Comments

1
Meanwhile, the National Organization for Marriage is none too happy about such acceptance of gay people. To them, this cannot stand:

http://www.nomblog.com/9027/
2
Dang it. I'm sitting here at the office with tears in my eyes at the 4:00 mark. God bless that guy.
3
@2 -- Me too. *sigh* It's good to know that some people are wonderful, everywhere.
4
Texas may be a hotbed of right wing, intolerant Christians, it is also a hotbed of ELCA Lutherans, who are progressive and open and believe love trumps all.
5
I was very, very moved. But my gaydar was going off on all the male defenders, except the first gentleman.
6
I live in the Houston area. tolerance is widespread and lots of small town gays prefer to stay in their towns only travelling to the city for the nightlife. The most outspoken are anti-gay nimrods but their views arent upheld by all. The problem here is the majority of people dont believe politics works so they dont vote.
7
I learned to voice my opinion in case someone is recording me. and then I cried.
8
i wonder if the same scenarios would have played out had they been two gay men, taking away the element of "saving the poor defenseless women" our culture loves so much.
9
@8: Obviously you didn't watch the entire piece.
10
This was great. The bit about New Jersey and how fewer people got up to say anything was really interesting. “Not my business” sort of thing. There is definitely a vibe of that in CT where I live and grew up. I wonder if more people said something in Texas because of the undercurrent of Honor Culture they have down there. Also, I think urban areas do tend to have a “don’t get involved” mentality.
@8 they did have a male gay couple in the segment
11
Why can't more Christians be like that dude?
12
@8 you must have not finished the video. They did put in a male gay couple and the reaction was very similar.

I am with @5 though that the two men featured as defending the male couple do set off my gaydar. However considering they said about half the people present objected to the treatment, I'm guessing there were more than these two and presumably most were straight.

I find it a lot more depressing that the big city crowd failed so badly, taking the typical big-city "not my problem" attitude.
13
I'm without words.
14
The whole thing is amazing, but that letter from Donovan made me cry. It's nice to see Christians being Christ-like.
15
Wow, can we find some kind of award to give to the guy at 4min. When they showed him, I thought he was going to end up being a dick by the way he looked. He showed that I was being a judgmental asshole and his note brought tears to my eyes. He seems like a fantastic example of a NALT and I hope more people out there like him have the courage to speak out like he did.
16
@ #5 - Farmers Branch, Texas, where that piece was filmed, is a suburb of Dallas. It's very much an urban area.
17
Correction - I meant to say @ # 10, not #5 (sorry!)
18
While I'm pleased with the results here, I generally don't like socially engineered film work, and it does concern me that at least some percentage of people did not see a customer defending the couples and left smug and self satisfied that their prejudices had been effectively voiced by the waitress. I guess Texas is a big state with lots of different people - nice to see the positive side for once.
19
In defense of the northeast, they said they did it a year earlier. It is true that there is a very strong mentality of do not get involved in the northeast - and you need that when you live in a densely populated area. It's how you live with a lot of people around you without having a loss of privacy that causes problems. It's also how homosexuality became tolerated in New York City to a far greater extent than in most places far, far earlier than in most of the country - because it wasn't other people's business. So, it has pros and cons. But views on homosexuality are changing very fast, and the one year time delay does not make it a fair comparison. So, we can't really say how they compare.

What we can say is that this is a pretty nice sign that attitudes are changing.
20
@19 - I agree. New Yorkers do a lot of putting their heads down and ignoring other people. On the subway I try to take note of passengers who might be dangerous, might be drunk, or anyone who might need my seat. And then I shut down. Same on the street, in a restaurant, etc. It would have to be incredibly loud, blatant and bad for me to get involved in anyone else's business. You just don't do that here. In part because it can be dangerous to do so (There's a reason I don't tell the 230 lb., 6'2" bodybuilder who talks about his criminal past to stfu when he goes on about gays. I want to live to get to my destination.). Most people "voice" their displeasure by walking away. Or, in the case of a restaurant, I might leave a minimal tip and tell the manager why.

That said - good on Texas. I definitely sat and cried at my desk when Donovan's letter was read. What a wonderful show of love and support.
21
Very cool! Gives you a little hope about the human race. Then congress brings you back to reality.
22
Wow. Now they need to try this one in Tennesee.
23
Even if I appreciate the politics, I loathe scripted reality tv glurge.

