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Susie924... No transference of anger here babe!
Paule Walnuts
Back at ya barryinla...
Former Rep. Mel Reynolds. The Illinois Democrat was convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault with a 16-year-old. President Bill Clinton pardoned him before leaving office. Former Rep. Gerry Studds. He was censured for sexual relationship with underage male page in 1983. Massachusetts voters returned him to office for six more terms
Next.
Paule Walnuts
midas98.. pick one, lets have some fun!
'Alex G' ... Our very own Kim Jong Ill
"Humans have forgotton how to live according to natural order." IxCimi
I'm asking you to give a more detailed opinion; making sarcastic, yet poignantly pertinent remarks in doing so.
Paule Walnuts
The Left's Pedophile Problem
Those who wish to instruct the Republican Party on how to deal with pedophiles might begin by purging such as Rouse from their ranks.
Democrats trying to make political hay out of the resignation of Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley should take a good look at their own party. There was Bill Clinton’s last minute pardon of former Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-IL, who had been imprisoned for having sex with a 16-year-old staffer. (He was later hired by Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; both Clinton and Jackson had also had sex with subordinates.) There is the case of Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, whose office housed a prostitution ring. However, less known is one Hawaiian case, in which more than seven high ranking Democrat senators and representatives (and one Republican) worked to assist one Leon Rouse – a convicted child molester serving time on underage sex charges in the Philippines. Rouse, now released after 8 years in prison, was hired last session as an employee of a Democrat-controlled Hawaii state Legislative Committee. 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful Russ Feingold also came to his defense, along with a Clinton-era U.S. embassy and more than half-a-dozen Democrats.
Arrested in the Philippines on October 4, 1995, and later convicted for paying 200 pesos to have sex with a 15-year-old boy, Leon Rouse served eight years of a 10-to-15-year sentence in New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City. After complaining of kidney stones, he was released by the Philippine authorities on September 29, 2003, and immediately deported to the U.S. As a condition of his release, he was banished from the Philippines for life.
In spite of being a convicted child molester, Rouse has received extensive help from many elected Democrats and one Republican. According to the May 22, 2005, Honolulu Advertiser:
U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye, D-HI, and U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-HI, informed a friend of Rouse’s on Maui that they had written to the Philippine ambassador to the United States. Both the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, D-HI, and U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-HI, wrote to the State Department.
In Rouse’s home state of Wisconsin, U.S. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-WI, and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-WI, along with several U.S. House members, wrote letters for Rouse. U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, one of the most conservative members of the Senate, wrote to the State Department, as did U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, among the most liberal members of the House of Representatives…
Former Big Island [Democratic] State Sen. Andrew Levin wrote to the American ambassador in Manila to look into whether Rouse was denied due process. Levin also asked then-[Hawaiian Democratic] Gov. Ben Cayetano’s office for advice about whether the [Democrat-controlled] state Legislature should pass a resolution requesting that Congress investigate Rouse’s plight.
Former Hawaii State Democratic chair Richard Port wrote a 2005 opinion column in support of Rouse.
According to an October 29, 2002, article in the Wisconsin gay community newspaper In Step:
Rouse has been actively pursuing his case from prison, personally and through family and friends, contacting several members of the U.S. Congress for help. Rouse and supporters wrote letters to Rep. Gerald Kleczka, Rep. Tom Barrett, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, Sen. Russell Feingold, Sen. Herb Kohl, and Sen. Daniel Inouye. Personal pleas were also made to the Philippine Ambassador to the United States and other government officials, all to little effect.
In recent years, Rouse also corresponded with [then-] Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland. Weakland wrote a letter to Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Philippines, asking for help on Rouse’s behalf.
(Weakland, one of the most liberal Catholic Archbishops, resigned in disgrace in 2002 after revelations of a sex-and-hush-money scandal.)
It is not clear whether Pelosi acted in support of Rouse; it would be most instructive to find out, as she has demanded House Republican leaders step down if they failed to act in response to Foley’s advances toward an underage boy.
The Clinton-era U.S. Embassy in Manila contacted the Philippine authorities on Rouse’s behalf. (The arrest came nine months after the Philippine authorities thwarted an al-Qaeda plot, known as “Operation Bojinka,” to bomb numerous commercial flights out of Manila – including at least one headed for Honolulu.)
