THE TWILIGHT ZONE

IMHO, the problem/discrepancy/disagreement here is actually the prism between personal and impersonal, abstract and concrete, hope you get the point..
Personally, I like the gays that I know very much. They are among the more sensible and inteligent people I know. I don't consider them any more ill than any other person I have met, at least from overt behavior and in the ordinary everyday life situations. Sometimes I see an edge of an issue somewhere, just as among other people.. but not in apparently higher concentrations than among the other people either.
Still in everything there is this other angle. In my life as well. I know how I feel but then there is also this other angle. The abstract impersonal force. I might listen to it, I might not, it's up to me. Though the further on the path I go the more I see with the eyes of the other.
You guys might be arguing from different positions. Sil from the abstract (though for her it is concrete) (but I'm not talking about everything she writes), you - the ones so vehemently opposing basically everything Sil says - from the real life personal (though you'd like to upgrade it to abstract, it is not the personal wanting that makes this transformation). The gay ice cream guy on the personal level seems like an ice cream seller. You may have a chat with him, he will advise you on the flavors, he himself might not be aware of ulterior motives other than making gayness more accepted and more everyday/normal. Which in itself is not a bad thing to want coming from a gay man, or any other man for that matter, if that is how he feels.
But personal, feeling/emotional plane is not all there is to things. Take a step away and look at things again. Stop your blabber of righteousness and be responsible. So many things leak out of its proper borders, how homosexuality is advertised (and I'm not just talking about ice cream) is only one of them.
I'd also want my friends to have a fulfilling life, and if they wanted children, well I would wish for them to be able to raise children (on the personal emotional level). But my friends is not all there is in the world.. there is also the gay ice cream guy (lol, for the joke). People get so emotional that they forget to actually look and think. It is something like a current brain disease or something. It's very easy to catch . I myself have been susceptible to it since young, and am not totally out of its grasp either (but I tell myself it is the others who are blind if they don't get it ).
Maybe the most healthy is a schizophrenic look, which I sometimes can't figure out enough to be able to stand up for something (but then again maybe that is also one of the good points of it..).

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concerning the illness again. Would you consider sadists and masochists mentally healthy? Is it not obvious they have some kind of problem? Still, they are part of our society, raise kids and all (though at least the kids have a male and female role model in this case). Why not homos? However, let's still be clear, they both do have deeper issues - which does not make them aliens or unable to lead more or less ordinary lifes.

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don't stop
because you have not found your answer
and as you look into the eyes of the unknown
don't forget the intent you have come with

Shawn, that is Sil's tactic, and it was exactly what I expected: call you, or anyone else opposing her gay.

You should know that by now, after all these years.

Sil has set up her mind, and no team of horses will be able to drag her from it.

For her being wrong is like being sentenced to death.

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Zoom! What was that? That was your life, Mate! That was quick, do I get another? Sorry, Mate. Back to the world of dreams. Yes, dear? ...

Hey Watergaze, you can write a lot more if you like, but you will never convince me Sil is right, and that these ice cream guys had some kind of pervert agenda.

Period.

Her attitude is based on nothing but a knucklebrain attitude by living in the woods, and very apart from a bit more 'civilized' - or should I say 'liberal'? - people.

She is simply scared her son and daughter might end up gay.

Well, if her son or daughter are not interested, they will put that 'temptation' aside.

If not, bad luck for Sil.

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Zoom! What was that? That was your life, Mate! That was quick, do I get another? Sorry, Mate. Back to the world of dreams. Yes, dear? ...

Watergaze, I really like your posts. They stretch the mind and agitate the layers...and that is the abstract core of this thread after all..

Exactly. The gay ice cream guy most likely isn't aware of his subconscious "orders" to expose children at the crucial age of prepubescence to the idea of licking phallic objects standing in front of his sign. And yet..

That's why I brought up the fact that he doesn't have any pictures of kids eating ice cream on his website. I just find that very odd to his assumed innocence. Someone must have advised him, or he came to the conclusion on his own. Either way his omission of the most natural customer profile of icecream consumer [the little kid with a cone] from his photo layout says to me he knows exactly what the laws are about online pedophilia, implied or outright. So he is aware after all, from all appearances one could deduce that.

