, and you absolutely have the right to express whatever opinions you wish to on it; if I talk of 'shaky ground', it is only with reference to the soundness of your argument, not to any sacred cows surrounding sexual preference. It has been my experience in the past here that civilised disagreement is entirely possible, and I hope I have not strayed from that level of discourse in this instance.

    As to paedophiles, my father was a probation officer; he leads me to believe that in the majority of cases the gender of the victim is far less important than their age - that is to say paedophiles target children of both sexes. So to ask whether a child abuser is gay or straight is to ask the wrong question. As you say, spurious.

    However, it has been a tactic of virulent homophobes to try and conflate homosexuality with paedophilia, which is why even the suggestion of this can cause quite strong reactions. One G Fawkes got into trouble about this a while ago, I seem to recall.

    I can see at least one other interpretation of your original post, but I hesitate to put words in your mouth. Would you be willing to clarify your reasons for not wanting to entrust your child to this individual?

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  14. Lord Nazh, I assume you mean the last part of your first comment is the one we should concentrate on?

    most people seem to equate gay men and pedophiles because of studies showing that most pedophiles are gay men (not that that makes it right, but that's why they do it)

    I put it to you that your parenthesis is extremely ambiguous - I now see that it can be read as referring to people's tendency to equate gay men to paedophiles, but I have really had to puzzle it out from the other reading - ie that "paedophiles abuse children because they are gay men", a statement that is all too familiar. OK, I am happy to accept that you were not making the latter point.

    However, I am troubled by your reference to studies which apparently influence these misguided people. Which studies do you mean?

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  15. Shakiness of my argument, Ian? Maybe, maybe and so I've now posted unequivocally where I stand on the issue.

    Sorry about the sensitivity to freedoms in our society today - it's an increasingly touchy issue.

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  16. Apologies Lord N- I have just reread your comment and you are right I misread it first time. James exactly what freedoms are under attack- I don't see any freedoms being attacked here.

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  17. I'd have hoped I'd made it clear in the following post and to one person I had and to another - not. Best to sum it up again.

    1. To be gay is what certain people are and it's not my place to bash them for it - on the contrary, some of the greatest people with the greatest contributions to society were gay or bi. Many opf my readers before these posts were gay.

    2. To claim equal status for gay sexuality in some sort of smorgasbord of sexual choices is a historical distortion. It is a deviance from the norm, the norm quite clearly being family oriented heterosexuality. The history of societies at their highest points has been this simple confirmation of human biology. To claim gayness as some sort of equally valid choice is twaddle.

    It is deviance from the norm, just as is any other variant which deviates from the ancient drive to mate and procreate.

    This is not to say it is wrong or that these people are evil or to drag any sort of emotive issues into it. It is simply deviance from the norm, anthopologically.

    So, live and let live - let gays do as they wish and let the others get on with procreating.

    3. However, this does not satisfy many gays, especially in America. They wish to enact legislation not just to recognize their aberrance [used only in the sense deviation from the norm]but to force the majority family oriented heteros to accept it as normal and they are forcing through [California, for example] legislation criminalizing people for telling the truth and clinging on to sanity in this matter.

    This is the freedom being attacked and right forcefully - compelling people, on pain of incarceration, to agree that black is white and white is black.

    My whole thrust is against the compulsion and the Thought Police tactics, not against gays themselves, for whom I have respect in the case of the ones I know but against forces abroad today which are trying to promote things as normal which quite simply aren't - e.g. distorted feminism as well.

    There is also childism, moving it away from this emotive issue for the moment. This was very big in the late 80s/early 90s where TV series portrayed chidlren as repositories of wisdom and adults as bumbling dumbos there to make up the numbers.

    This is so obviously convoluted it scarcely needs explanation.

    My sights are fairly and squarely trained on the heart of the force promoting this claptrap and any claim I'm anti-gay just does not stand up.

    If they were promoting killers as a behavioural "orientation", just another legitimate way of expressing oneself and forcing people through legislation to accept this, I'd be equally up in arms about this.

    Interesting that when I did the "stupidity" post, Mopsa immediately called for equal treatment of men. Why didn't she claim equal treatment for gays or dark haired people? why interpret it in terms of female/male?

    The answer is that this was the thing close to her heart and she couldn't see any other possible divisions in the comment which made no gender references at all. But she saw them there.

    I could equally say that that article portrayed only Europeans as stupid and not Chinese or blacks.

    To sum up - it's the compulsion, the removal of people's freedom to speak what they feel is the truth by legislative process that I'm down on. The issue is irrelevant.

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  18. apology accepted... I thought that was what happened, so I counted to 10 (by 2's) before I replied :)

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  19. James, I'm afraid you mistakenly conflate a light-hearted comment on a blog that pointed the finger at admittedly stupid famous females, with my comments here which are utterly serious because of the genuine hate crimes that can emerge from opinions that equates paedophilia with homosexuality. But enough already - subtly posting me as stupid in your most recent piece is something I will kindly ignore, and as this is archived only you will read this anyway.

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  20. ...subtly posting me as stupid in your most recent piece...

    Mopsa, what the heck are you talking about? You're the last person I'd consider stupid, subtly or not.

    You give me far too much credit for subtlety. And you see I go for fatuous targets only.

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  21. Thank you for tweaking the picture caption. Sorted.

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