They called me an idiot, a moron and a homophobe, they dismissed my points as drivel, they tried to say I was against letting gay people have kids at all, they made statements about things I never even said, and worst of all they cut me off from responding to their comments and then banned me from their site. My horrible crime? I posted a piece called "Why I Can't Support Gay Marriage", my post right before this one on thehippieconservative.com. I knew it was coming. I was doing what I always do, trying to inject a train of thought that you may not have considered. For that I was banned from ever posting again on the Myspace Democrats.
To be fair, at first the Myspace Republicans wouldn't even let me join. I guess the word "hippie" got them a little nervous. Oddly enough, as soon as the Dems banned me the Republicans accepted me. (????) For those of you that aren't familiar with the whole Myspace world, it has a lot of groups and forums for supposedly open discussion. While the Myspace Democrats are a public group (you don't need to necessarily join to post) the Myspace Republicans is a private group (you have to request to join and be approved to post). Since I was rejected by the Republicans, (which, by the way I found very funny) and accepted by the Dems, I started posting some of my thoughts on their site. I started out posting some less contraversial pieces and things were going great. And then I decided to challenge them to open up their thinking a little by offering a debate against gay marriage. If you read the peice you'll see that all I was really arguing was that a gay marriage might not be the very best situation (I said optimum) for a child when compared to a man/women marriage. (You could even take the gay factor completely out of it.) I based it on research and made my points based on cross gender parenting, the raising of a child of the opposite gender. Since this is not a problem in a man/women marriage, I thought it was worthy of debate.
You would have thought I told the Christians that there was no Jesus. The attacks poured in. By now, most of you know me well enough to know I'm not afraid of a debate and that I promote civility in discussion. I don't think I would be understating it to say there wasn't a lot of that. Although I should point out here that it really didn't seem to be the gay people themselves that were the problem, it was those who wrap themselves in self-rightousness as a defender of their gay friends. One by one I responded to their accusations, misquotes, and misconceptions and then, suddenly, I was banned from responding. I immediately put up a post (I could still do that) and asked what it was that I had done wrong? I was civil. I didn't call people names. I didn't in the least bit promote any animosity towards gay people. What was the problem?
After about a half hour, (maybe they reviewed my comments) I was back up and responding. I stayed online for 3 hours giving my point of view as the accusations against me grew. One by one I corrected them and then, again, I was banned. Frustrated, I went to bed. In the morning, a thought for a new post came to mind on an unrelated subject. I logged in and was suprised to find out I can no longer post on the Myspace Democrats. Well, I'm mad as hell. Myspace has millions of viewers. It and Youtube make up the largest sites for posting material. If I allow this to happen, little by little we float into a world where only one view is tolerated, where open discussion is limited, and where free speech is slowly killed.
So what can we do? I'm asking all of you to take a minute and help me. Go to my post, read it and draw your own opinion. Go to the Myspace Democrats and read my comments and if you agree that I didn't deserve this, post you own Topic asking why I'm no longer allowed to post. It's a small battle, but remember freedoms never leave all at once, they fall a little at a time. Thanks in advance. H.C.
To be fair, at first the Myspace Republicans wouldn't even let me join. I guess the word "hippie" got them a little nervous. Oddly enough, as soon as the Dems banned me the Republicans accepted me. (????) For those of you that aren't familiar with the whole Myspace world, it has a lot of groups and forums for supposedly open discussion. While the Myspace Democrats are a public group (you don't need to necessarily join to post) the Myspace Republicans is a private group (you have to request to join and be approved to post). Since I was rejected by the Republicans, (which, by the way I found very funny) and accepted by the Dems, I started posting some of my thoughts on their site. I started out posting some less contraversial pieces and things were going great. And then I decided to challenge them to open up their thinking a little by offering a debate against gay marriage. If you read the peice you'll see that all I was really arguing was that a gay marriage might not be the very best situation (I said optimum) for a child when compared to a man/women marriage. (You could even take the gay factor completely out of it.) I based it on research and made my points based on cross gender parenting, the raising of a child of the opposite gender. Since this is not a problem in a man/women marriage, I thought it was worthy of debate.
You would have thought I told the Christians that there was no Jesus. The attacks poured in. By now, most of you know me well enough to know I'm not afraid of a debate and that I promote civility in discussion. I don't think I would be understating it to say there wasn't a lot of that. Although I should point out here that it really didn't seem to be the gay people themselves that were the problem, it was those who wrap themselves in self-rightousness as a defender of their gay friends. One by one I responded to their accusations, misquotes, and misconceptions and then, suddenly, I was banned from responding. I immediately put up a post (I could still do that) and asked what it was that I had done wrong? I was civil. I didn't call people names. I didn't in the least bit promote any animosity towards gay people. What was the problem?
After about a half hour, (maybe they reviewed my comments) I was back up and responding. I stayed online for 3 hours giving my point of view as the accusations against me grew. One by one I corrected them and then, again, I was banned. Frustrated, I went to bed. In the morning, a thought for a new post came to mind on an unrelated subject. I logged in and was suprised to find out I can no longer post on the Myspace Democrats. Well, I'm mad as hell. Myspace has millions of viewers. It and Youtube make up the largest sites for posting material. If I allow this to happen, little by little we float into a world where only one view is tolerated, where open discussion is limited, and where free speech is slowly killed.
So what can we do? I'm asking all of you to take a minute and help me. Go to my post, read it and draw your own opinion. Go to the Myspace Democrats and read my comments and if you agree that I didn't deserve this, post you own Topic asking why I'm no longer allowed to post. It's a small battle, but remember freedoms never leave all at once, they fall a little at a time. Thanks in advance. H.C.
3 comments:
"They called me an idiot, a moron and a homophobe, they dismissed my points as drivel, they tried to say I was against letting gay people have kids at all, they made statements about things I never even said, and worst of all they cut me off from responding to their comments and then banned me from their site."
C'mon Hipster. I only temporarily banned you from my blog. Sheesh! *Joke*
Seriously, I wouldn't let that nonsense get you down. In fact, above everything you should look at this situation with humor. To me, it represents the mindlessness and the hypocrisy of the two predominant political ideologies.
First, I'm not suprised that the Conservative folks were quick to dismiss you. Rejecting things that are "outside of the box" (and, believe me, a 'hippie conservative' is a perfect example) is their M.O.
Now; turning the attention to liberals; I think they're just as bad as Conservatives. They're only liberal when it comes to THINGS THEY SUPPORT. When something arises for which Libs have disagreement, they want to censor it, dismiss it, or vilify it. To me, the ultimate measure of being a liberal SHOULD be that even THEY know how to accept varying viewpoints. For example, the true "liberal" who advocates free speech needs to advocate it for their group as well as for the groups with whom they disagree. Clearly this didn't happen on MySpace.com
Personally, I think it's healthy and therapeutic to laugh at both of them equally...
Well said Andre,
Actually I found a lot of it funny, especially when the Myspace Republicans suddenly decided I could be in their group. What happens? Do the MS Dems send an E-mail, "We're kicking this guy out, you want him?" I'm just trying to turn this into a positive.
"C'mon Hipster. I only temporarily banned you from my blog. Sheesh! *Joke*"- Pretty funny Dre, I shot Coke out my nose. Thanks a lot, now I have to clean my keyboard.
Yeah. That Coke...uh...Coca Cola...sure can get messy. How that Coke...uh...Coca Cola...wound up in your nose is anybody's guess.
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