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Weiye Loh

Worms, dating and editorial consequences « Yawning Bread on Wordpress - 0 views

yawningbread.wordpress.com/...ing-and-editorial-consequences

Homophobia Homosexuality Censorship Freedom of Speech

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Sep 11 - No Cached

  • Freedom of expression is a civil right — this means that the state is enjoined from violating it. Note: the state. Private citizens can do what they please with their private properties. Thus ‘private’. Newspapers traditionally have been mouthpieces of their owners and editors, arguing for and promoting certain viewpoints. Restaurants are not obliged to pin any and every damning review of their food and service on their front doors. Mosques do not have to include Islamophobic letters to the editor when putting together their monthly newsletters. A political party is not obliged to carry criticism of its program on its website.

    Even when it comes to the role of the state, it is generally accepted that the freedom of expression that the state should protect is not an absolute one. Arguably, states can regulate hate speech — which includes speech that deliberately demean an entire class of persons, urging social and political restrictions on them. Thus, even by that measure, there is a good case for not permitting the airing for homophobic views.

  • Weiye Loh on 26 Sep 11
     
    A continuing difficulty for webmasters is the degree to which homophobic statements, including thinly disguised appeals to pseudo-reason, should be allowed. This seems to be more difficult for webmasters than taking decisions regarding racist statements. Why is this so when homophobia is equivalent to racism? Most probably it's because an intellectual position against racism is longer established, and ordinary people, even if they themselves cannot quite articulate the intellectual arguments against it, have imbibed the conclusion - that racism is wrong - as morally-binding. The intellectual position against homophobia is just as strong, but perhaps not enough time has passed for this to migrate into popular consciousness.
Weiye Loh

The Gay Case Against Gay Marriage and Gay Bigotry | marksimpson.com - 0 views

www.marksimpson.com/...t-gay-marriage-and-gay-bigotry

Sexuality Marriage Freedom of Speech Religion

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Sep 11 - No Cached

  • Miss California, a practising Christian, was last week denounced by Miss America judge Perez Hilton on his blog as ‘a dumb bitch’ and unworthy of the Miss America crown because she gave the ‘wrong’ answer to his chippy question about gay marriage. Like most Americans – including the current Democratic President of the United States – she believes that marriage is ‘between a man and a woman’. Boo! Hiss! Rip her to shreds!

    It wasn’t just the famously bitchy gay gossip-monger Hilton casting stones, however. For honestly and somewhat courageously answering his question Miss California was roundly condemned as a ‘bigot’ by hosts of gay and liberal bloggers, and was even denounced by the directors of the Miss California pageant who declared themselves ‘saddened’ by her views and that they had no place in the ‘Miss California family’, whatever that is. Most now agree with Hilton’s gloating claim that her answer cost her the crown.

    Candidate Obama expressed the exact same view during the Presidential Election: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union. You know, God’s in the mix.” Instead of being scorned as a bigot and a dumb bitch, Obama was handed the Mr America crown by liberals and probably most gay voters. But I suppose that being President of the United States is a rather less important title than Miss America.

  • gay marriage zealots, many of whom admit that they themselves don’t wish to get married, insist on characterising civil unions as ‘second class’, ‘social apartheid’ or ‘riding at the back of the bus’. I’d like to think it was merely a ploy to make fully-recognised civil unions more achievable, but many really seem to believe their own shrill propaganda. Worse, they’ve made even more of a fetish of the word ‘marriage’ than the religious right they rail against.
  • In the UK, where nationally recognised same-sex civil unions with the same legal status as marriage – called civil partnerships – were introduced in 2004 there is little or no appetite now for gay marriage. In my experience few lesbians or gays feel they are ‘riding at the back of the bus’. Maybe because in many ways they’re actually riding at the front. It’s probably only a matter of time before gay civil partnerships in the UK are made available to all, as they are in France – where the vast majority of applications are now made by cross-sex couples disenchanted with traditional marriage.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • so far the gay marriage crusade in the US doesn’t seem very interested in any of this or lessons it might learn from the experience of other countries. Instead it seems too busy proving itself holier-than-thou. And less sophisticated than Miss America contestants.
  • Weiye Loh on 13 Sep 11
     
