Up through the 70s cops in every big city in America were just breaking up gay bars and beating the living shit out of everybody inside for no reason. Gay bars had to pay tons of protection money to the mob or dirty cops to stop this from happening (when possible), and their drink prices cost up to 5 times as much as a fancy straight bar. Gay people would have to pay $10 or $20 or more for a beer, and if they tried to go into a straight bar they could easily be beaten to death by a drunk mob.

Let's not forget you can shoot Harvey Milk to death and get a slap on the wrist just because he's gay, and all you need is to use "the twinkie defense."

The constant brutal gaybashing done by cops around the country only slowed down after the Stonewall riots where the cops got their asses beat down by an army of totally wasted gays and trannies and it was shown on television.


Gay rights movements are much slower (and lonelier) than ethnic based civil rights movements, because unlike blacks and Jews and other ethnic minorities, gays don't have gay parents and gay siblings and an all-gay neighborhood to act as a support group (unless they're born in San Francisco, West Hollywood, or Miami).

So don't be too hard on Kasz, he was making a really valid point.

First let me remind everyone that I support gay rights 100% and separation of church and state. Read through my whole post carefully because I don't want any misunderstandings. Remember, I'm not arguing in this post just explaining the world as I see it. I think it's important to understand the minds of the people your trying to change, and then do it with reason they understand.

Gay rights are different than ethnic or gender rights because there are choices. Of course, I don't mean gay people choose to be gay but they do choose to live a gay life. The right to a vote or equal opportunities is much less complex than the right to the pursuit of happiness (which isn't a right, it's just mentioned in the Declaration of independence). Beyond gay marriage laws and guaranteeing basic rights, the core of the problem is social. It's hard to explain to the masses that certain people deserve to be happy when they're all miserable (especially when it comes to romantic relationships and sex).

Look at surveys of people about sex, none of them are satisfied. Maybe they want more partners, better looking partners, better skilled partners, more attentive partners, or, maybe, they're just not loved. On top of that, many of them, are just disgusted by homosexual acts or believe it is wrong. Whether or not they believe that homosexuality is a choice, they most certainly know that homosexuals are choosing to be open and/or active.

For movement that is mostly social change there needs to be a change in tone. The homosexuals who are protesting, the overly publicly sexual ones, and the argument of "holocaust" and mirroring it to ethnic or women's rights will be a failure and lead to more problems. (Which would be really bad)

For it to be successful there needs to be a larger movement within the gay community to conform every other aspect of the larger society to be more inline with the rest of the culture they want acceptance from or they will not achieve their goals.

They would probably be more successful if they didn't align with Transgendered groups (which I also believe should have equal rights, but I'm talking about Gay Rights strategies) or other non-mainstream groups.

Unlike blacks or women were or transgendered people today, gay people largely aren't denied access to employment, opportunity, votes, credit, or their wealth. They need to change their focus. Instead of fighting for their rights, they need to focus on social acceptance, publicly contribute to the welfare of others.

Yeah, yeah, I know they shouldn't have to do all that stuff... Sucks, but life sucks and it isn't fair.

steven787 said: First let me remind everyone that I support gay rights 100% and separation of church and state. Read through my whole post carefully because I don't want any misunderstandings. Remember, I'm not arguing in this post just explaining the world as I see it. I think it's important to understand the minds of the people your trying to change, and then do it with reason they understand. Gay rights are different than ethnic or gender rights because there are choices. Of course, I don't mean gay people choose to be gay but they do choose to live a gay life. The right to a vote or equal opportunities is much less complex than the right to the pursuit of happiness (which isn't a right, it's just mentioned in the Declaration of independence). Beyond gay marriage laws and guaranteeing basic rights, the core of the problem is social. It's hard to explain to the masses that certain people deserve to be happy when they're all miserable (especially when it comes to romantic relationships and sex). Look at surveys of people about sex, none of them are satisfied. Maybe they want more partners, better looking partners, better skilled partners, more attentive partners, or, maybe, they're just not loved. On top of that, many of them, are just disgusted by homosexual acts or believe it is wrong. Whether or not they believe that homosexuality is a choice, they most certainly know that homosexuals are choosing to be open and/or active. For movement that is mostly social change there needs to be a change in tone. The homosexuals who are protesting, the overly publicly sexual ones, and the argument of "holocaust" and mirroring it to ethnic or women's rights will be a self-fulfilling prophesy. (Which would be really bad) For it to be successful there needs to be a larger movement within the gay community to conform every other aspect of the larger society to be more inline with the rest of the culture they want acceptance from or they will not achieve their goals. They would probably be more successful if they didn't align with Transgendered groups (which I also believe should have equal rights, but I'm talking about Gay Rights strategies) or other non-mainstream groups. Unlike blacks or women were or transgendered people today, gay people largely aren't denied access to employment, opportunity, votes, credit, or their wealth. They need to change their focus. Instead of fighting for their rights, they need to focus on social acceptance, publicly contribute to the welfare of others. Yeah, yeah, I know they shouldn't have to do all that stuff... Sucks, but life sucks and it isn't fair.

Oh really?

http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/programs/dogayrightslawsmatter.pdf

Long story short.  Discrimination based on sexual orientation is about equal to that of racism or sexism despite it being tons easier to conceal.

Hence why ENDA exists.

