Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Manny Doin' Stuff
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Vote!
Friday, July 03, 2009
What Am I Supposed to Say?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Finally, A Win
Thanks for making it a memorable one, Andre.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Home Sweet Home

Highway Robbery

Friday, June 26, 2009
Overreaction?
Over at Sons of Steve Garvey, Orel relayed a story that started on the MLB message boards, got picked up by a Nationals blog called Federal Baseball, then by Big League Stew. And now I'm mentioning it. The gist of it is this: a Red Sox fan was heading down to D.C. for the Sox/Nationals series, and he asked Nationals fans if they could recommend a bar. They recommended a gay bar, the guy went there, everyone had a good laugh.
Except for me, of course, because I am the killjoy when it comes to homophobic content, no matter how vague it may be. Here's what I wrote in the comments section over at SoSG:
My first reaction was to laugh about this. But then the gay rights activist in me was like, "Okay, so he was sent to a gay bar. So what?" And the guy had to get out of there as fast as he could, I guess just in case he was raped or something. Those gay boys just can't keep it in their pants, am I right?
I guess my issue just lies in the idea that the worst possible punishment the Nats fans could think of for this guy would be to send him to a gay bar. And as long as this is the prevailing mindset, I'll continue to have an uphill battle.
I'm not trying to get totally up in arms about this because it's certainly not the most blatant example of anti-gay "jokes" I've seen, particularly since I spend my time reading a lot of sports blogs. Fanerman, another SoSG reader, responded with this:
...maybe it's just easy for me (a straight male) to say, but it doesn't seem that... bad.
The joke does play on homophobia (and the guy seemed to have some), and that mindset does indicate the uphill battle. But, to me, it doesn't feel much more than the kind of politically incorrect practical joke that guys do to each other. As far as how bad the punishment is, how many kinds of bars are there?
Yes, we could get into the whole "oh, everything has to be so PC now that no one can make a joke argument," but I don't know if I have the energy for that right now. The bottom line for me is that the mindset is the problem, and as long as it's considered even borderline acceptable for jokes of this type to be made at the expense of gay people, we have a problem.
Any sort of event that furthers the attitude that it's okay to make fun of gay people, however innocuous the joke may be, is grounds for complaint from the gay side of things. The idea is to change people's minds, and to make them see that we are the same as everyone else, and only want equal rights. Now, you might say, "okay, if you're the same as everyone else, then we should be able to make jokes about you." But the thing is, a lot of people aren't joking. A lot of people see the "gay rights movement" as a call to arms, a reason for them to stockpile weapons and spew hate whenever they get the chance. And if we continue to further this notion that "gay" equals "stupid" or "wrong," we simply lend credence to the idea that gay people are somehow less than human, and therefore not as deserving of the same rights the rest of you get.
Steve Sax of SoSG wrote me and had this to say:
[Maybe they were] just sending him someplace they figured wasn't consistent with what the BoSox fan expected (whether they knew for a fact or assumed). It's like Victoria Beckham rolling into town and asking for a furniture store and sending her to Ikea.
That is definitely a fair point. But when you actually go to read the message board (which you can find here), there is one post that jumps out at me. After the man came back from his gay bar adventure, and posted a comment thanking the fans for directing him there, one fan had this to say:
The original poster wanted to know of a good bar near the park, I just recommend [sic] the place where I thought a Red Sox fan would feel most comfortable.
Since it's clear the Nationals fans had a problem with the Sox fan asking for some advice about their city (their absurd reaction is an entirely different post that I won't bother with), you can almost create a syllogism out of this thing:
All Red Sox fans are stupid and awful for invading our ballpark to cheer for their team.
Gay people are stupid and awful.
All Red Sox fans are gay, and would therefore feel "most comfortable" in a gay bar.
Does that make it more obvious why this would bother someone like me? Hey, I'm not innocent, believe me. I have called someone who offended me a "fag" (though not to his/her face, ever) on more than one occasion, and I can't promise I won't do it again. So I'm part of the problem, for sure. But I'm working on it, which is more than I can say for most everyone else who makes these kind of jokes. This country is almost completely desensitized to the use of "gay" as a pejorative, and that doesn't make the fight for equal rights any easier.
I felt like I had already written about this, and it turns out I was right, as this post (the important part is after the baseball stuff, halfway into the post) from this time last year ago attests. And damned if that post isn't much, much better than this one.
