Just to make plans about going out.


Doesn't smile when not talking. No physical contact.

He's straight.

You're wrong, but you're also a politard so I don't plan on arguing with you

My best friend is straight. I don't think he worries that people may perceive him as gay because he hangs out with me a lot, but it helps that he's married. He also has a cousin who is gay who recently got married down here in Chicago. It was kind of a big deal because the cousin comes from a huge family and 3/4 of the family didn't come because they didn't approve. My friend went.

We were up in our hometown in WI at a bar this past weekend and we were outside smoking with a guy who doesn't know about me. The guy asked my friend what he thought about the whole wedding situation, how ****ed up it was, etc. It would've been easy for him to side with this guy who was obviously opposed to it in order to boost his masculinity, but instead he told him that he went, had a great time, and was happy for them. It makes me wonder if he would've said the same thing if I hadn't been standing there, but I think he would've.

And this

I kinda think it's sad that you think that that story about your best friend is worth telling. I can't imagine someone who's not a bigot responding at all differently.

This, I even think a good portion of people who are against gay marriage would definitely would show up at a wedding of two dudes if they were relatively close with either.

Noah, the thing is that when I hear a conversation regarding gay stuff back home, most people feel compelled to make a standard joke/comment about it being gross. I kind of expected my friend to do the same in this situation (and would've been totally fine with it if he had). But he didn't. I've even done it in really tight spots. I don't know where you live but homophobia is very alive and well in a lot of the US.

Like I said, 75% of this guy's family refused to go to the wedding. And his family is huge (100+).

Meh.. there's a difference between joking about gay sexuality being gross and saying "oh yeah I think they shouldn't have gotten married" or whatever.

I mean.. I'm grossed out by the thought of gay sex. I think that's pretty damn natural. If I were asexual, I'd probably be grossed out by all sex. And, I think it's funny to joke about the fact that I think gay sex is gross. I don't really see why anyone would have a problem with that.... I think lots of food that some people love is gross too, and I think lots of sex acts that lots of straight people like are gross. And I think it's gross that my parents ever had sex. I joke about those things too sometimes.

But if two people love each other and they wanna get married, good for them. Why the **** should I care as long as they're not ****ing in front of me? It's not like the guy said "Hey, isn't it kinda gross that those two dudes like to **** each other"; he didn't even say "Hey, doesn't it kinda weird you out a little bit that two guys got married" (which I wouldn't have anticipated relating to, but when one of my relatives came out and later married another woman, it did sorta strike me as weird); he said that it was ****ed up that they got married. That's just bigoted.

Edit: LOL that post ended up being a lot more about my repressed homophobia than anything else, huh?

NoahSD
Is Gay



Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 15,238

lol.. a few different people PMed me to ask if I was gay when this thread first started and I was posting a lot in it.

I always thought your avatar was barry greenstein for some reason

I totally agree with you BASaint, I mean Noah.

I think the problem is this guy doesn't have the experience to make the distinction you made. He's a pig farmer for ****'s sake, he's probably never met a gay person, and he probably has no way of associating gay marriage with anything other than gay sex.

The reason me and my friend went back was partly because he had a family reunion and we had been talking about that. That's what prompted the question about his cousin, and I just thought my friend would recognize the type of person he was and go the Brokeback Mountain joke route to keep things from getting too real.

wtf? why?



wtf dude?



Yeah it is but shouldn't you, in spots like that, as a gay person, stand up and say stfu? I'm not gay, I'm bi, but I still get offended and pissed off when people say **** like "that's gay", and if I was with a friend and another person and the friend made a homophobic joke or remark to the other person, I sure as hell wouldn't be fine with it, I'd be pissed off and say something about it.

Are you like a self loathing gay or something?

It's a word that's become part of common usage and is not meant offensively so should not be taken offensively. Being offended is a choice, and in this particular case isn't far from a black guy being offended when he hears the phrase 'black magic' or 'black comedy' or something.

