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Post by wackadoodle on Mar 7, 2009 14:47:09 GMT -5
Yeah they always tote shit like that, that there are thousands of "reformed homosexuals". Phhhfffft....I'd like to see these thousands. Whenever they say this, they can never produce a sizable number, it's always the same ex-gay's all the time. What's sad is that you know deep down they are truly still homosexual, that shit never goes away, no matter how much you repress it. So I feel sorry for their beards...um I mean spouses. Many of my friends have known they were gay since they were children. Now, whether they came out early on or tried to supress it and came out later, they were still born homosexual. There is no doubt in my mind. I've spoken to many lesbians and gay men that would LOVE to change being homosexual, just for the prejudice alone. They're what you call "self hating gays". But, they can't change it, of course, so they have to accept how they were born and move on with their lives. Unfortunately, there are a select few that choose to enter into those "ex gay ministries" and end up either depressed, suicidal or still homosexual. They basically teach you to hate yourself. I looked up the numbers from an actual psychological study of these Ex-Gay ministries, not just some minister spouting numbers like NARTH and the people quoting it use. out of 200 men only 8 would say they've become straight, keep in mind their was no attempt to actually test their answers but still only .04% *I think, suck at math* would claim they're straight now. How anyone can believe this ex-gay BS is beyond me, do they seriously think EXODUS and the modern crackpots are the first to attempt this? Psychologists and churches have been trying for atleast a century and nothing has worked.
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Post by Rat Of Steel on Mar 7, 2009 15:06:38 GMT -5
Not .04%, but 4%. Still, given that it's 4% of what it is, that's still nothing to be proud of, even (hell, especially) for the Homosexual Reformers.
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Post by schizophonic on Mar 7, 2009 15:29:16 GMT -5
College ages kids also don't have to worry about a draft.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Mar 7, 2009 16:10:15 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure that's not true. I thought the gov't got rid of the college excuse as a way of being exempt from the draft. Right after/at the end of the Vietnam War, I think the rules are changed so that if you're in college and you're drafted, you can finish out that semester, but then you have to go. I think the term is changed from "deferred" to "postponed", which to me isn't much of a distinction, but you aren't exempted from the draft until you're done with school completely anymore. Just for that first semester.
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Post by SimSim on Mar 7, 2009 16:16:41 GMT -5
Maybe schizophonic means that there isn't currently a draft and that if there was one during the current wars that more people would be protesting? At least that's how I took the post.
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Post by wackadoodle on Mar 7, 2009 16:38:32 GMT -5
Not .04%, but 4%. Still, given that it's 4% of what it is, that's still nothing to be proud of, even (hell, especially) for the Homosexual Reformers. I thought .04 sounded wrong. Of course, that is 4% and I probably shouldnt have assumed my calculator converted it on its own.
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Post by schizophonic on Mar 7, 2009 16:50:06 GMT -5
Maybe schizophonic means that there isn't currently a draft and that if there was one during the current wars that more people would be protesting? At least that's how I took the post. Indeed.
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Post by Lt Fred on Mar 7, 2009 17:03:11 GMT -5
Not .04%, but 4%. Still, given that it's 4% of what it is, that's still nothing to be proud of, even (hell, especially) for the Homosexual Reformers. That's essentially the percentage of the population that's Bisexual. Probably even more are Bi, in fact.
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Post by skyfire on Mar 7, 2009 17:44:53 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure that's not true. I thought the gov't got rid of the college excuse as a way of being exempt from the draft. Right after/at the end of the Vietnam War, I think the rules are changed so that if you're in college and you're drafted, you can finish out that semester, but then you have to go. I think the term is changed from "deferred" to "postponed", which to me isn't much of a distinction, but you aren't exempted from the draft until you're done with school completely anymore. Just for that first semester. From what I understand, the intent of the exemption was that if you had a college graduate you could potentially turn him into an officer. Problem was, a lot of parents got their kids into college not so much for the sake of the kids' futures but so that they could avoid the draft.
