A suggestion for us about the shit stirrers.

[Jamastiene]

It wouldn't hurt to consider avoiding any threads accusing us of racism unless that thread is in the GLBT Forum. Most of the 1,999,999 threads complaining about the racist gays are being started by shit stirrers. They are trying to get rid of us and at the same time, pat themselves on the back by overdoing the "I'm not a racist, they are, see?" bit.

If we completely stay out of those threads, they'll keep bragging on themselves and patting themselves on the back about how non racist they are. The more they talk, though, the more they will show just how much they do NOT know about the topic. Eventually they'll stick their feet in their mouths and get their asses handed to them.

Quite a few of them are just shit stirrers who are throwing gasoline on something that would be nothing more than a mere spark. They are only making things worse with their zillions of self righteous threads. They should step back and let the GLBT community and the AA community work this out amongst ourselves. Instead, they keep baiting us and it is only making everyone more pissed off and angry at each other than we would be if we just worked things out, one on one, without the outside agitation.

This race war bullshit needs to stop pronto. The only way we can put a stop to it is to stay the fuck out of the shit stirring threads. You know them when you see them by how much they make your blood pressure go up. Don't feed them. Please avoid them.

I would like to make this suggestion for us to try to work things out without so much gasoline splattering everywhere:
Let's have a thread here in the GLBT forum and invite our AA friends to help us fix this nightmare as soon as possible between the two groups. Reconciliation would be a good starting point if we are ever going to have peace again. Those who are not ready to kiss, make up, and try to move forward yet, could try to just read the thread and not post until you feel like you are over the anger and the hurt enough to start talking about reconciliation too.

The important thing to remember is that the majority of AAs here weren't the ones who voted to take our rights away. Also, some AAs are GLBT too. We have more in common than we differ. We wouldn't be on DU if we didn't.

This race stuff is bothering me. If we do not come together and end this race war bullshit on our own soon, I am going to send an email to Skinner and ask him if he will come up with a solution for us. I can't live like this, y'all. I refuse to take part in a race war when I do NOT want to fight.

You can officially call me a hippy now.

I'm putting all my weapons back in their collector's cases (even though I love looking at my mostly unused collectible weapons) and going back to the Lounge.

Fuck a goddamn race war.

I want no part of it.

I know how unnecessary and destructive that entire illogical concept is.

I refuse to post in any more of those "you racist gays" threads.

Fuck those shit stirrers.
Hard.
Sideways.

[msongs]

1. the common denominator for YES on 8 voters is a certain religion & its various sub-cults. race is

not really the primary factor so talking about various race issues is irrelevant. After all predominantly/exlusively black churches have their counterparts in the nearly almost exclusively white LDS church or predominantly latino Catholic churches AND various mixed race churches. And those churches are ALL variations on the superstitions of the Jesus myths.

Msongs

[Jamastiene]

3. Actually, it would not hurt us to have a topic here on extremism in religion as well.

I see your point about race, but the damage has already been done. It would be much better if we found a way to make up within the confines of DU with the AA community. I just want some peace. Ya know?

[Ellen Forradalom]

4. I've thought for a while that the "Harold Washington coalition" would fall apart

This coalition is the alliance between white liberals and African-Americans that began with civil rights, elected African-American officials like Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago, achieved civil rights and open housing, and reached its ultimate victory with Obama. The two groups politely agreed to overlook major political and social differences in order to achieve those goals. The rage over Prop 8 is reminding (or teaching some for the first time, judging by some comments here) that many quarters of the black community hold very conservative views on social issues--enough to constitute a significant voting bloc. This electorate was courted by both Yes on 8 and Obama. It is the conservative aspect of this electorate, not its color, that is germane here. But the fallout is severe discord in a traditional Democratic alliance.

[Jamastiene]

5. Ultimately, it REALLY does come down to the conservative part of the equation.

We all know that nothing brings social conservatives out to vote like GLBT rights and abortion. They are obsessed with those two issues quite a bit. They could be on their death beds and would still vote if it was a chance to vote on those key issues )and some more issues they seem to like to harp on an awful lot).

Couple that with the fact that conservative does not always mean Republican but Republican mostly means conservative. That leaves the overlap with the Democratic Party. We've all known for years that there are socially conservative Democrats. Quite frankly, those are the ones I always blame when a Democratic presidential candidate does not win in a general election. In truth, though, it is the socially conservative factor (regardless of any other factor except maybe extremist forms of religion) that is the bottom line.

How do we get the social conservatives to loosen up at least enough to listen when we try to show them the difference between myths and facts about the GLBT community? I wish I knew the answer. God knows I've tried here where I live. Sometimes you can get them to loosen up. Sometimes you cannot. I can't help but think different methods work for different people to come to some understanding.

