My father said the oddest thing about DADT and accepting homosexuality...

[LiberalLoner]

He said "But if we say it's okay to be gay, then EVERYONE will be gay!"

Now this is a guy who is 76, was in the Infantry for 30 years - two wars. Has had six marriages, domestic abuse charges, (not as many as he deserved), child abuse, you name it.

It got me thinking...he's always acted like he completely despises women and he's always been very adoring of strong men (like Hitler or Cheney.) I wonder if there isn't something "there" in the corners of his mind, like the way John McCain has something "there" with homophobia.

It just struck me as such an odd thing to say because...well, I don't feel any inclination to be gay. I've always been over the top heterosexual. Boy crazy at the age of 4, LOL. I've never felt any wishes to be gay.

But to my father, apparently EVERYONE would be gay if it just were socially acceptable.

And it makes me wonder...well, you know, they always say the most homophobic guys are gay but in denial.

Sheesh I wish he would have just followed his desires instead of making life hell for the women he's been involved with.

[NuclearDem]

1. Someone at Offutt said something I found quite hilarious...

With the way the military works, this was just perfect.

"I'm getting out before DADT is repealed...because pretty soon after homosexuality becomes optional, it's gonna become mandatory." :evilgrin:

[LiberalLoner]

3. LOL Well the military is known to go overboard at times, LOL....n/t

[polichick]

2. That's quite a story - thanks for sharing! I think you might be onto something. nt

[LiberalLoner]

4. If he came out, I would congratulate him on his courage and of course would accept him totally...

although I'd still be kind of ticked off about the wife and child beating/rape thing. I mean, you know, some things just suck even if there are mitigating factors like stress over denial of sexuality.

[daleanime]

5. But then we wouldn't have you.....

strange how things are almost always good and bad.O8)

[LiberalLoner]

6. LOL Actually I'm the product of an affair my mother had during the marriage...so not

his bio child. And the world would probably be better off without me, I'm a depressed nut case, LOL. Just being honest here.

[Chorophyll]

8. You seem okay to me.

:pals:

[LiberalLoner]

11. Thank you. :) I love your quote! :) n/t

[Angry Dragon]

16. The world is better because of you

[LiberalLoner]

19. Thank you, AD. I think the same of you. :) n/t

[Angry Dragon]

22. I have written proof that many would disagree with you on that

[LiberalLoner]

24. LOL - well if we don't make some enemies in life we aren't trying hard enough! :) n/t

[Iggo]

33. Reading your OP and this thread made my day better.

So there.

[StevieM]

34. Forgive me if I shouldn't be asking this....but I'm curious.

You didn't make your father sound like the greatest guy in the world. And yet it sounds like he accepted you as his daughter, even knowing that you weren't biologically his. That seems like an odd dichotomy. So maybe there is another side to him, if he could love you like his own child, in spite of the circumstances.

Steve

[LiberalLoner]

35. Yes, there is another side to him. He's a very strange enigma to me -

he made sure he had tons of life insurance before he went to Vietnam so that we'd be taken care of - but when he came home, he was so abusive we had to flee for our lives many times.

He has done a lot of very bad things but I don't think he is a bad man. It's hard to explain. There are good things about him. I would say he was a tortured man and broken inside and an alcoholic and very hard to live with. But not a bad man.

[RKP5637]

7. Yeah, I think some of these guys fear "the gay" might be lurking in them, like

some unknown disease ready to get them if the antibiotic is not constantly taken. I think similar about McCain. He seems to be so ravishingly against it ... it gets a little weird after awhile IMO.

[LiberalLoner]

10. Yes, that's what I mean! It's just weird! Really makes you wonder what on earth is

going on in their brains. I would feel sorry for them if I weren't so mad at them for trying to harm gay people.

[Smarmie Doofus]

9. One doubts it. The most homophobic guys...

>>>And it makes me wonder...well, you know, they always say the most homophobic guys are gay but in denial. >>>

are straight... in my experience.... and just *really* ignorant.