    Branding Christians and traditionalists 'bigots' for being Christians and traditionalists and thus none too keen to fundamentally revise the definition of marriage is a highly unattractive exercise in liberal self-righteousness that makes Miss America look quite sophisticated. Not to mention sounding a lot like pots and kettles rattling. It's faintly absurd to have to even say this, but it isn't bigoted to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. It's just being conventional. And after all, marriage itself is convention and tradition tied up in a big red bow and covered in confetti and sprinkled with Holy Water. Which is exactly why lesbians and gays should have nothing to do with it.
Weiye Loh

Ugly politics in NY gay marriage vote - 0 views

www.wtnh.com/...vote-get-ugly-nt11-jpe_3858783

Freedom of Speech Homosexuality Religion Law Marriage Discrimination Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 11 - No Cached

  • "Our unofficial Facebook policy is not to automatically delete comments that disagree with us, but when the comments come into untruths or uncharitable, then we have to delete them," Poust said. "And when it really becomes abusive we have to ban them."

    According to the group, one Facebook post stated: "Eventually your kind of 'religion' will be extinguished from the memory of mankind forever, because this sort of interference in the lives of people you only wish to harm. You have NO MORAL AUTHORITY any longer because of your evil pedophilia."

    Another said the Catholic church only approves of marriages "that produce altar boys to be molested."

    The group deleted both.

  • "The tension has really reached a fever pitch for some people. ... I'm sure there are certain unstable members of both sides who are prone to excess," Poust said.

  • The Democrat has been using a

    kind of shuttle diplomacy to privately test proposals for additional religious exceptions within the Senate's Republican majority. He's talked to individual senators or small groups of lawmakers privately, breaking down barriers and letting them take his message to others in the Republican caucus.

    The proposed protections are aimed at saving religious groups from discrimination lawsuits if they refuse to recognize gay marriage based on their principles.

    "Will the conference allow a vote to be taken, that's the threshold," Cuomo said Wednesday evening. "I'm pro-marriage equality, I'm also pro-First Amendment, I'm pro-church-state separation and I'm pro-religious freedom. So I also have the same concern."

    Even if Republicans agree to the religious exemptions, that's no guarantee the bill will pass.

  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa and the District of Columbia allow gay marriage. Of them, all but Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., allow at least limited religious exemptions.
Weiye Loh

Sexual Harassment and the Loneliness of the Civil Libertarian Feminist - Wendy Kaminer ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...236887

Freedom of Speech Gender Equality Sexual Harassment Libertarianism

shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • feminism helped lead the assault on civil liberty and now seems practically subsumed by it. Decades ago, when Catherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and their followers began equating pornography with rape (literally) and calling it a civil-rights violation, groups of free-speech feminists fought back, in print, at conferences, and in state legislatures, with some success. We won some battles (and free speech advocates in general can take solace in the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the right to engage in offensive speech on public property and public affairs). But all things considered (notably the generations of students unlearning liberty) we seem to be losing the war, especially among progressives.
  • Concern about social equality and the unexamined belief that it requires legal protections for the feelings of presumptively vulnerable or disadvantaged students who are considered incapable of protecting themselves has generated not just obliviousness to liberty but a palpable hostility to it.
Weiye Loh

Angry Doctor: Take our rights... please! - 0 views

angrydr.blogspot.com/...take-our-rights-please.html

Sexuality Religion Freedom of Speech

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Feb 10 - Cached

  • Take our rights... please!

    angry doc is quite disappointed by this piece of news.

  • angry doc feels the making of the police reports represent more of a disservice to the LGBT community than help.

    While our laws are currently biased against gay people (S377A) and in favour of people of religion (S298), angry doc does not believe that the solution to this state of inequality lies in appealing to the authorities to gag or punish those who speak against the LGBT community (or for that matter any segment of society).
  • By appealing to the law to take away the right of a person to express his opinion publicly, even if that opinion is wrong or unjustified, we are effectively supporting the belief that the law has that right. What is needed is not for more of our rights to be taken away, but returned to us. The solution to 'bashing' from religion is not to demand that they be silenced, but for the right to challenge the contents of that 'bashing' to be returned to us.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • If we say to the police: "shut this man up for what he says offends me," then can we really complain when the police tell us to shut up because what we say offends another man?
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