Call Me Prudish, But...
With the recent flap over Gen. Pace's "personal opinions" regarding gays, their fitness for military service, etc., I've found it interesting to watch comments on the blogosphere regarding not only Pace's comments, but others related to that "issue."
That being said, while I'm not exactly an evangelist for the gay lifestyle, I'm not inherently hostile to it, either. I have friends and acquaintances who are gay, and I'm pretty much a "live and let live" kind of person. Indeed, several months ago I wrote a post which I thought was pretty open to the idea of gay civil unions, at the least. If you're interested in blasting me on that one, for one reason or another, go back and read it first. Basically, my libertarian leanings suggest that as long as you're not hurting me, I don't have a problem with you doing pretty much whatever you want, and I don't see a problem with the state sanctioning same sex unions, just as they sanction civil unions between heterosexual couples. Personally, I'd leave the whole "marriage" thing to the churches to work out--but more on that in the previous post.
I've been following Andrew Sullivan's postings on that topic (and others) for a while, and to his credit, Sullivan is pretty civil in his discourse. But he does occasionally link to sites that I consider unnecessarily...what? Angry, inflammatory, crude? I've run out of good words to use, but here's a link that may demonstrate what I'm concerned about--originally followed from Sullivan's site. . I think that it's possible to make an argument and to forcefully show your frustration without resorting to the repeated use of four letter words or crude name calling.
I recognize that some of this is probably audience driven, but speaking as one from "middle America," I'm afraid that language like that may reinforce stereotypes. Most of us don't object to the occasional "hell" or "damn" as part of a declarative statement. Many of us still abide by what our moms and dads told us as we were growing up: "people judge you by the way you speak; if you 'talk trash' all the time, they're going to think that's what you are."
As long as folks advocating for "gay rights" continue to use language which most folks are uncomfortable with, or at least wouldn't want their children reading or hearing, then it's going to be hard to convince them that gays are "just like us"; that they're every bit as wholesome as everyone else, etc. As long as you use language with sexual and anatomical connotations usually reserved for high school restroom stalls, then "the rest of us" will have a tendency of thinking of you the same as we sometimes think of those adolescents--not quite grown up, not really worthy of being taken seriously. If you want to use the questionable language, then make your sites available by "subscription only" so that the general public doesn't wander into it. Or is shock really the goal?