I didn't say there weren't legal problems, I said that the base of the problem and the solution were social.

Your own link supports my statement:
"The GAO found that a small percentage—never more than about
3%—of state employment discrimination complaints were claims of sexual
orientation bias. It concluded that, “relatively few formal complaints of
employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation have been
filed, either in absolute numbers or as a percentage of all employment
discrimination complaints in the state.”"

steven787 said: I didn't say there weren't legal problems, I said that the base of the problem and the solution were social. Your own link supports my statement: "The GAO found that a small percentage—never more than about 3%—of state employment discrimination complaints were claims of sexual orientation bias. It concluded that, “relatively few formal complaints of employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation have been filed, either in absolute numbers or as a percentage of all employment discrimination complaints in the state.”"

Read the rest of the article... that's about the total number... it's not population based.

Exerts from the article

"adjusting the raw data to account for the size of the gay workforce
suggests rates of complaint filing much closer to those of race and
gender than the small number of actually filed sexual orientation
complaints might imply."

"In eight of ten surveyed states, gay workers file claims of sexual
orientation discrimination more often than women file claims of gender bias.
These states are Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin."

"The raw data mask the similar filing rates of these different types of
discrimination. In Massachusetts, for example, MCAD receives an annual
average of 822 complaints of gender discrimination and 111 complaints of
sexual orientation discrimination. A quick glimpse at this data would imply
that there are roughly eight times as many gender complaints as there are
sexual orientation complaints. However, there are about 1.5 million women
in the workforce. The number of gay workers is much smaller. At the
lowest level of my range, there are about 61,000 gay workers in the
workforce, while at the highest possible level, there are about 325,000"

I get the point of the article. I cherry picked.

The advocates seem to agree with me:

"Moreover, gay advocates
themselves have expressed surprise at what seems to be under-utilization of
protections that they fought hard to secure and, accordingly, they have
attempted to explain why the numbers are so low."

(Exactly, what I'm saying, instead of dressing up for a parade and protesting they'd be better off following standard procedure that previous civil rights movements helped create.)

He doesn't support his overall claim:

"I find that in six of ten surveyed states, the
incidence of sexual orientation filings falls somewhere between the incidence
of sex and race discrimination filings."

He never says how he got the number of gay workers. You know how? He probably worked backwards from the number he wanted to get... which is admitted around p.19.

"The biggest methodological hurdle came in estimating the total number
of gay people in the workforce to utilize as the denominator for the sexual
orientation complaints. This is complicated because sexual orientation is not
visually identifiable and because there are no census-type data concerning
the number of gay men and lesbians in the workforce. Moreover, there is no
one meaning for “sexual orientation”—sexual orientation can be established
by reference to desires, behaviors, identities, or combinations of these, and
all three can fluctuate over the course of an individual’s life. Yet the method
of this Article’s analysis required some meaningful way around these
epistemological and practical counting problems.
I utilized the following process to address this hurdle. In each state,
I began with the 1990 U.S. Census estimate of the total civilian workforce. I
then expressed the number of gay people in the workforce as three different
possible portions of this total: 10%, 5%, and a combined number consisting
of the sum of 2.4% of the male workforce and 1.3% of the female workforce.
I selected three different figures to provide a range for the findings. Given
the impossibility of arriving at a single estimate of the number of
heterosexual or gay people in society, presenting three points across a fair
range of the possibilities seemed the most sensible way to proceed."

How does generality of amount of gay people in the work force or in society have to do with the number of internal state-employed cases of orientation discrimination?

I'll restate my point though: The gay rights movement, as it is, is destructive to their own cause and poorly planned. If they want to be successful there needs to be changes in tone and method.

It's simple... there are just less people to discriminate against.

I'll go further though, there's always risk at work when you talk about your romantic life at work or act in a manner that isn't socially acceptable or palatable.

The argument still comes back to choices (not being gay, the choice to behave a certain way)

If I talk about my GF (or even if we're just seen out), I run the risk of making people not like me and them holding something against me.

If I dress in a manner that isn't acceptable for my work (whether effeminate, gangsta, sporty, nerdy, etc), my coworkers will like me less and I'll lose sales or get fired.

If I talk a certain way (whether a lisp, a stutter, etc.; granted this isn't a choice but there's coaching available and plenty of sources to work on speaking skills), my coworkers will like me less and I'll lose sales or get fired.

Like I said, life sucks. There's no fair way to address these things unless social acceptability changes.

Picking Warren seemed to me a very strange move. But... Obama might have calculated that he had a better chance of some political gain measured against a small political loss. Akuma's sketch of the calculus seems sensible... but it still strikes me as an odd choice.

I'm more interested to see how this is going to play out against the background of some larger strategy. There has to be some larger framework that he's laying out. This must be just a precursor, or the foundations of some larger plan that is being put into motion. Right? I hope so, uh, I guess.

Kasz is definitely right about people being able to discriminate against gays in housing situations in almost every state. There just aren't any laws to protect them unless a city or a state passes those laws themselves.

I was pretty surprised to learn this in my property law class.

Ironically, you can still discriminate in most places against people based on "marital status", for instance if they are an unmarried couple who are living together and that offends you, there is no law that prevents you from discriminating against them.

But very few landlords give a shit about that these days it is so common.

Gays are sometimes forced to "hide", which is pretty ridiculous.