Given these levels of support one might expect that Rouse had an exculpatory story, but even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a July, 2005 report on an appeal by Rouse – a report which Rouse claims proves his innocence – describes the circumstances of Rouse’s arrest in damning terms:
Around noon on the day of arrest, he [Rouse] arrived at Pichay Lodging House, where he saw Harty Dancel, a former acquaintance, accompanied by two individuals, Pedro Augustin and Godfrey Domingo. The four of them had lunch in a restaurant, where Dancel offered Godfrey to have sex with the author. The author refused, arguing that the latter was too young, even after Dancel insisted and assured him he had reached the age of majority.
Later in the day, the same three persons waited for the author at his hotel. Dancel had them invited to the author’s room. After the author [Rouse] had taken a shower, Dancel and Augustin left the room, leaving him alone with Godfrey. The latter requested to use the bathroom, where he undressed. When there were knocks on the door, the author opened, and police officers entered. At that moment, neither the author nor Godfrey wore clothes.
In the initial Philippine court decision the events are described thus:
On or about the 4th day of October 1995, in the City of Laoag, Philippines, and within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court, the herein accused did then and there, willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously by using his adult influence and promising to pay 200 pesos ($3.79 US), engage one Godfrey Domingo, a male child who is below 18 years of age, as in fact he is 15 years old, for lascivious acts and committed said acts by masturbating and sucking the penis of the child and inserting his penis into the anus of the child all of which acts were committed by the accused on said child at Room 205 of the Pichay Lodging House at Laoag City, but which acts although already performed by the accused on the child was discontinued due to the intervention of the police who apprehended the accused who was then naked and in the company of Godfrey Domingo who was also naked in Room 205 of the Pichay Lodging House.
Rouse appealed all the way to the Philippine Supreme Court where his appeal was denied on April 23, 2003.
When Rouse was deported back to the United States, he returned to Hawaii where he had been a gay rights activist in the early 1990s and helped State Senator Brian Kanno, D-Kapolei, launch his political career. Rouse’s activism extends back to his native Wisconsin, where the gay magazine Blueboy describes him as the first to use gay rights as an excuse to drive the military off campus:
The current nationwide movement to force ROTC, and by extension the Department of Defense, to stop discriminating against sexual non-conformists or to get off campus began in 1982, when Wisconsin became the first state to pass a lesbian and gay civil rights law. Two students at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Eric Jernberg and Leon Rouse, decided to ask their school to adhere to the spirit of the new law by suspending participation in the ROTC program if that program continued to violate the terms of the statute.
The anti-military campaign started by Rouse in 1982 was finally put to an end 24 years later by the unanimous March 6, 2006, Supreme Court ruling upholding the Solomon Amendment which requires federally funded colleges to allow access to military recruiters.
Democrats’ support for Rouse extends beyond helping win his release from prison. When he returned to Hawaii, State Senator Roz Baker, D-Maui, gave Rouse a recommendation for a cabin-boy job with Norwegian Cruise Lines. Rouse took the job May 2, 2004, but didn’t last long. On June 11, 2004, he was fired and thrown off the ship at a port call in California after being accused of sexually harassing his male co-workers.
When news of Rouse’s firing reached his friends in the Hawaii Legislature, they immediately sprung into action. According to an article in Hawaii Reporter:
Kanno asked his colleagues, both House and Senate elected officials, to sign a letter demanding that the company rehire Rouse or pay him restitution and travel expenses. The letter dated Aug. 24, 2004, to Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), was signed by Democrat Senators Kanno, Baker, Suzanne Chun Oakland, Brian Taniguchi and Carol Fukunaga – all chairs of their respective committees. In addition, House Chairs Roy Takumi, Kenneth Hiraki and Eric Hamakawa [all Democrats] signed the letter.
Kanno also introduced a resolution (SR65) requiring the cruise line to detail its sexual harassment policy, and demanded that the state Department of Taxation consider mandating the cruise line pay Hawaii’s 7.25 percent transient accommodations tax. The Senate members who signed the resolution include: Sens. Carol Fukunaga, Roz Baker, Brian Kanno, Gary Hooser, Clarence Nishihara, Ron Menor, Russell Kokubun, Kalani English, Colleen Hanabusa and Brian Taniguchi. [All are Democrats.]
Hooser, Hanabusa, and Menor were all competitive but unsuccessful candidates this year for the Democratic Party nomination for Congress, 2nd District of Hawaii.
