cher@ihuxi.UUCP (Mike Musing) (09/27/84)
..................
1. I was wondering about acceptance of homosexuals in parts of
the world other then USA. Someone here, probably can come up
with brief summary and analysis of geographic and political
variations that could be interesting.
Should someone wish to discuss it, please limit the number
of thick books on the subject that I should have read before
asking to 10. :-)
2. Totally unrelated to 1., but while following some of the
discussoins here I noticed that a number of net.motss regulars
are communicating out of Bolt, Beranek, & Newman location.
In fact, it seems that there is no person communicating out
of that locaton who is not a net.motss regular. It is
mildly intriguing, but by no means am I trying to cajole any
proprietory Bolt,... info.
Thanks
Self-proclaimed Garfield
Mike Musingag5@pucc-i (Henry C. Mensch) (09/27/84)
<<Death to the fascist bozos!>> >>1. I was wondering about acceptance of homosexuals in parts of the >>world other then USA. Someone here, probably can come up with brief >>summary and analysis of geographic and political variations that could >>be interesting. This is easy! Better to die in a plane crash than to be gay in Indiana! Personal experience indicates that the only people here who accept gays for who/what they are *don't* come from the Hoosier State, but are temporary visitors from other states/countries/planets. This sounds real negative, I know. I'm being kind to the Hoosiers, though. No gay student groups on this campus. The last time (approximately four years ago) there was one of those "blue jeans" days one woman was beaten (raped?) by three burly bozos who figured that "all she needed was a good fuck!" Now you know why I'm taking 20 credits this semester; this way I can graduate early and head back to safer territory! -------------------------------------------------------------------- Henry C. Mensch | Purdue University Computing Center {decvax|ucbvax|sequent|icalqa|inuxc|uiucdcs|ihnp4}!pur-ee!pucc-i!ag5 -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Saved by Bird's Eye Cheese Sauce!"
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (09/29/84)
Mr. Musing's musing about the preponderance of submitters to net.motss
from BBN has a very simple answer.
First, please reread my message about BBN's employment policies.
Gay people at BBN have nothing special to fear by expressing their opinions
in this forum.
Second, bbncca is simply one machine out of many at BBN. It is (at
present) the only machine at BBN which receives netnews. It serves a
limited software development community of approximately 30-50. Most other
BBNers (approximately 1000) neither read nor submit to netnews. One would
like to change this, but it involves administrative and not technical
problems, as well as generalized apathy. Also, the technical components of
USENET are served well, albeit more inefficiently, by the ARPA mailing lists
such as INFO-MICRO and UNIX-WIZARDS. Thus, there's less incentive to be
connected to the "real world" through USENET. BBN already has the ARPAnet.
(Just to remind everyone, incoming mail sent to BBNers through bbncca is
delivered successfully regardless of where the users' mailboxes reside.
Thus, to the UUCPnet, everyone at BBN resides on bbncca.)
Like every place, the majority do not read the news, a smaller group
reads the news, but does not post, and there is a smaller contingent
which posts articles regularly. Of this contingent, three or four of us
are gay, and post articles to net.motss.
The only thing that is "remarkable" about this is the testament
of tolerance which every workplace should display. It's a shame
that it is "remarkable" at all.
--
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPAjbp@edison.UUCP (10/07/84)
In reference to homosexuality around the world: When i got out of college (undergraduate type at least) i joined the peace corps, partly from lack of interest in joining the real world, partly from fear of being gay (despite having had a lover and participating fairly actively in the local student gay group). I spent the following four years in Zaire being a high school math teacher. (By the way, the peace corps, when i was a member, had a fairly-very high proportion of gay volunteers). I was told that if the Peace Corps ever found out a volunteer was gay, the volunteer would be promptly kicked out (about the same fate reserved for people who had worked for the CIA). Further, when students brought the subject up (they had heard about gay people in America on the radio and wanted to know about it) they stated fairly unequivocally that being gay was something that never happened in Africa. Not that it was disapproved of, it DID NOT HAPPEN! Well, I know of two instances of American Peace Corps volunteers having gay lovers (and both were in the same province as me, so who knows what was happening in the other provinces where i didnt know as many gay people), and both relationships lasted for a while (at least a year, and perhaps two). I knew (fairly well) a pair of Zairois lovers, their relationship was quite well known and accepted in the European expatriate community, but i couldnt quite figure out how it was dealt with by the Zairois. Further, it was a fairly open secret that the priest who was the director of my first school was living with a boy who was one of my students. I was more than a little paranoid, and despite what i have been saying, i think justly so. So when i arrived in Zaire, i had decided to restrict my sexual activities to Europeans and Americans (not lack of desire, paranoia), however i found that it was quite impossible over the long run. Interestingly i heard my sexual preference discussed (in swahili) fairly openly, but never either heard officialy, or casually anything about it. jefu (edison!jbp or edison!<kbsvax-soon-to-be-steinmetz-if-it-will-work>!putnam) [ honi soit qui mal y pense! ]