[LiberalLoner]

13. It's just so hard for me to understand people who are so afraid and hateful.

I really just don't get it. And why would acceptance of homosexuality cause anyone to be gay who wasn't born that way? I mean someone like me isn't going to become gay just because all of a sudden it's cool. We're born the way we are born, it's not like any of us have a choice, as far as I can tell. For the life of me I can't understand how men like my father think or John McCain or a million others.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. I just posted something on this--please have a look.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9678104&mesg_id=9684806

[LiberalLoner]

20. Thanks! I will go read it now! n/t

[LiberalLoner]

25. Oh, very interesting! Makes a lot of sense to me! I mean it all kind of fits. It's really

interesting how frequently you see misogyny and homophobia both together in a homophobic man.

[RKP5637]

27. Thanks for this!!! Very very interesting and much as I had suspected. n/t

[Smarmie Doofus]

28. Honestly, the experiment sounds like the plot of an early Woody Allen movie.

And the premise... or i guess "hypothesis" in this case... is akin to "Hitler may have had a Jewish grandparent... hence the Holocaust."

The Holocaust happened because of 2000 years of Christian anti-semitism... HELLO? Not because of Hitler's alleged Jewish lineage.

Why does this idea persist... in the face of history and logic? Because it somewhat expiates the guilt of the guilty.

A similar dynamic is afoot, I suspect, with the "homophobia is the fault of ( repressed) homosexuals" speculation.


Golly.... don't heterosexuals ever do *anything* wrong???

[originalpckelly]

12. If you can trust his numbers, Kinsey said 46% of males had attraction to both sexes...

That's a lot of people if it's true. I wonder how true that is. I can't understand it, as I'm only gay, but I really wonder how many bi people there are but just don't say shit about it, for fear of the consequences.

[LiberalLoner]

14. Wow, that's interesting! That's a high number. Maybe he's right...I could see

bisexuality as being very advantageous in forming societies. Kind of like the bonobos (is that how it's spelled?) that have sex all the time with both sexes to reduce tension. A social thing.

Well it's really high time that we just mellowed out about this whole sexuality stuff because there are way too many uptight phobic messed up people in this world.

Personally I don't think God gives a flying fornication who we have an orgasm with as long as nobody is harmed.

[pnwmom]

40. His sample is unreliable because it wasn't random. People self-selected

to be in his study.

[quaker bill]

15. I have never been concerned

about social acceptability, I just simply don't find other guys attractive in that way. Perhaps I was just born that way....

I did not choose to marry a woman because it was legal. I did so because I wanted to.

[Klukie]

18. He is not gay....he is just driven by fear

Everything he thinks and all of his actions begin with a sense of fear and he has never learned to recognize this demon and therefore he will never be able to overcome it. Call him a coward or tell him he is being fearful and see what his reaction is...I bet he goes nuts.

[boppers]

21. Everyone should give it a shot, at least.

Otherwise, how would they know?

:evilgrin:

I'm only slightly joking... lots of people are very gay, lots of people are very straight, and then there's a huge chunk of people who wander all over the spectrum, and even invent new colors while they're at it.

[Sal Minella]

23. One of the saddest things in John Cheever's journals

was his jealousy of men who could keep their attraction for men under control, and not yield to it in weak moments like he did (running off to New York now and then to find a willing male partner.)

He was bewildered and jealous that some men could successfully suppress half of their sexuality and seemingly be satisfied with only sleeping with their wives or girlfriends.

I definitely got the feeling he had NO IDEA that many men have no desire at all to bed other men. Sad.

[LiberalLoner]

26. Oh, that is sad. I guess he felt he had to suppress his desires to match what

society and others expected of him. But it's interesting that it never occured to him that other men don't always want to bed other men. But maybe that is a common thing among us humans. I mean I can't tell you how many times I've picked out a present for people because I thought it was something really great. I always think, if I think it's great, surely everyone will think it's great too, LOL.

[Sal Minella]

45. Cheever felt like a FAILURE because he couldn't consistently

suppress that (socially unacceptable) desire at will, and (obviously to him) other men could suppress it consistently!

Instead of presents with me, it's cartoons with my daughter -- I send her cartoons that just lay me out laughing, and she doesn't see what's funny about many of them. And I hear her laughing at things that I miss entirely.