When NCL refused to bend to the legislators’ demands, Sen. Kanno helped Rouse get a job as office manager for State Representative Rida Cabanilla, D-Waipahu. Rouse resigned that position in April, 2005 as news of his criminal record came to light. But that was not the end of Rouse career as a legislative aide. In full knowledge of his conviction, Rouse was then hired in a new position serving one of his original sponsors, Sen Roz Baker, D-Maui, as a legislative assistant. This made Rouse the only employee of a State legislature anywhere in the United States known to have a criminal record for child molestation.
Rouse’s position under Baker expired with the end of the Hawaii Legislative session. It is possible he will be rehired for the next session.
By Andrew Walden
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 3, 2006
Paule Walnuts
Would you choose to be homeless?....Oh Come on!
This is failed logic and you know it. Gain some intellectual ammunition or shut up! Your posed questions only exaggerate the appearance of incompetencey.
Listen to me I'm trying to do you a solid.
Paule Walnuts
IxCimi..What do you mean?
The sickly and weak, die off so that the species may thrive?
Pack animals don't jail their wicked thus imposing punishment on the good. They kill them off so the rest of the pack can live in relative peace?
What?
Paule Walnuts
Guilt trip...
19 Way to be a Good Liberal
1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand-and in so doing assume that guilt and innocence are totally irrelevant.
2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Iran or Chinese and North Korean communists.
4. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.
5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical changes in the earth's climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV's.
6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial, but being homosexual is natural.
7. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
8. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th-graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
9. You have to believe that hunters don't care about nature, but PETA activists do.
10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
11. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
12. You have to believe the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.
13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.
14. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Edison.
15. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
16. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
17. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag queens and transvestites should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
18. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right-wing conspiracy.
19. LIE ALWAYS
GOD BLESS AMERICA
What is Slow Food all about?
IxCimi...sounds fun.
Recommendation #62 ....good,no?
Paule Walnuts
IxCimi..lol You wish... Portland.
IxCimi....Yes!...The chore of maintaining our family history is handed down from generation to generation and is well detailed and documented.
A family’s heritage is a very important thing; I suspect most families keep some sort of genealogy. Obviously you do.
Paule Walnuts
One Last Thing | The risk in the rise of Islam
By Jonathan Last
19 November 2006
(c) Copyright 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. All Rights Reserved.
Mark Steyn's America Alone is the jauntiest bit of doomsaying you'll ever come across. Part Philip Longman, part Samuel Huntington, part Robert Kagan, America Alone takes the two most important global trends - falling fertility and surging Islamism - and examines what the world around their intersection is going to look like.
Not that it takes much imagination. Throughout the developed world, birthrates are already falling to historically unprecedented lows. In Spain and Russia, for instance, fertility rates now hover about 1.1 births per woman - a number demographers call the "lowest low." (A rate of 2.1 is needed for a stable population.) The result is that populations in these countries and many others, ranging from Europe to Russia to Japan, will begin a sharp contraction during the next 40 years. In some countries, the decline has already begun.
The other trend, the rising tide of Islam, is also well in evidence. As Steyn points out, every year, "more and more of the world lives under Islamic law... . Today, there are more Muslim nations, more radicalized Muslims within those nations, [and] more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations." Steyn notes that Islam is taking hold in the most unlikely places. What's the most popular baby boy's name in Belgium, Amsterdam, and Malmö? Mohammed.
Islam is, by definition, both a religion and a political system. As the population of Europe withers away, Muslim immigrants are amassing power, bringing the political culture of Islam into close conflict with Western liberalism. Steyn wonders what will happen when the laws of sharia smack up against the mores of Europe.
It is not an unfounded concern. Consider Bertrand Delanoë, who in 2001 became the first openly gay mayor of Paris. In October 2002, Delanoë was stabbed by a Muslim immigrant in the middle of a public festival. As Steyn writes, the good news is the would-be assassin wasn't a "terrorist." The bad news is he was merely a Muslim who hated homosexuals.
From the Danish cartoon riots to the persecution of Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the murder of Theo van Gogh, you can hardly go a fortnight without seeing some story of Muslim aggression in Europe. While one could see such crimes as the inevitable result of large numbers of people suddenly thrust into an alien culture, Steyn sees a wider significance to them: Such incidents are the precursors to conflict between a declining population with one set of values and a rising population with very different ones.
