dyer@wivax.UUCP (Stephen Dyer) (01/18/84)
I would like to begin by thanking those who had kind words for my prose. Good reviews encourage continued output. It was said that my views, along with those of Steve Dyer, represented the main stream of gay people. I take that as a compliment, but I would like to make a friendly amendment to it: My views represent a moderate viewpoint within all people, not gays in particular. I recognize that I live in a society where there are individuals who would react with shock or violence if they found out what I did in my bedroom; where laws intended to protect are used by powerful people to oppress; and where people have trouble relating to each other as individuals. I joined the gay community to learn and grow as an individual. Whenever I come off as a Gay Person, I think I am doing something wrong. I want people to know me as well as they feel comfortable knowing me, and I don't want to be known merely for one prominent feature. People who have read my submissions know a great deal about my sexual, emotional, ethical, and romantic views. I am afraid of being labeled as Homosexual, Gay, Fag by people who I understand are not mature enough to see me as an individual. Oppression hurts, and I prefer to avoid confrontation when I might lose. I am much more interested in having each person realize his or her full potential as an individual and in a society of individuals, than I am in ending Gay or any other single type of oppression. I have known Will Doherty for more than a year, and as a person he is quiet and fun to be with. I confess to have only a cursory knowledge of his politics. Politically he is a radical, and I suspect that if he and I were political opponents he would fight ruthlesslessly against me for what he believes in. Right now he and I get along pretty well together, and I see no need to go out and murder either him or other members of NAMBLA just because they are members of NAMBLA. The emancipation resolution addresses a real problem: The age of majority on the law books is arbitrary, and there are times when schools and parents use it to oppress people who are more mature than their particular schools and parents. Age is not always a valid basis to judge maturity. The worst problem with the NAMBLA resoution is that no new basis is suggested to gauge maturity. The old one is merely thrown away. Yes, the oppressed minority has its freedom, but the protected majority has lost its hard won freedom from oppression! I would like to hear new ways to protect the immature from oppression by those who would use their superior world knowledge to oppress. I would guess that NAMBLA is filled with people who have stories to tell about how they were oppressed by someone who used the majority laws in situations where they were invalid. For this reason I will listen to its members. Unfortunately, NAMBLA too often comes off as a group of horny old men trying to put the law on their side while they look for more little boys to have sex with. Knowing Will's ideology, I do not think that this is what he is personally interested in. Now to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. For those who don't know, these are a bunch of very butch looking gay men who go about San Francisco in nun's habits! After all the work I've done to bring tenderness and sensitivity to net.motss someone mentions the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence! GAK! Well, they represent a radical viewpoint that many religious people can react to with shock and horror, just as some here have reacted with shock and horror to NAMBLA. I do not want net.motss to get filled up with flame counter flame on the Sisters or on NAMBLA. Instead let us listen to the extremma and learn. While I am interested in the new topics that Will brought forth, I want to see a diversity of topics. I think too much bandwidth has been taken up with people's flammage on how they don't want to be associated with some particular extreme viewpoint. Let us go back to people revealing themselves as individuals. To readers of net.motss who have never seen "One of those Gay Persons (ugh)" before, I think it is becoming clear that there are all sorts of people with all sorts of viewpoints who could be labeled gay. This is the strongest reason I can think of to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. A person who is gay is still a person, in exactly the same way that a person who is black or Jewish or Irish (remember the potato fammine) is still a person! Love, "Felix"