Well first off, anyone wanting to know my views on the whole subject of depression can search the archives to their hearts content, especially anyone who thinks B&S songs are too happy. Also, people who think you have to talk it like you walk it. Look at comedians like Paul Merton, Caroline Aherne, Spike Milligan. All depression sufferers at one time or another and you don't hear them banging on about it all the time. Not like Thom Yorke or little teenage Manics fans. Not that I am accusing them of faking it, but we don't need to hear it all the time. This has all been covered a while ago, so onto something else: Namely, the whole gay/Catholic thing. Amongst other loads of contentious ill-thought out arguments (now Chris, I understand you didn't think them out, but do you have to swallow (ahem) them quite so whole-heartedly?), was this gem...
I personally don't believe that a homosexual lifestyle and family environment(ie. - katy stays with ron and dave, or whatever that book was) should be promoted as a replacement for a hetrosexual family environment, as it CANNOT BE EQUAL - there are two 'fathers' or 'mothers'.
Does this mean that anything without one father and one mother is wrong? OK, your (and formerly my) church see divorce as wrong, but what of in the case of bereavement? What if one finds oneself with one mother and NO father through no fault of your own? What's your God thinking of by depriving you of the normal family environment that seems so bloody important? Also this one:
However, it [the Catholic Church] does not agree with homosexual acts (ie. sex) due to it's definition of the purpose of sex. It believes that sex is a sign of commitment in a permanent loving relationship.
I am currently in as near to a permanent relationship as I would imagine possible, and don't need to be married to know that it will last (the wedding's for the family and all the other shit that goes with being married - I don't think "but we won't break up, honest" will convince in a court of law no matter how convinced we both are of it), so by your definition we are allowed to have sex (like we need the permission of any church) as we are in a permanent loving relationship. What about monogamous gays? These do exist, unless you think all gays are just like Stuart out of Queer as Folk, which they aren't. Also the bit about just to produce children as a reminder of your love. Why are people impotent and infertile? If you are a happily monogamously married Catholic, if you find out you are infertile, do you have to stop having sex as you aren't going to produce children? What about when you hit the menopause? Let's continue:
Apparently some grown men have had to walk around with nappies due to damage caused to their arse muscles. our re teacher told us that. he also told us how lesbian sex 'happens'. That whole fisting malarkey was news to me.
And your RE teacher is one of these Keep the Clause types, I presume. I mean, you aren't ALLOWED to promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, so what better way not to than to tell people it's scary and evil and bad for you? As if Catholic guilt wasn't bad enough...How does he know how lesbian sex happens by the way? And does that mean anything a woman does to a woman is wrong is it's done to her by a man instead? Or is it not the nature of the act, just the perpetrator's gender? This is all horribly confusing and I certainly wouldn't want it explained like this to my kids. It's all a little bit fascist. Finally:
I don't think that promoting homosexuality in schools will change anything, because bigoted attitudes, are more often than not, created in the home, and no amout of persuading by a teacher will change a childs views from what thier parents taught them. If the parents were not bigoted, then neither would the children be.
Do your paretns share these attitudes, and if so why are you laying it all at the feet of your teacher, if no amount of persuading by them would sway you from what your parents told you first? So how do you suggest we stop the next generation from growing up as bigots, if you can't teach them and bigotry is inherited? I used to cringe as a child when my dad referred to people as poofs and darkies and the like, but he's got more tolerant as he's got older and as our generation have shown people like him that basically people are the same no matter what colour their skin or what they get up to behind closed doors with another consenting adult. I hope we are all boycotting Stagecoach buses by the way. For those of you not aware of what Struan was getting at, Brian Souter, the owner of Stagecoach buses and one of the richest businessmen in Scotland has offered an obscenely large amount of money to the Keep the Clause campaign, also backed by the Daily Record which Starry has already advised you to bombard with your junk. Do you think they'd get away with "get these blacks out of our homeland" or "Fascism lessons for all" campaigns? Doubt it... I would like to say I think Chris is perfectly entitled to his opinion, but I just get the sneaking suspicion that it's not really his opinion at all, just something he's learnt from an early age like his three times table or the alphabet. But if I'm wrong, and intelligent people genuinely believe there is something intrinsically wrong about wanting to have sex with someone you love, then I lose a little more hope every day. Golly this was rather serious wasn't it. I sort of promised myself I wouldn't get up on my high horse about this sort of stuff any more. But what the hell eh? Ailsa xx +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+