The European reaction thus far has been accommodation. In 2005, for instance, England's chief inspector of prisons banned flying the flag of England on prison grounds, since it featured the cross of St. George, which might be offensive to Muslims. Britain's version of the department of motor vehicles has also banned the English flag, as has Heathrow Airport.
Yet none of this has helped Europeans avoid trouble. Take the words of Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed to Lisbon's Publica magazine shortly after the March 11 terror attacks in Spain: "We don't make a distinction between civilians and noncivilians, innocents and noninnocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value."
As Steyn observes, there are no "root causes." There is only an ideology that requires submission of the host culture. Even in a country as amenable as France. The French are hostile toward both Israel and America, they were against the Iraq war, and they are in favor of allowing Iran to pursue its nuclear dreams. If you're an Islamist, what's not to like?
Yet five days before the 2005 Bali slaughter, Steyn writes, "nine Islamists were arrested in Paris for reportedly plotting to attack the Metro." When extremist terrorists attacked a French oil tanker, the group responsible, the Islamic Army of Aden, released a statement saying, "We would have preferred to hit a U.S. frigate, but no problem, because they are all infidels."
No problem! But the real problem is that capital-T Terrorists aren't the only problem. Steyn argues that "Islam itself is a political project." We see this reflected repeatedly in news reports from France, Denmark, and other European countries, in which disaffected Muslims chafe at the trammels of Western law. Such reports bring to mind the grim admonishment of James C. Bennett, businessman and president of the Anglosphere Institute: "Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two."
So where do we go from here? Steyn has some ideas. Noting reports that the majority of women in European battered women's shelters are Muslim, he suggests a serious push for women's rights in the Islamic world, which could fundamentally destabilize the Islamist project. Listing a number of Muslim terrorists who lived on the European dole - Muhammed Metin Kaplan, Abu Hamza, Abu Qatada, etc. - he posits that Euro-welfare should be remade. But ultimately, Steyn admits that Islam itself will have to be reformed if it is to become compatible with modernity.
Buried in America Alone is a question Steyn asks but leaves unanswered. Surveying the history of Islam as it has regressed over the last few generations, Steyn wonders: "We... talk airily about 'reforming' Islam. But what if the reform has already taken place, and jihadism is it?"
Some possibilities are too dark for even a book about the End of the World.
IxCimi
And I can draw mine back to the Maccabees but that doesn't make me a Jew.
Paule Walnuts
Here’s a new topic…
The Constitution a living breathing document or a solid foundation with the provision for change as long as that change coincides with the constitutions basic precepts.
What side do you come down on and why?
Paule Walnuts
iamshazzam.... ABSOLUTELY!
We do not live in a socialist democracy...yet.
Paule Walnuts
Nice exit.
PegnVA
"Don't worry, I won't ask you any questions - that seems to unnerve some people."
You won't ask me because you're not here to promote ideas but rather play circle jerk with yourself.
You laid out the question, I asked you to verify we were talking about the same issue, and you ran like a stuck pig.
Good day jokester. Come back when you have substance.
Yes, I did stomach that tripe.
Paule Walnuts
When it suited them, the Clintons claimed Jewish heritage.
We're still trying to connect the dots. But hey they claim it, so it must be true.
Paule Walnuts
Like Bill and Hillary. lol
PegnVA..typical but not very helpful for a liberal....Here's the report,
http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/iraq_study_group_report.pdf
On page 58 my recommendations start with #66 what recommendations are you specifically addressing?
Paule Walnuts
Ok...
[A woman on a panel said she chose to be a lesbian] and the audience was just going crazy! "What does this mean?" and "Well, do you still have an attraction to men?" And she said, "No, I don't." And they said, "But that can't be, if you had it before." And she said, "Yeah, I used to like cheese but I don't eat cheese anymore and I actually don't like it; it was an acquired taste. Men were an acquired taste. I no longer have the taste for them." People were like, "What? Oh no!" Weeping and gnashing of teeth.
