rjd@linus.UUCP (Robert DeBenedictis) (11/24/84)
Mr. Arndt says:
Remember, the masses may be asses but they're not gay!
More accurately:
The masses may be asses but they don't think they're gay.
I stand by the 10% figure. 10% is an awful lot.
The best hope I see for the rights of gay people is that nearly
everyone has a gay cousin. Of course, this depends on the size
of your extended family (mine is particularly large). With other
forms of discrimination the "them" is visibly different from the
"us". Most aunts and uncles love their nieces and nephews, don't
they? Wouldn't they still love them, regardless of their sexual
preference? It's like: At thanksgiving my aunt was happy to hear
that my sister won $400 in MEGABUCKS (a MA tax on the stupid).
She said "It's nice to hear about that when it happens to someone
you know." The point is that relatives, at least mine, tend to
give one a lot of leeway and credit just for sharing some of the
same blood. Today, I may be the exception to their still firmly held
stereotype. But to their kids maybe it'll get through that discrimination
against gays isn't always a hard and fast rule.
On the Ayn Rand (sp?) philosophy:
Steve Dyer once noted that the gains of the movement are made on the
backs of the naive. I.E., if you only knew how much you were *really*
risking you wouldn't post something like this (yes, THIS!) to a network
that your coworkers have easy and ready access to. Well, hey, I, can
afford to take these risks. I'm young enough to find another job. I have
the energy. Besides, I have a lot of confidence in the quality of my work.
ANYWAY, before this place (part of the Military-Industrial Complex) hired
me full-time, I went down to personnel to make a request. This was way
back (could it really be 10 months ago) when I was a mere Summer Hire/Part-
Time-On-Call. I asked the personnel lady in charge of affirmative action
to put in a non-discrimination clause (for gays of course). Now this was
a bold move. I was really counting on getting a job at this place. Being
gay is not the kind of thing that MITRE expects from it's employees. After
all, we deal fairly closely with the air force and the military has always
had a real hair across their ass when it comes to same sex relationships.
("The point! get to the point man!")
Oh, yeah. I was taking a big risk, venturing into the unknown. Would
personnel see to it that my SECRET clearance got revoked? Would someone,
somewhere, simply decide that it wasn't maybe a good idea to hire this kid?
It would've been easy enough for them to do. But they didn't. Probably the
personnel lady kept my identity a secret. They didn't change they're
policy. Said they didn't have to -- they already obeyed the law. I
expected to see this in writing but that was not forthcoming.
NEXT TOPIC:
Is it a compliment to be the exception to someone's stereotype. You know:
"But I like you. You're not Like other fags!"
And what do YOU think of the name Almost Home?
Roll it over in your mind a little. It's kind of like MountAin Dew or
MountAin Groan (folger's). (Mountain = Mount And . . .)
Almost Home Almo's t Home all mo's home oh most home oh most homo most homo.
Does anyone else out there see these things? The ads for Almost Home almost
seem to confirm this cock-a-mame-he'd idea. You know, the one's where they
all find the name kind of unsettling but the cookies are so moist and chewy
(that it doesn't matter WHO cuts your hair!). I particularly like the one
with the drill sargent and the private.
I'm constantly seeing things like this. Ever here a texan redneck tell
someone not to be a quitter? It comes out like this:
Don't be a qui''er.
They just don't pronounce the t's.
And there's Burger King. Home O' The Whopper. FLAME broiled. Isn't
"flamer" common non-gay slang for (whoppingly) obvious gays?
And are frat boys really suspicious of poppers?
And why is the word heart so often prounounced as hard in pop music:
"Stop dragging my heart around"
"Two hearts beat as one"
"My heart is on fire, my love is alive"
"Let your heart beat; next to mine"
"I've got a heart on my heart, I've got to swallow my tears"
I mean they're all out there talking about how lonely their heart is,
how their heart beats, and what they're gonna do with that other heart
when they find it.
Hey, this is going off the deep end, even for me.
Have a nice weekend. I hope I do; I'm treating Mom and Dad and
Sis (Senior in College) and sis (10th Grader) to Torch Song Trilogy.
Another Linguistic Ambiguity in the Everyday Phrase from
Robert DeBenedictis