Ironic Statement of the Day -- Friday, March 9th Version

Just read it.

Did I mention that I'm proud to have a blog where NDT's comments are actually welcome?

Then remember this.

NDT has finally joined the long, proud list of Malcontent bannees. Like Mike Rogers and company, he is a gay person whom ironically I believe to be dangerous to the interests of gay people.

Then guffaw. :)

Regular commentor and all-around good guy Pat stated in the comments to the first version of this post, "Times change, don't they?"

Actually, I don't think I changed at all; it's just that Matt and Robbie ultimately figured out that I wasn't going to cut their counterproductive and hateful behavior on the occasions they practiced it any more slack than I did Mike Rogers's. I have the utmost respect for both GayPatriot and Boi from Troy, but that doesn't stop me from calling them out in similar situations.

Gays, at least in my opinion, put a higher value on belonging and unity than most. This is understandable, since the great majority of us have been to some degree separated from the places in society that would ordinarily support that, like churches, families, organizations, and such; we want what we haven't had or have been denied. But the danger in wanting to belong too much, to be popular, as shown to us in innumerable after-school specials, is that you put belonging ahead of thinking and keep making excuses about how you have to do this, or people will stop liking you. H.G Bissinger's Friday Night Lights (a great book that became an average movie and turned into a lousy TV show), about the hero worship of high school football in a West Texas oil town, has a powerful and sad example of the lengths to which people went to be associated with the players.

Then there was the girl who had been dubbed the “book bitch”. So desperate was she to ingratiate herself with the football players that she bought one of them a brand-new backpack and then offered him fifty dollars to sleep with her. When that didn’t work, she offered to bring the books of several of them to class. Dutifully, she waited in the hallway, whereupon Don and some others loaded her down with books so she could trudge off to class with them with a slightly chagrined smile on her face, as if she knew that what she was doing was the price you paid for trying to gain the acceptance of the football players when you had blemishes on your face and didn’t look like Farrah Fawcett.

Sounds like Elizabeth Birch at a Clinton campaign rally.

But what's worse in the gay community is that, once we've been "accepted" by other gays -- that is, once our book-bitching actually works -- we have an adamantine resistance to doing anything that might jeopardize that acceptance.

Again, understandable; having been rejected more than most, gays are hypersensitive about avoiding the pain that comes with that, and will thus want to tend towards compromise, accomodation, or saying nothing. But what this means is that, more often than not, gays are faced with a Hobson's choice: go along with something with which you disagree in the name of unity and protecting your position as accepted, or hold to your principles and risk an avalanche of insult.

The reason I do the latter more often than not is simple; the most intrepid revolutionary is one who has a fear greater than anyone can inflict on him. Because of what I have been through in my life and experience, I know full well that letting yourself down is worse than any taunt, insult, or pain another person can bring against you.

And that is what ultimately matters most.