—a queer man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity, 1996
Although it might seem convenient to, I will not say that I can't help being a homosexual—that it's biological and predetermined chemically, or even, it's God's will for me . . . the fact is that life is like a river and we are like fish, or water-snakes, or the plastic rings from six-packs and we flow and so some of us flow, as a friend of mine once said, into a different pool so when someone says to me "I'm sorry about AIDS Queer-bashing Police Harassment Discrimination, but you chose to be queer," I respond, that I've chosen to be an uppity faggot, actually, and that this was my choice and yours, and I mention queer-faggot contributions to the arts, education, social and sexual liberation, liberation movements and Civil Rights movements, not forgetting uniquely faggot educational activity like, "genderfuck," which by the way if you haven't noticed it is really catching on, so, yes, I can help it and helped myself to it.
—Michael Haldeman (a.k.a. Violetta), "I'm Quitting—and I'm Angry," Holy Titclamps, 1995
Of course, I'm that most awful of perverts. I chose, I gleefully admit that I was heterosexual until I met the right man and chose to indulge in my homoerotic potential. Take that!
—Elf Sternberg, posting on the talk.politics.misc newsgroup, April 18, 1993
I was straight until 21 yrs old.
—Anonymous Deaf Woman, "Heartbroken from a Straight Woman (Deaf)" coming-out story published on deafqueer.org, September 3, 1996
There's a poem by Robert Frost that's called "The Road Not Taken," and it ends something like, "I took the road less traveled by/And that has made all the difference," or something like that, and really, my whole life has been that way. I have always considered that, just because everybody else was doing something, that didn't mean I would do it. And when I think about it, being gay is that way, too.
—a gay man, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity, 1996
I guess I never felt that it wasn't a choice. It was an option, I guess.
—a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity, 1996
Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed to.
—Johnny Mathis, Us magazine, June 1982
I have friends who are straight, you know. I realize it's problematical for them because they have not been able to get out of where I was at, at that particular trap. I think of heterosexuality as a kind of trap. And they can't get out of that trap. I've been known to say, "I think you would be better off without men." And some women say to me, "I just can't bring myself to do that." And I tell them all, "I don't expect you to make any compromises on my account. It's your life." But culture and society says you sleep with men if you're a woman.
—a queer woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity, 1996
Joey's mother used to tell him about collard greens. When he was a child he would say, "Yuck." His mother said, "I know, I know. But someday your tastes will change." She said that one day she had walked into the kitchen and asked her mother what that was that smelled so good. It turned out to be collard greens, which she had always thought were gross before. From that point on she loved them. The story horrified Joey's romantic sensibility. If something that fundamental could change—if he could be the kind of person who liked collard greens—what else about him might be different someday? What other person might he become? He felt the same way now about his sexuality. Sometimes he saw a woman who appealed to him, or while masturbating he accidentally thought about one. He put these thoughts away, not because he had anything against heterosexuality, but because they made him incomprehensible to himself. He also to this day did not like collards, or any greens for that matter.
—Joey Manley (owner of freespeech.org), "Love Will Tear," Blithe House Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 1, Winter 1998
I must confess that Garber's very multiplication of examples browbeat me into wondering whether I myself might not have been bisexual had I lived in another era. When I was a young man, in the sixties, before the beginning of gay liberation, I was always in therapy trying to go straight. I was in love with three different women over a ten-year period, and even imagined marrying two often. But after the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 . . . I revised my thinking entirely: I decided I was completely gay and was only making the women in my life miserable. Following a tendency that Garber rightly criticizes, I denied the authenticity of my earlier heterosexual feelings in the light of my later homosexual identity. After reading Vice Versa, I find myself willing to reinterpret the narrative of my own personal history.
—Edmund White, "Gender Uncertainties: Marjorie Garber Looks at Bisexuality" (review of Marjorie Garber's book Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life), from The New Yorker, July 17, 1995, p. 81
[O]ne of my goals in the women's studies classroom was to convert someone to lesbianism in the course of the year—and I was always successful at this, just by talking about how sexuality is a construction and heterosexuality an institution and by simply posing the question, by asking my students: How do you identify yourself sexually? And if they would respond: I'm heterosexual, then I would ask: How do you know? How can you be so sure? thus provoking them to question their sexuality in certain fundamental ways. Result? Conversions right and left.
—Catherine A. F. MacGillivray, in dialogue with Calvin Thomas, from Straight With a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality, edited by Calvin Thomas, p. 262, 2000
I was not gay before I met her. I never thought about it. Nobody could have been more confused than me. . . . I think [that] in love, there's not sex, there's not segregation, there's not anything, there's just LOVE, and that’s what I feel. . . . I don't feel like I'm coming out. I've never been in a closet. I've never had anything to hide. I've lived my life in truth always. This was just a natural progression toward getting more love in my life. . . . I don't have any fear about this. This was the easiest thing in my life I've ever done. It's fantastic. I'm the happiest I've ever been in my whole life.
