View Single Post
Old 03-18-2004, 01:03 PM   #8 (permalink)
lurkette
My future is coming on
 
lurkette's Avatar
 
Moderator Emeritus
Location: east of the sun and west of the moon
It's one thing to describe homosexuality as a "biological error" in a purely descriptive, scientific context. It's completely another to use that as ammunition for castigating an entire population and denying them basic rights.

There's a difference in context between the comments made by "Dr." Laura and 50Cent:

Dr. Laura is parading as some kind of authority (which is arguable, depsite the Ph.D. behind her name) and her words therefore carry a greater weight - they're more likely to be taken as true. Her criticism of homosexuality was not limited to the few phrases that are being bandied about here. Those phrases were part of a much larger pattern of vitriolic and religious-based (NOT science-based) gay-bashing that was frankly much more insidious than what 50cent said.

50cent is a rapper. Sure, his words reach a lot of people and he should probably consider the impact of them, but he's speaking as an individual - not as a medical authority - and his opinions are likely to be seen as just opinions. And as others have pointed out, he makes a distinction between "wrongness" and his preference not to be around people who are gay. There's a difference between being personally uncomfortable around a certain kind of person, and insisting that their identity is invalid, wrong, etc., because you don't happen to like it.
__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France
lurkette is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73