Gays making headway on the marriage front...

[evangelicalhumanist]

I'm admitting to being bloody gorgeous for 62 years old (in 2 weeks). That photo you see is me at 61!

[Baruch]

Plan a happy birthday. I had my last childhood birthday party when I was 9, then didn't have another one until I was 50, thanks to my best friend. Since then, no more parties again. Bummer!

Shalom

[Kurt]

Baruch, go back and re-read what I wrote in my last post. I never suggested that gay people were in any way superior(Leonardo's). I simply offerd up the fact that demonstrating superior skills or qualities is more dangerous for gays than it is for straights. Leonardo gay? Neither you nor I can know. And who cares?

Kurt

[Baruch]

Thanks for clarifying. I will choose to not accept your thesis though. I think it is more dangerous for gays to be out of the closet, doing anything at all, than to be still in the closet, and doing anything at all. I am not proposing that gays stay in the closet however.

I suspect many talented people in the past were gay (Leonardo) or bi (Michelangelo) ... and since they were not outed, they weren't persecuted except for the usual envious reasons ... though close friends knew their dispositions (which is why biographers know details about those two artists). It is now believed that Lincoln was bi and his predecessor, Buchanan, was gay.

Perhaps your point is, that if one is a celebrity ... with the public press already focused on one ... then it is harder to be out of the closet gay, except in California, than if one is anonymous. Well that would be a truism, wouldn't it?

Shalom

[evangelicalhumanist]

These days in the U.S., I think it's probably more dangerous to be out as an atheist than it is to be out as gay. Then again, to be out as both probably means you're toast!

[Baruch]

Well things certainly are going backward in Texas, as the textbook controversy is just the tip. Catholic and Baptist dictatorship that ;-(

Shalom

[evangelicalhumanist]

Here's an interesting aside to this conversation.

A man named George Smitherman is running for Mayor of Toronto (Canada's largest city). Smitherman was previously a very powerful minister in the Cabinet of the Government of Ontario, serving as Minister of Health and Deputy Premier, and later as Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. During his time as Minister of Health and Deputy Premier, Mr. Smitherman married his long-time partner, Christopher Peloso.

Mr. Smitherman and his husband are now living with a 15-month boy who they will soon adopt, approved of by the Toronto Children's Aid Society (which by the way cared for me all those many years ago).

And here's the really interesting bit. In a 100% democratic process like a Canadian civic election, Mr. Smitherman, well-and-truly out, married to a same-sex partner and about to adopt -- is still the front-runner!

Amazing, don't you think? Does that mean the people don't really always think what their governments and their churches tell them to?

[Baruch]

Perhaps people in Canada still have free thought. Americans gave up all their freedom on 9/11, for false security.

Shalom

[Kurt]

I suspect many talented people in the past were gay (Leonardo) or bi (Michelangelo) ... Shalom

Interesting. Why talented people particularly? Do you think that there are a higher percentage of gay people in the ranks of the talented than amongst the less-talented? I'm not saying, right now, whether I'm on either side of that proposition. I'm just wondering what your reasoning might be.

Kurt

[Baruch]

Well talent isn't found among ordinary people. And gay people are ranked with the non-ordinary. Also talent correlates higher with the autistic, than with the non-autistic, though being autistic is just one way of being non-ordinary. In any case it would be a lose correlation. Jews are also not ordinary except in Israel. Only the non-ordinary can color outside the lines.

Shalom