—Anne Heche, interviewed on Oprah, April 30, 1997
"When did you first know you were different?" the counselor at the L.A. Free Clinic asked.
"Well," I said, "I knew I was poor and on welfare, and that was different from lots of kids at school, and I had a single mom, which was really uncommon there, and we weren't Christian, which is terribly noticeable in the South. Then later I knew I was a foster child, and in high school, I knew I was a feminist and that caused me all kinds of trouble, so I guess I always knew I was different." His facial expression tells me this isn’t what he wanted to hear, but why should I engage this idea that my gender performance has been my most important difference in my life? It hasn't, and I can't separate it from the class, race, and parentage variables through which it was mediated. Does this mean I'm not real enough for [sex change] surgery?
I've worked hard to not engage the gay childhood narrative—I never talk about tomboyish behavior as an antecedent to my lesbian identity, I don't tell stories about cross-dressing or crushes on girls, and I intentionally fuck with the assumption of it by telling people how I used to be straight and have sex with boys like any sweet trashy rural girl and some of it was fun. I see these narratives as strategic, and I've always rejected the strategy that adopts some theory of innate sexuality and forecloses the possibility that anyone, gender troubled childhood or not, could transgress sexual and gender norms at any time. I don't want to participate in an idea that only some people have to engage a struggle of learning gender norms in childhood either. So now, faced with these questions, how do I decide whether to look back on my life through the tranny childhood lens, tell the stories about being a boy for Halloween, not playing with dolls? What is the cost of participation in this selective recitation? What is the cost of not participating?
—Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, p. 32, 1998
The train will stop at this way station which might be Boston and stay a few years and then get on the road again and stop at another way station. In this way station you were a heterosexual; in this way station you were a lesbian. You look back down the tracks and you look at your past and all the events in your life and your friends, and you're now looking at them through lesbian eyes. So you're reinterpreting the past.
When I became a lesbian I looked back at my life and realized that all along I had had these signals that I was one of them too. So, when I became a political lesbian that I thought I had chosen, had I really chosen it or had I been one all along but repressed it? When I was writing Borderlands I had the lesbian perspective, but my thinking had not evolved to the place where I believed that when you realize that you like women, that you want to have primary relationships with women, that you want to have carnal relationships with women, you can still make the choice to stay with men. Many of us have done that. You can become a lesbian and be a lesbian for twenty years and then decide that you want to be sexual with a man. I don't know if that changes your lesbian identity, but . . . you make a choice. If you know you're a lesbian and you're married and have kids you say, "Okay I'm going to be with my husband and I'll be a straight woman as much as I can and be with my kids." Or you can say, "I'm going to leave my husband; I'm going to come out as a lesbian and take this path," depending on how much courage you have. But I think that there's only certain places where you can make that choice, and those are the places of ambiguity, of change, where you're in nepantla—you can go either way. Once you're on this track, you're pretty much a lesbian and you think like a lesbian and you live with lesbians and your community is lesbians, and the heterosexual world is foreign and that's the path you and I—well I don't know about you—but that's the path I'm on.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, interviewed by AnnLouise Keating October 25-26, 1991, published in Frontiers, September 22, 1993
The male party line concerning Lesbians is that women become Lesbians out of reaction to men. This is a pathetic illustration of the male ego's inflated proportions. I became a Lesbian because of women, because women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate.
—Rita Mae Brown
Although I have been married and have two sons, I was a late bloomer and decided in my late 20s or early 30s that being a lesbian was OK and that, for me, it is a choice.
—Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey conducted by The Advocate, July 2001
When I became homosexual I felt free of a great amount of bullshit. I know that people are shackled by a lot of things that they don't believe in, that aren't in their interest to pursue. They pursue them because of the enormous social pressures that play on people, and one of those things is heterosexuality. People don't want to get involved in other people's lives in the straight world, Men don't—they can't. They're afraid of sex. . . . Homosexuality is very positive in people's lives because they can become free of a lot of conventional social imagery that rules them, chains them down, that directs their lives. They can get outside that. It's the first step. Becoming gay is an opening-up process to people: they feel they can be more honest and more real.
