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- Path: sparky!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!uvaarpa!concert!borg!chopin!harris
- From: harris@chopin.cs.unc.edu (Trey Harris)
- Newsgroups: alt.homosexual
- Subject: Re: Reasoning with homophobes??
- Message-ID: <17810@borg.cs.unc.edu>
- Date: 22 Nov 92 21:35:07 GMT
- References: <By3228.CMn@cscns.com> <1992Nov21.225442.22416@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
- Sender: news@cs.unc.edu
- Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Lines: 31
-
- In article <1992Nov21.225442.22416@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> ted9e@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Thomas Edward Doyle) writes:
- >What should we do with the homophobes... and regular old
- >racists, for that matter? There's been numerous debates on whether the
- >oppressed should just lie down and take it of stand up and fight. I
- >haven't heard anyone, though, advocate just putting these hating
- >bastards behind bars and keeping them there for the rest of their
- >biological lives. clearly they're not fit to live in free society
- ^^^^
- >with the rest of us. Anyone agree?
-
- I don't. While I certainly don't like being hated, called faggot and
- queer, being bashed, or worse, I definitely don't agree that such
- people should be locked up.
-
- You use the phrase, "free society," but how 'free' is a society if
- 'freedom' entails putting away people with whom you do not agree for
- the rest of their lives?
-
- As Monsier Arouet put it, "I do not agree with what you say, but I
- will defend to the death your right to say it." Freedom is a precious
- thing. Mandated adherance to an ideology, no matter how benevolent,
- in speech and action has only one name: fascism. And I would no more
- want to live under a fascism of tolerance than a fascism of hate.
-
- I believe we must, in order to survive, convince those who would hate
- us of why they should not. But we must never _require_ others to like
- us. Such is a benevolent dictatorship of mind, but a dictatorship
- none the less.
-
- Trey Harris
- --Stranger in a Strange Thread!
-