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Post by schizophonic on Mar 7, 2009 18:04:33 GMT -5
Not .04%, but 4%. Still, given that it's 4% of what it is, that's still nothing to be proud of, even (hell, especially) for the Homosexual Reformers. That's essentially the percentage of the population that's Bisexual. Probably even more are Bi, in fact. One of the biggest problems with tracking statistics on a group like homosexuals or bisexuals is simply the "X" factor involved. Hard to track a group that is kept underground.
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Post by mnstrm on Mar 7, 2009 19:00:40 GMT -5
Smart parents. I'd have done the same.
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Post by skyfire on Mar 7, 2009 19:53:29 GMT -5
Smart parents. I'd have done the same. Ever watch Animal House? There's a sequence where the dean gets the main house members in his office and reads them their grades. He notes that because they've all managed to fail it means that every last one of them is now eligible to be drafted. That's actually not too far from the truth; you needed to keep up your GPA if you wished to remain exempt.
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Post by the sandman on Mar 7, 2009 20:00:56 GMT -5
From what I understand, the intent of the exemption was that if you had a college graduate you could potentially turn him into an officer. Problem was, a lot of parents got their kids into college not so much for the sake of the kids' futures but so that they could avoid the draft. You make me laugh. ;D First you use the phrase "I understand." Something you clearly do not. Secondly because you think college deferments were granted because of the potential of creating an officer. Do you ever think? Educational deferments were granted because if you draft everyone you screw your nation out of an entire generation of essential professionals. To avoid that disastrous possibility, you exempt those dedicating themselves to essential pofessions from military service. You see, that's what's called "logic."
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Post by erictheblue on Mar 7, 2009 21:30:07 GMT -5
Well not I normally agree with Skyfire but in a way he's right. There was a good deal of burn out. That kind of passion is hard to keep going, especially intergenerationally. There were activists that went from casual drug use to hard core drug use, of course. It's intellectually dishonest to ignore that at least some people are going to develop a drug problem. As for sex, I don't think it was the "free love" that was the problem so much as the free and unprotected love. This goes especially for the Gay community which was finally coming into it's own at a time when there were no STDs known that couldn't be treated or dealt with. By the time AIDS was discovered, a large number of the really active gay leaders were infected and dying. Yeah, one can say that the 60's had consequences. But every period in history has that. The societal rebellion and change of the 60s was a natural and probably necessary result fo the repression that proceeded it. And one cant' talk about the negatives of the period without also acknowledging the good. (or vice versa) No, actually, Skyfire was wrong in everything he said. The protest period started in about 1961 with Northern students heading south to work with the civil rights movement in the south. Here, after a short time, many of the students were radicalized by the violence of the authourities. Then JFK happened, the Warren Commission, Johnson's escalation in Vietnam and the expansion of the draft. The antiwar movement started on the heels of the civil rights protests, and had a radicalized element built in, due to their experiences in the South. Drugs and the use thereof; the vast majority of young people experimented with marijuana, and a much smaller minority tried LSD, mescaline, peyote and other hallucinogens. A very tiny minority of "protesters" did any injectable drugs, ie heroin or used cocain. Some entertainers did, but in general, the youth movement's drug of choice, by overwhelming majority, was the herb. By 1973, the war in Vietnam was winding down, Nixon was chased from office, the draft was also winding down, and protesters also wound down. The reasons for many of the protestors activism were eliminated. The real "protest movement" had ended by 1973. The gay rights movement came along quite late in this period, becoming noticeable by 1972. The "women's lib", later simply the women's movement, began in 1968, reached its peak just before the defeat of the ERA. Aids was an 80's phenomenon, and actually revitalized the Gay rights movement. The murder of John Lennon ocurred long after the protest movement was over and being subject to revisionist history. The societal rebellion, as you refer to it, was never that. Most of the youth were radicalized initially by the JFK assassination, and Johnson's escalation of the war. We saw that our institutions