—Mark Liebergall, The Ninth Street Center Journal, Vol. 2, 1974
And if desire is something that you learn . . . just like heterosexuality was taught us, you know, you're supposed to like this little boy if you're a little girl. . . . If desire is something that you're not born with, something that you acquire—that sexual hunger to connect, to touch somebody, to be touched by somebody—if that can be learned, it can also be unlearned and relearned. So that if there are political lesbians out there (a lot of political lesbians came out in the seventies because that was a viable alternative), there were other lesbians like Cherrie [Moraga] who at a very early age were attracted, lusting, after women. With both types, there was a resistance to the teaching that we should desire men. But with people like Cherrie, that took on a very emotional kind of manifestation very early on. They got turned on by girls. And with the political lesbian you were a lesbian in your head first and then you started looking at women differently because of these theories about sexuality: Is sexuality learned? Is heterosexuality learned? Is lesbianism learned? And through the theory you got to the body and the emotion and the closeness with women.
After [my book] Borderlands came out I got to thinking that yes, some of us do choose. It's a very conscious thing: "I'm going to give up men; I'm going to go to women; I'm going to come out of the closet and declare my lesbianism." With other people, it's very unconscious. They don't even know they've made the choice. They think it's just natural to be a lesbian or to be a heterosexual woman, but there have been all these processes and decisions made all along the way that you're not even aware of, that you don't remember. Okay so here we are now in 1991, and I don't think a person is born queer; I don't think every person is born queer. I think there may be some genetic propensity towards most things: music, having a good ear for music. I don't know if there are any queer genes, but if there are they'll be discovered. So some of it might be biological; some of it might be learned; and some of it might be chosen. My position will probably change in a year or two, but that's where I'm at with it.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, interviewed by AnnLouise Keating October 25-26, 1991, published in Frontiers, September 22, 1993
But I think that one has to: one, make the distinction between desire and love. Desire may be a catalyst for love, and it may not be. And so I think that it's actually much more easy for us to choose who to love and how to love than who to desire, because I think there's a certain quality of mystery in all our lives that is still centered around desire. I think it's useful that we've had so much focus on the social construction of desire because I think it does enable us to realize the role the mind plays in desire and that it is possible, to the degree that you can alter states of consciousness, to alter the nature of your desire. Now the question is how many of us are really so in tune with ourselves that we are capable of altering our states of consciousness, and I think that most of us don't live at that level of holistic awareness of our senses and of our intellectual understanding in order to be able to do that. But it's certainly possible.
—bell hooks, "An Interview with bell hooks: The Ripple Talks with One of America's Leading Feminists" by Marlene Smith & Julie Petrarca, Washington Ripple, Vol. 9 No. 2, March 1995
I am 46 years old. I am female. I was married for 26 years and have three children and two grandchildren. In my case it was definitely a choice. When I was 35 or so, I met this woman, and we became friends. In the manner of teenagers, and at her suggestion, we decided to "experiment" sexually. I laugh now, to think back on it. I was petrified at the thought, but one day I looked at her and said, "OK, kiss me." We looked at each other and laughed, and she did. My response was, "Well, what the hell, the sky didn't fall! Do it again." . . . I made the choice to be a lesbian. I have found that sexually it is the right choice for me. I have been very lucky in that my children are totally accepting of my choice of lifestyle and my ex-husband is one of my best friends.
—Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey conducted by The Advocate, July 2001
For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality. Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be queer (for some it is genetically inherent). It's an interesting path, one that continually slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts. In and out of my head. It makes for loquería, the crazies. It is a path of knowledge—one of knowing (and learning) the history of oppression of our raza. It is a way of balancing, of mitigating duality.
—Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987
Actually StephanieVanbryce...
I took a position, made my case; and am now responding to those here that refuse to handle the defeat.
"It's all about the game and how you play it.
All about control and if you can take it.
All about your debt and if you can pay it.
It's all about pain and who's gonna make it.
I am the game, you don't wanna play me.
I am control, no way you can change me.
I am heavy debt, no way you can pay me.
I am the pain and I know you can't take me.
Look over your shoulder, ready to run.
Like a good little bitch, from a smokin gun.
I am the game and I make the rules.
So move on out here and die like a fool.
Try to figure out what my moods gonna be.