I agree with knivesout here, im straight acting but have no problems telling people im gay/bi/whatever however every now and again its def +ev to just smile and say nothing when someone makes the cliche gay joke.

Just curious why this offends you?

I find it funny when people say ' thats gay ' and use it myself to wind my straight friends up.

As some of us gay folk may not be affected by the usage of the term, "that's gay," I can see how it could be offensive to someone who is gay. So if I know they don't like it, I respect that and just think about what I say before I say it.

I've started to just elaborate a lot. Like instead of saying "Razz is gay", I say "Razz is sexually attracted to forms of poker of the same gender."

It's offensive because of the way it's used. No one says "man I just went and saw my favorite band play an awesome set, it was so ****ing gay!" They use gay to mean something is bad.

It's a common saying, but so ****ing what? Homophobia and discrimination against gay people is common as well, so should gay or bi people just roll over and not do or say anything about it? There was an issue with discrimination here a couple years ago, I would post pictures of guys that were just as SFW or NSFW as pictures of girls that were posted, and the pictures of guys were deleted. According to some of you, I apparently should have just rolled over and not only done nothing about it, but maybe even start reporting pictures of guys. What did I do? I made a thread in ATF, I self banned for a week, and I ultimately PMed Mason about it.

It's no longer an issue and no longer happens because I stood the **** up and did something about it, not roll over and be walked over.

'Man that band were gay' has nothing to do with homosexuality. In 99% of cases the person making this sort of comment is not making a link between the negative qualities of the band and homosexual behavior.

The other 1%? So what, **** them.

idk any gay that feels insulted when somebody describes something as gay

Just bc it's part of common usage doesn't mean it's ok. The n-word was once a part of common usage too. Just bc saying something is gay isn't mean offensively doesn't mean it isn't offensive. People are insensitive and ignorant and say offensive things all the time even when they don't mean to. It's still wrong and those people need to be educated.

And your black magic/black comedy analogy makes no sense. The word "black" in those words isn't derived from the ethnicity, it means that tonally those things are dark. That's why black people aren't offended by those terms. Otoh, saying something is "gay" to mean dumb or bad is directly derived from a time when being gay was considered wrong. What's implied when you say "that band was gay" is "I hated that band in the same way I hate when two people of the same sex having sex." I realize that people who use the term don't always actually feel that way about homosexuality, but it's a holdover from a time when it was ok to outwardly hate on gays. We should stop saying it and try to move past that time. Just pick another word. It's not that big a deal.

this

I mean I am a self loathing gay, and it's pretty much because of how badly my parents reacted. It made me learn to hate myself in a time I needed to love myself and it takes a lot of time to make all that go away. So I really think sometimes it's just not worth it.

I really wouldn't find anything wrong with someone standing up for themselves every time. Good for them.

Some people say "that's gay" just as a phrase and would probably stop if they were told that someone was offended by it.

Others say "that's gay" mostly as a phrase but also because they really are hating on gays. They not care if someone were offended. (I'm guessing more than the 1% BASaint guesses. I don't mean that they are actually comparing X to gays in that sentence, but I do get an anti-gay feeling when someone who is homophobic uses that phrase.)

One group offends me with their usage of 'gay' and the other doesn't, and it comes down to intent.

And yours...?

I had this argument recently in the plo forum, of all places. My position is unchanged. The south park episode was pretty well on the money for me. You're not going to be able to change popular culture. So you have a choice. One of them involves being offended and getting worked up and upset. The other involves realizing that, whatever the past connotations of the word, the current intention of the word is not negative. Sure, it sucks like hell that there are so many gay kids around the world that are getting down about society maltreatment of them, and this is but one aspect of that. If we could change society, we would. But we can't. So we take the passive, tolerant approach, and we encourage others to do the same, otherwise we get a brain aneurysm from all the anger and bitterness.

If it currently makes you angry, choose to want that it no longer gets you angry. Realize that their intentions are not negative. Realize that they are ignorant, but that changing yourself, while difficult, is 100x easier than changing other people.