And like I said, it isn't this one creepy guy that is the crux, it's all the people who, like Shawn, have "practically no reaction" who bury the "practically" part and support the guy without a second thought about the agitation, if even very tiny, they feel when first encountering his business name and what his business involves: selling essentially a children's product.

The agitation is the abstract core. And yes Abe, I am agitated about a world where pedophilia, homosexuality, beastiality, and all other forms of object-sexuality are modeled as "normal" for kids to aspire to subconsciously...as all kids do...they aspire to societal norms. The flyers count on this. Just like I would be agitated if the Nazis had won WWII and exterminating jews was "the right thing to do". Or if women were still given lobotomies "to calm their minds", as was accepted once, in spite of being born with brains they should be using for thinking. Or the practice of blood-letting to "cure disease". All forms of "normal" things that really aren't normal, or at least they shouldn't be. When you think of Nazis killing jews, you should feel a visceral agitation. When you think of women getting lobotomies, you should feel a visceral agitation. When you think of blood-letting to cure illness, you should feel a visceral agitation. When you think of a man combining a phallus to be licked by kids and openly calling that product "gay ice cream"..you should feel a visceral agitation. And when you think of that same man selling a cone to kids called "The Salty Pimp" that is chocolate colored, you should feel a visceral agitation..

These concepts are too big for Abe. So he falls back on bullying. It's his failsafe.

This is a good debate BTW and thanks to all who are participating. It has brought "life" back to TTZ.

That's just NYC y'all. NYC slickers wouldn't even bat an eye over something like this.

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Art for the Masses

The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Except For One Day Out Of The Year, Because Everyone Knows Anyhow Tradition.

Here they have a tradition in most of the colonios, which are neighborhood communites of several thousand people, of the Mojigangas, each in their annual community street festival. Mojigangas in most of Mexico are men of the community that are cross dressed for the event. I have researched the tradition just a little and it seems to go pretty much in the same form, with the cross dressing males being the constant thread, to Roman pre-Christian traditions.

I used to think that these were usually just normal hetero men who got duped into playing the part, but have been finding out more that they are the gay men in each community, who have their “gay pride day” once each year, and the rest of the year they do whatever they do and don’t make a big deal of it.

What I notice again and again is that these traditional gays are not isolated from the community. The hetero, and the few gay people of the community are more like extended family and maybe there is not much room for hostility and ugly feelings to develop.

This might address two problem issues expressed this thread;
1)The necessity to keep homosexuals integrated into a community, and not be ostracized for their orientation, even if others don’t agree. This also helps prevent a splinter gay group from forming which could more possibly get perverted or self amplified.

2)The “peace of mind” of the heteros is better because the gays don’t feel the need to flaunt it all year so much, and things are out in the open as far as the adults are concerned, and the kids who don’t understand won’t come up difficult questions for the hetero parents to answer.

Just what I have seen, and for sure there are exceptions I am sure, and my point of view here is very limited, and for sure it is different in big cities too.

Here is a photo of the annual community parade in colonio Emilio Zapata, where I work, with the Mojigangas.


Here is a video of the Mojigangas last December in colonio Shiperes, where I live.


Here is a video produced by Juan Estevez of the Mojigangas in his pueblo of Tecomatlan. I wrote about Juan in my legends thread. You can see how they interact with the community a little in this one. (Cut past the first few minutes)

The Native people of the US territories also have an open relationship with homosexuals. The Lakota, for instance, call their gay males Tinksis and they are given special privileges and duties.

Some info.
"Two-spirited individuals perform specific social functions in their communities. In some tribes male-bodied two-spirits held specific active roles which, varying by tribe, may include:

* healers or medicine persons
* conveyors of oral traditions and songs (Yuki)
* foretold the future (Winnebago, Oglala Lakota)
* conferred lucky names on children or adults (Oglala Lakota, Tohono O'odham)
* Nurses during war expeditions
* made pottery (Zuni, Navajo, Tohono O'odham)
* matchmaking (Cheyenne, Omaha, Oglala Lakota)
* made feather regalia for dances (Maidu)
* fulfilled special functions in connection with the Sun Dance (Crow, Hidatsa, Oglala Lakota)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit

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Art for the Masses

Homosexuality exists. Pedophilia exists. Obesity and diabetes also exist. That's not what we're debating here in case you guys missed it. We're debating what we are choosing to hold out to new generations to aspire to as "normal". Abnormal always exists. It's when abnormal seeks to be normalized that we should feel the agitation under the layers..