Come on over sucker, why don't you ask me?
Don't you forget that the price you can pay
Cause I am the game and I want to play....
It's all about the game and how you play it.
It's all about control and if you can take it.
It's all about your debt and if you can pay it.
It's all about pain and who's gonna make it.
I am the game, you don't wanna play me.
I am control, there's no way you can change me.
I am your debt, and you know you can't pay me.
I am your pain and I know you can't take me.
Play the game
Your gonna be the same
Your gonna change your name
Your gonna die in flames"
Motorhead
Paule Walnuts
I laid out a coherent argument directly responding to your question. If your attention span cannot handle a two minute read, I don't know how to communicate with you.
I personally believe my response destroys your current paradigm and incapable of responding with the courtesy and respect coupled with an intellectual basis, you are in complete denial and looking for a way out...
Just call me some names and get it over with. You know you want to.
Paule Walnuts
Like I said you have no clue. People, PEOPLE!
I would like you to bow your heads in a moment of silent reflection.....
And THANK GOD you are not afflicted with the intellectual disabilities Alex G. demonstrates daily.
Paule Walnuts
Koikaze.. I agree.
PegnVA...Post the report please!
IxCimi... Please keep your liberal anti-Semitism in check please.
A better argument, and one consistent to the point; would be the Democratic invasion of Waco Texas under Janet Reno and Bill Clinton. But that wouldn't look too well for you demonrats would it...Answer attack the Jews!
Paule Walnuts
IxCimi..
"By the way, by every indication, the conservative view of paradise must be these elderly women living in the streets with no place else to go.
AHHHHHH! Refreshing!"
I'll bite. Let's hear why you think this.
Paule Walnuts
Sorry Bull,
"Unfortunately Bush made it an event. And that is who the bigot is."
I've already posted evidence to the contrary. The gay community is bashing Cheney for not publicizing her decision even more.
She gave up her 4th amendment right by associating herself with a militant political movement. They used her, and she hasn't complained yet.
Paule Walnuts
IxCimi...Excuse my naivety that’s just the way I feel. I understand that this country has already had a civil war where cousin killed cousin and so on.
But I also know that 100 + years later our "progressive" society is composed of a bunch of pansies. The liberals have been beating the manhood out of our men for decades. I no longer believe we have the heart. Our new found liberally imposed sense of “Higher morality” and all that jazz.
Paule Walnuts
Gulfbreeze.. Absolutely correct.
Paule Walnuts
Testimonials are not considered as fact when debating a subject. I can provide just as many testimonials to the contrary.
Paule Walnuts
Susie924. You have no sense of humor do you?
Paule Walnuts
Susie924..
"With the discrimination against gays in this country, why do you think anyone would choose to be gay?"
First this is not a tautological argument in regard to genetic disposition, but I’ll answer it anyway.
1)It may seem silly to reject perfectly good people just because of the shape of their sex organs.
2)If they don't believe queerness is genetic and they also don't see anything immoral about choosing it, then limiting themselves to loving only members of the opposite gender just from pure fear of social condemnation might make them feel like cowards.
3)They may be looking for a sense of purpose in life, and reclaiming the right of all people to love and make love to members of their own gender may provide them with a sense of purpose.
4)They may admire the queer community and want to be a part of it.
5)They may be rebelling against the sexually repressive culture.
6)If like most non-queers they find that the idea of being called queer scares them, they may recognize that the only way to overcome any fear is to face it and do what scares them most—to become queer.
Again I don’t think people who choose to be queer think that doing so will be some kind of nonstop party. People often choose for good and rational reasons to do painful things. Some people volunteer to fight in wars and die for their country. Other people choose to practice civil disobedience and be arrested and/or beaten up for the sake of their cause. Maybe for many gays, choosing to become queer may feel something like that? Also, most of us who made a fully conscious and direct choice to become queer also tend never to have believed the hype about queerness being in any way immoral or a genetic defect.
I put some time into this one so I’d appreciate you taking it seriously. Thank you
Paule Walnuts
Gulfbreeze...
Do you realize that if something bad were to happen to our Pres. and Vice Pres. then she would be running the country?
Does this not chill you to the bone?
Paule Walnuts
'ergo sum'....
First you missed the joke. Secondly if you HAD read the book, you'd realize that it has nothing to do with Deism; the subject we are discussing.
Next
Paule Walnuts