Thursday, November 24, 2005

daft people who are real men

The Polish Prime Minister, the delightful Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has expressed concern that "unnatural" homosexuals might "infect others" with their deviant behaviour. Enough for yer man Peter Tatchell to organise a protest, and enough for the Guardian to post a short message about it on its Newsblog. It's the response from 'Stan' that is worth reading, however, for a sign that we can't get all high and mighty about the grossly unpleasant homophobia abroad before confronting the idiocy closer to home.

Stan comments that "Homosexuality is not a human right. It is a lifestyle choice. Of course, Im sure we'll start hearing about how we need to "educate" the Poles into accepting Homosexuality. Hopefully slavic men, just about the only real men left in Europe, will just laugh at these people". Stan's a real man, too btw. More interesting is the fact that he's not the first to reply with a splurge of drivel - an initial comment mentioned that "most people believe homosexuality is gross. Of course faith groups dont want to engage with you! Youre like someone going to a football game and demanding to watch cricket". This genius of this rather colourful comparison aside, the Guardian chose to delete the comment rather than let it stand. Good old Stan reinstates it. Both utter idiots, obviously, but should the Guardian have deleted the original comment? What do you think?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't thnk the Guardian should have deleted the comment. I wonder whether the massive new Guradian readership are really on board. Take the letters page on November 10th:

The opinion polls show that over 70% of the voting public is in favour of introducing an up to 90-day detention period for suspected terrorists. So how come our elected representatives have just voted to reject what we want?

Rosemary Roome
Bedford


Obviously an interested Sun reader...

Stephen Newton said...

I don't think Stan's comment was offensive enough to be deleted. After all he'd been robustly shouted down by others, who now look a little silly because we don't know what they're responding to.

I think you can measure the amount of freedom in a society by the number of lifestyle choices it offers, so Stan's critique doesn't bother me.

Anonymous said...

Censorship causes a real problem

I see there's a newish blog dedicated to campaigning to stop Amazon selling child porn
Ostensibly this is a good thing for most people

But, if successful, where would it end

Anything that attracts the displeasure of a number of people (what number, one wonders?) becomes a target

America has its 1st amendment to the constitution protecting freedom of speech - to me this seems only right - I wish the UK and other countries had the same freedom

If one bans paedophiles, racists and fascists from airing their opinions, then why not ban trainspotters, advocates of cannabis legalisation, homosexuals and the Respect Party?

It's a tricky one