All this means is that someone's crassly pandering to me, I see no sincerity, only demographics.
24
Yep, much easier to speak up in a town than in a big city.

Hate to say it, but it really does depend on whether I think it'd even be safe. In a nonviolent atmosphere during the daytime, sure. But I don't know if I could be as brave as the old woman at McDonald's in Baltimore during the attack on Chrissy Lee Polis. I'd probably just be calling 911 and hiding outside.
25
What dickhead wrote up that skit? But very nice responses.
26
@25 - Dickheadedness is the whole point of the show. It's a candid camera show where they do something dickish to somebody and observe the people around them.
27
The creator of Candid Camera did something similar in the 60s (or 70s, i forgot). Some of the clips were just silly situations but others were about people's reaction when confronted to bigotry against interracial couples for example. Much like this clip, a lot of the reactions were very surprising.
28
In conservative Texas common sense standards of publicly appropriate behavior get defended.

In liberal Jersey they don't.

Typical liberals, all hat and no cattle.
29
@28: Shouldn't you be taking your kids fishing?
Also, this was in Dallas. That's LIBERAL Texas, not conservative Texas.
30
@28
I must say you've come a long way, you now agree that supporting Gay Rights is the common sense and moral thing to do. Good For you.
31
@30

Gays have full equal rights now. They always have had. I suppose in that sense I do and always have said that treating our fellow citizens with respect and courtesy whatever their life choices is a general standard of behavior.

This isn't about granting gays exemption from the consequences of their life choices, or marriage. It isn't about granting them the priviledged citizen status Mr. Savage and others want for them. It's about general standards of public conduct.

And in that, to no-ones surprise, conservatives do better than liberals.
32
@29

My kids are in school. But we are planning a two week fishing and camping trip to the San Juan islands in June. Thanks for asking.
33
no no no no no -- Dallas is NOT, most definitely NOT, a liberal part of Texas.

34
@31: "Gays have full equal rights now. They always have had."
Okay, you're saying there were never such things as sodomy laws in this country (which were not finally done away with until 2003)? That people were never thrown in prison for consenting, discreet, and adult sex acts SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE THOSE SEX ACTS WERE HOMOSEXUAL? Alan Turing, one of the seminal genii of computer science, and who helped us beat back the Krauts by helping to crack the famous ENIGMA, committed suicide when he was forced to choose between prison or unwanted hormone therapy as punishment EXPLICITLY for him being gay. In New York, homosexuals were for a great while banned from drinking in bars due to having been arbitrarily branded "disorderly". And those are just the American examples I could find in a few minutes!
If you want to believe that homosexuals were never explicitly oppressed under the law (not to mention the rampant denial of protection against discrimination), then sure, we are just making a big fuss about nothing whatsoever. But we're not; the past is the past, and all the smarmy avowals in the world won't change it. You can keep telling your lies, and eventually you'll grow to believe them. Or you can face the truth, as distasteful as it may be to you, and actually think a bit on the issues. You claim that conservatives are generally superior to liberals in thinking; you should have no trouble, then, coming to a rational conclusion as to whether or not you told a baldfaced, wholly-unsupported lie. Think also on this:
Gays have equal rights with straights when it comes to marriage, because they too can marry the opposite-sex, consenting, adult, and unrelated partner of their choice. But if same-sex marriage is legalized, will gays really have special privileges in that regard? After all, straights too will gain the right to marry the same-sex, consenting, adult, and unrelated partner of their choice. The same goes for laws that criminalize discrimination based on sexuality; it would be illegal to discriminate against someone because they're gay, but it'd also be illegal to discriminate against someone because they're straight. (Should a gay bar be allowed to fire a bartender if it came out [no pun intended] that they were straight? Do you support allowing those scary homosexuals to deny good honest heteronormative Americans jobs?)
See, nobody's trying to pass a law that will extend rights or privileges only to homosexuals; these all go both ways (like bisexuals), and will protect straight people as well. You have made a habit of ignoring this and reiterating the same old talking point about gay privilege. I'm wondering now if you're just refusing to read what I write, or if you're willfully shutting down any internal contemplation of the matter at hand. If the latter is indeed the case, shame on you for wasting that brain God gave you.

@32: Ooh, looks like fun! Apparently it's a big center of whale-watching.

@33: Dallas is one of the most liberal parts of Texas, according to voting patterns, but most of its suburbs are pretty conservative. IT ARE A FACT. I know it because of my learnings.

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