[bluedawg12]

9. Well said. If I recall some neocons were libs back then.

Irving Kristol famously said: a neoconservative is a liberal kicked in the head by reality.

It's an interesting historical passage in politics.

We'll see what this coalition brings GLBT issues, our President has not even been sworn in, good things may yet come.

[Jamastiene]

12. One thing is for sure.

If the protesters can keep it up at the same rate of the last few days, Obama's first major crisis will be to do something to calm things down.

He won't even be able to do anything else. He will HAVE to do something about gay marriage that will settle the country back down. The only thing he WILL BE ABLE TO DO that will insure some peace is to fix it, regardless of anything he has said before on this issue. If we keep the heat turned up long enough to hit January 20th and as long as it takes beyond that date, we'll get it turned around. If we don't, it might be years before we can even begin to try again. It might not hurt us to start using the same strategies of the 60s civil rights movement and KEEP IT UP. Keep going and don't back down.

[MuseRider]

2. You might want to post

something similar in the AA group. I would bet that there are more than a few there who would also love to put this aside and work together. Good post, it is ridiculous to make more separations among ourselves.

Welcome to the hippy movement. Kum-bah-ya my friend! :hi:

[Jamastiene]

6. I should break out my acoustic guitar and practice that song.

Maybe we could stage sit-ins in the nastier threads where we only sing that song and refuse to fight. }(

[jonnyblitz]

7. I am actually trying to ween myself from this discussion on here

all together. it is starting to make me physically ill but for some reason i need to keep reading and commenting. this whole incident has completely RUINED any semblence of happiness for me over the election result. I get the feeling we are raining on everybody's post-election parade who think they don't have a dog in this fight. Democrats, for me, are damn near as big a group of bigots and assholes as the GOP even though many claim to support us which i believe they do to a point. the nasty assholes here seem to stand out more than the allies.

[Jamastiene]

10. The nasty assholes are louder.

They purposely say the most incendiary things to lure people into a heated debate that turns into a giant cluster fuck in no time flat. They aren't solving any problems. They are only making them worse.

Our allies are trying their best. I have seen WAY more outspoken support from our allies on DU lately than normal and for that I thank them. It is just that the shit stirrers are drowning any reasonable discussion out and pitting two groups together who really don't hate each other here.

I'll make a big huge confession: Unless someone tells me their race online, I don't know what race they are. I don't think we hate each other at all on DU. There are some here who are not for gay marriage, but I don't know what color they are. I don't think it really matters. What matters, to me, is there were at least 48 last time I counted, who voted no in the poll about gay marriage in GD: P. That's pretty disgusting.

[Moloch]

8. 100% Agreed and recommended.

There is no reason for shit starting and finger pointing here on DU. We should all come together and start a (non-accusatory) dialog with many in the African American religious community. I believe we can persuade them that their struggle for civil rights is the same as ours and we have much in common.

[HamdenRice]

11. This reminds me of a graffitti I once read in a majority white university

It was in a bathroom stall and it said, "there will be a meeting of the Black Students union in the telephone both on the fourth floor of Grey Hall."

There are only about 2-3% of us African American DUers. I think most of the Asian DUers were chased away by the DU animal lovers screaming about how Chinese and Koreans eat their beloved dogs and cats. (Man, that was a nasty thread war!)

You seem to be asking for a dialogue, but there aren't many of us left, and after the "let's vote on slavery" thread, I think there are going to be even fewer of us -- especially those of us who had great grandparents who were slaves -- if any, to dialogue with in the future.

[Jamastiene]

13. We'll have to try to recover from where we are then.

I cannot argue against your point at all. We'll have to work with what we got. It can't continue like this. Something's gotta give.

Maybe we should just agree to alert the most incendiary threads when we see them and not feed those kinds of flames. We cannot "rally the troops" according to the rules, but we can agree to take it upon ourselves to alert on a case by case basis when each of us sees something incendiary like that.

I missed the thread you were talking about entirely. What day was it? Most importantly, is it still open or has it been locked?

[jonnyblitz]

14. nothing is going to get resolved on this issue here at DU.

eventually people will stop posting the same two comments over and over and over and over like they are the first to say it and we will move on to the next divisive topic. this is a place for people to yell at each other, nothing else happens.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

15. I've decided to try to stay in the GLBT forum when discussing this issue. We are among family here

GAY AND STRAIGHT!


There are lots of awesome people here at DU from all religions, races, and orientations.





I want everyone reading this post who supports us and is not gay to know we truly appreciate you, and we know that there are plenty of you.

Thank you.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

16. Oh, also, FUCK YOU to the whiners who are mad that we dare complain about the bigotry

against gays in California AND on DU.

[bluedawg12]

17. There's not much more to say at this point,

we're going in circles. I agree, unless something outrageous comes up, we should probably continue to work on this among oursleves in this forum. Where we can hatch secret plots. :rofl:

Oh those gays.