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|   | Subject: Oh, be sensible. Please.
Posted Aug 3, 2012 by KB | | Post: 1
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There have been a lot of bits in the local press recently about the fact that the DUP mayor of Belfast accepted an invitation to attend a "Gay Pride Event". Now, the DUP are a party with a considerable pedigree of homophobia and Christian fundamentalism, so accepting an invitation to a "Gay Pride Event" does indeed sound like a big step forward.
Until you learn that the particular "Gay Pride Event" he accepted the invitation to was a panel debate, where his role was to play the homophobe on the panel, and explain to everyone how marriage is between a man and a woman, and all the rest of it. 
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it *is* progress that he even agreed to turn up there. Baby steps, baby steps. Take it slowly.
After all, if the world's just 4000 years old, there's still plenty of time before the Enlightenment.
Okay, see, this is where the Phantom Time Hypothesis comes in handy: A84336528.
If your calendar is running slow by about 300 years, what you're doing makes perfect sense, I guess. 
 Why can't we forcibly re-educate these people? I vote we make this guy live next door to, say, John Bannerman... I understand Bannerman speaks Scots, so he could probably explain it all to the Mayor of Belfast in terms he could understand. 
|  | Subject: Oh, be sensible. Please.
Posted Aug 3, 2012 by KB
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 3
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Dmitri, tell me you didn't really say that first sentence in the third paragraph. This time tomorrow it will be all around the fundamentalist blogosphere that a gay/commie alliance wants to send Good Decent People to gulags to be brainwashed.
 Oh, dear. I repudiate the gulag idea. But I think a visit from Bannerman might do the fella good...
| | Subject: Oh, be sensible. Please.
Posted Aug 3, 2012 by KB
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 5
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Well, to be honest, my beef was with poor journalism equally as much as with Gavin Robinson. Cut 'n' paste journalism about him going to an unmentioned "Gay Pride Event".
And while it is something new for a DUP mayor to even accept an invitation to an Event Such As That, I can't find it within myself to call it progress. It's progress in the sense that it's...well, let's face it. It's a more polite form of bigotry. 
Yep. Fake debate, silly journalists.
But hey, I read the Belfast Telegraph online upon occasion. While a cut above our local rag, it's...okay, I'd better shut up while I'm ahead. 
| | Subject: Oh, be sensible. Please.
Posted Aug 3, 2012 by KB
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 7
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I don't have a problem with bad journalism in your local paper, or her local paper, or my local paper. But when it tells us to applaud homophobia, for being not quite as bigoted as it could be, or used to be - and uses the same copy word-for-word as BBC Northern Ireland use - then...
Sorry. Accepting an invitation doesn't mean you aren't a bigot.
No, you're absolutely right. It doesn't.
I know a lot of silly people who think something like that is 'dialogue'. No, dialogue is when you're ready to change your mind about something. Or at least learn.
Yup. I've given up even pretending to respect people who don't at least start with an acknowledgement of shared humanity.
Dublin Pride once hosted a debate on the employment equality act, except that the opposition failed to turn up, so we had a panel discussion instead. (My question was about religious exemptions. I left out the bit about the government giving special rights to people merely because they had, or claimed to have, an imaginary friend, and merely questioned whether it was the government's place to define what is, and what is not, a religion. For what it's worth, David Norris agreed.)
TRiG.
| | Subject: Oh, be sensible. Please.
Posted Aug 4, 2012 by  Beatrice
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 10
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Have fun at Belfast Pride, anyone who's going! Look out for darling daughter dancing in Custom House Square.
|  | Subject: Oh, be sensible. Please.
Posted Aug 4, 2012 by KB
This is a reply to this Posting.
| | Post: 11
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I should have been there - I planned to be - but I got involved in a philosophical discussion with my brother and my father that stretched into the wee small hours 
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