could not be trusted. Look, I'm not trying to glamorize the 60's, there was lots of fucked up stuff happening, but the idea that we, collectively, could change the world, was true. Attitudes did soften, racism did decrease, the war was unpopularized and was ended. Evidence for this can be seen in our current president, and with our short toleration for unjust war, ie Iraq. You haven't refuted a thing Sky said. He didn't say the protests of the 60s did no good. He did say that times changed. But most of them don't see how they have a dog in the fight, and the general attitude has shifted away from fighting battles that don't necessarily directly benefit yourself but benefit humanity to fighting battles that only get you what you want. I would never have thought of it in those words, but do see that happening. Reading this sent my blood pressure through the roof. I cannot believe that any woman today could have a negative opinion of feminism. Then again, some on the right have made a career out of redefining "feminist" as "lesbian man-hater." Pastor Martin Niemöller comes to mind... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came... Yup. Recycling a few cans and bottles doesn't seem like much when compared to the coal-burning power plant down the road. QFT. DV, I couldn't agree more. 35 years of regressive politics and corporate media pandering, of economic policies that created the "dog eat dog" mentality, the concentration of wealth into the hands of very regressive people all contribute to this apathy. Fuck, the media spends more time on the antics of Speers and Hilton, than they did on the horrible Bush policies, or on the injustices still present in our society. I pretty much stopped watching network news, as nothing interesting was ever discussed. I got my news from The Rachel Maddow Show and The Washington Post. But again, who wants to be hated and discriminated against? Who would choose this? I once asked that to someone who was claiming homosexuality is a choice. Watching them hem and haw was rather funny. I have to agree with JonathanE on this one. How much of the war have you seen on TV? The most we get is the odd soldier talking about a lost friend. You don't see the body bags, you don't see the fighting, you don't see anything. To the credit of the media, not seeing the coffins was Bush Administration policy, not the choice of the media. Obama has changed the policy and now leaves the choice to the families. Not saying we will start seeing coffins, but since the change has only been in effect a week or so, there really hasn't been enough time to say one way or the other.
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Post by somnium on Mar 7, 2009 22:47:43 GMT -5
I have kind of lost track of peoples overall positions in all the dates so if I am repeating anything let me know.
In the past a lot of protests were about "home" issues such as equality (race, gender, sex, social class...) or unjustifiable wars that your country was fighting. Now with increased globilisation and the internet we are finding out about so many human rights violation that it is difficult to get emotionally invested in each individually, as a result it splits the protest base making it less likely for there to be big collective protests, like the ones seen in the 60s.
That being said these issues (I'm referring here more to international issues like Zimbabwe, Georgia, Sudan and so forth) are being tackled on a number of different fronts (aided and abetted by the internet). Sometimes in these cases large protests may be completely pointless so instead people use letter campaigns and the like to lobby their government to implement sanctions. People are more calculating in their response (will this help? is it so bad that even if it doesn't help is it worth it any way?) and the big protests are still occurring - recent examples including the protests surrounding the olympic torch relay (which was rather impressive given that it transcended international borders), the G8 summit protests, internet censorship protests and well many more.
I don't think the consequences from the "party" lifestyle in the 60s is the reason for the changes in the way we protest (or the general attitude towards activism) - to Quote xkcd correlation does not mean causation. I also don't think the risk of getting arrested is the reason - the protests here (a western country) have been largely peaceful so you can attend without fear of being hurt or arrested and large protests in non-western countries have been violent but the issues are so important to the people that they will not stop fighting (I'm referring to places such as Tibet etc etc etc)
I don't know a lot about activism but this is how I feel. I think the protest spirit is alive and well, there are just so many issues being fought on so many fronts it is difficult to keep track but every now and again there are still large collective out cries and protests.
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