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- Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!mipl3!pdb059
- From: pdb059@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov (Paul Bartholomew)
- Newsgroups: ca.politics
- Subject: Re: "Monsters Among Us", Frontlines, November 10, 1992, PBS
- Message-ID: <197568@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov>
- Date: 19 Nov 92 10:16:30 GMT
- References: <13147@optilink.UUCP> <1992Nov12.231349.29610@gordian.com> <1992Nov17.230223.17089@gordian.com> <13246@optilink.UUCP>
- Distribution: world
- Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Image Processing Lab
- Lines: 75
-
- In article <13246@optilink.UUCP>, cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
-
- > You don't suppose that the continual drumbeat of support for
- > child molestation by homosexuals in soc.motss has done some
- > damage to your cause? I didn't care, one or the other, about
- > this subject three years ago. Soc.motss has really opened my
- > eyes to what sick, screwed up, depraved people homosexuals are.
-
- I've been waiting for this. Have you noticed how Mr. Cramer's postings
- have grown increasingly shrill and vituperative as he realizes the weakness
- of his position and the futility of his postings?
-
- Statement 1: "Continual drumbeat of support for child molestation"--Mr.
- Cramer has presented no evidence of any such "continual" support for child
- molestation in soc.motss. He has presented no evidence at all that anyone
- in soc.motss supports child molestation. He has presented evidence that a
- couple of dozen people in soc.motss support lowering and/or abolishing the
- age of consent laws.
-
- Statement 2: "Sick, screwed up, depraved people"--Mr. Cramer has presented
- no evidence that homosexuals as a group are "sick, screwed up, or depraved"
- (other than the simple fact that they are homosexual, which is considered
- depraved by some). He has presented a dozen or so postings from three or
- four people that I consider troubling. I would recommend counseling for
- those people. By no stretch of the imagination can those postings be con-
- sidered representative of the millions of people in the gay community.
-
- Finally, I take issue with the entire paragraph. I have grown curious over
- the past year about soc.motss. Mr. Cramer has been saying all along what he
- said in this paragraph. I had never read soc.motss previously because I had
- no particular interest in it. I'm not gay, although I do have several gay
- friends, and I had no particular desire to read a gay-oriented newsgroup.
-
- However, Mr. Cramer got me curious, so this month, I began browsing through
- soc.motss on a regular basis to see what it is they do discuss in that news-
- group, and to see for myself if Mr. Cramer's characterization of the group
- is accurate. The result? Mr. Cramer's characterization of the group is
- completely inaccurate.
-
- Is there a "continual drumbeat of support for child molestation?" Hell, no.
- During this entire month, I didn't see a single posting devoted to NAMBLA,
- child molestation, sex with children and/or adolescents, nothing.
-
- Were there "sick, screwed-up, and depraved" postings? Once again, no. There
- were several I found mildly distasteful (e.g., some postings where men were
- talking about how attractive Keanu Reeves is and hints of what they'd like to
- do with him). Since I'm not gay, these made me somewhat uncomfortable, but
- there was nothing sick, screwed-up, or depraved about it. There were only a
- few postings, in the several hundred I browsed, which included any kind of
- explicit sexual talk or discussion of unusual sexual practices.
-
- Would you like to know the number one topic of discussion in soc.motss?
- Politics. You could probably transfer 70% of the discussion in soc.motss to
- talk.politics without anyone noticing the difference. Other topics included
- coming out to parents, friends, and relatives; raising children as a gay
- man or gay couple; discussion of reading material; gay themes and roles in
- movies and television; the relative attractiveness/unattractiveness of body
- hair; and, just as in every other newsgroup, flame wars.
-
- Now, I will freely admit that Mr. Cramer has been reading soc.motss for a
- far longer time than I have. And I will also admit that the subject matter
- in soc.motss is probably skewed by the recent national elections, which
- would explain why political discussion is so prevalent there right now.
- I'll check periodically for the next few months to determine if it ever
- becomes the newsgroup that Mr. Cramer has described. I suspect it won't.
-
- In the meantime, I invite everyone to spend an hour or two and browse
- through soc.motss. Decide for yourself whether I'm right or Mr. Cramer
- is right.
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Paul Bartholomew | Clayton Cramer: "[Brian Kane] and Paul Bartholomew
- | are among the best examples of how screwed-up and
- pdb059@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov | emotionally disturbed homosexuals are."
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-