So, we all just bumble along, eh? Eh!

And as H. L. Mencken said, People are friends in spots.

[truedelphi]

29. here is a kind and funny rsponse to your dad next time he

embarks on that line of thinking -

"But Dad, look at the influence teachers have over kids. if teachers were so influential, then why aren't there a lot more nuns coming out of Catholic High Schools these days?"

(I owe this comment to Harvey Milk, as he used to make a similar statement.)

[LiberalLoner]

36. LOL - now there's something to think about! :) n/t

[EC]

30. Likely...

the ones most afraid of "the gay" are the ones that do have attractions to the same sex and repress it because they think everyone is the same as they are...they think that gays, just weren't strong enough to not act on their impulses...


Someone should tell him that heterosexual people just don't have the urge...so they don't have to repress anything...

[LiberalLoner]

37. To be honest, I'm still afraid of the man. I'm not going to be the one pointing anything out....n/

[Shallah Kali]

31. misogny and homophobia seem to go hand in hand

Do Boys in Tutus Break God’s ‘Chain of Command’?
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/candacechellew-hodge/3692/do_boys_in_tutus_break_god%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%98chain_of_command%E2%80%99

"God created the order from God to Jesus, from Jesus to men, from men to their wives, from wives to their children. So men play a critical role in bridging the gap between the deity and the family. The human male is the person that God uses to bring the truth to the world and the family. If the man quits acting like a man and doesn’t take the man’s responsibilities — that’s what they call gays — then the structure falls apart,” White said.

snip

Feminist theologian Beverly Harrison has written that the connections between homophobia and misogyny run deep because “the social control of women as a group has totally shaped our deepest and most basic attitudes toward sexuality.” That control is so complete that society expects “compulsory heterosexuality” and its only alternatives are celibacy or asexuality.

This social control then, Harrison posits, is at the heart of not just the inequality of women, but the inequality faced by gays and lesbians.

“We must acknowledge that it is through our socialization to sexuality that we begin to learn ‘fear of equality’ and either to feel ‘strong’ by lording it over others or to feel ‘safe’ by being controlled by them. By conforming rigidly to ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ roles, we learn, at a foundational level, to tolerate inequality.”

[LiberalLoner]

38. Yes...I can see that....interesting! Thanks for posting this! n/t

[applegrove]

32. Sounds like your father is a misogynist. When faced with the aroused pupils of

a healthy happy sexually aroused female, his pupils contract in disgust. And that disgust is likely why he abused the women. Or he was doing things to them to get the female's pupils to contract so he would no longer be disgusted. (I read about the pupils of misogynists in a book called 'eye signs')

[LiberalLoner]

39. Wow, that is interesting! Yeah, he couldn't stand for any of us to be happy, that's for sure. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

41. I think hating women or worshipping strong men doesn't necessarily translate to being gay, though.

I don't think people are logically consistent entities, either.

[pnwmom]

42. I think you're on to something.

Speaking as the daughter of a gay father who, like many gay men in his generation, had some unconscious contempt for women.

And as a Catholic, I've often wondered if this is behind the Church's attitude about homosexuality. So many of the priests in the hierarchy are closeted gays. They seem to think that most men are "tempted" to "sin" with other men and that they (the priests) are just better at resisting "temptation."

[old mark]

43. K&R - I believe this is the REAL motivation for a very large percentage of vocally anti-gay men.

Interesting, too, that he chose a profession where he was surrounded primarily by men.
It is an obvious fascination, isn't it?


mark

[yurbud]

44. a lot of people on the right say that, but if pressed for details, they will quickly reassure you

that they don't mean themselves--just some OTHER gullible cretin who wouldn't know his sexual orientation unless his mother wrote it on his underwear for him.

[Randypiper]

46. They are telling us more than they would want us to know.

When any one says that people chose to be gay, they have to be bisexual.
Only bisexuals think that you could enjoy sex with a man or a woman and chose.

[bemildred]

47. So? nt

[AndrewP]

48. I've never understood it either. Like it'll "spread"? LOL

I'm not gay, and how I handle not being gay is by not dating or having sex with men. I'm not sure why that is so tough for so many people to figure out for themselves.