"Normal" doesn't exist.. So logically, neither does "abnormal"..

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Art for the Masses

Sil, you call what I say "bullying", but when someone like Shawn opposes your point of view, you say he is gay. That's sniper tactics, right? I prefer the use of a baseball bat, heh.

And this is not about pedophilia, it's about being gay.

It's only you who twists everything out of proportion.

It must be great to live in a small community like you do, separate from everyone who 'should not be allowed to fit in'.

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Zoom! What was that? That was your life, Mate! That was quick, do I get another? Sorry, Mate. Back to the world of dreams. Yes, dear? ...

It is often said in the advertising world that sex sells – even homosexual sex. Some people just can't control themselves as soon as sex is mentioned. People just like to talk and write and think about and have and condemn other people for sex. It’s even more popular than politics (or Jesus).

Sil has demonstrated that a person can be unpopular and ostracized from her community without even being homosexual.

I'm not banned from here idjit. You sound so much like power or Ghost Dog at times that...nevermind..

Maybe if I couched this in "the pursuit of pleasurable sensations" the idea would be easier to get? Think of morbidly obese people. Really, all they are are people who took the pleasureable sensations associated with eating [feeling full, satisfied and having adequate blood sugar and a sharp mind] and just decided that there was no end to this pursuit. That's really it. They are never "full" of the pleasure they seek. And of course, to them, there isn't a problem. Or a vague recolleciton of one that they quickly bury with more pleasure-seeking [eating]. But with obesity, you have obvious signs that there is a problem that very few can deny. Huge fat and lethal blood pressure and sugars are the clear signs that this pleasure seeking has gone way out of balance. And yet, for americans, overeating is "normal". It has become saturated in our media with fatty and sugary foods oozing from every other ad you see. Very close to sex in fact.

Much in the same way is the pushing of the envelope on sexual pleasure-seeking. This gay ice cream guy is the "obese sex creep". He literally cannot see the problem with what he's doing. And yet on some level he knows its a problem because he excludes pictures of kids he supposedly caters to from his web layout. But he just burys it with more sexualizing [and racism] naming one of his cones "The Salty Pimp". And then sells it to kids from his "Big Gay Ice Cream" truck.

It's the pushing of a normal human pleasure behavior meant to preserve and purpetuate life into a category that is no longer normal. Yes, Allister, there are "normals" when it comes to the body's function, sorry to burst your snobby intellectual esoteric bubble there.. Where it's dead obvious where food pleasure-seeking-gone-amok is lurking, it's not so obvious with sexual pleasure seeking...except when you run across a rare gem like the photo of "Big Gay Ice Cream"... Pedophiles are the most obvious of sexual obesity in that they stand right out when they solicit who they're after in an open way. Two adults soliciting each other are patently ignored by most.

The cure for obesity is very simple but very hard for the addict. It is to simply eat only when they are truly, actually hungry and not just bored, afraid or worried etc. The cure for sexual obesity is simliar. It is only to have sex when you are truly in love with the person you are with and not just bored, afraid or worried etc. They tell food obese people to pay close attention to actual signs of hunger such as a gnawing feeling in the stomach and sometimes even lightheadedness. Likewise, sex-obese people should pay close attention to the actual signs of love which are a strong and nearly invincable desire to spend the rest of their life with the person they want to have sex with...and oddly enough the pangs of true love have been described as a "gnawing feeling in the gut and lightheadedness" when in the presence of the one they love. Funny, that. And I believe it's why our ancestors made very stringent rules about falling in love first before sex, not from some lofty moralistic stance but because they'd seen and heard about for generations, stories of what happens when you get in bed first before the pangs of "real hunger" are truly felt.

Pedophiles have absolutely no intention of spending the rest of their lives with the various little kids they seduce. Promiscuous adults of either the hetero or homo variety are interchageable in my mind. Their obesity means one likes to stuff their face with "pizza" while the other stuffs their face with "croissants". Either way, there is stuffing of the face. At least with hetero sex there is the greater chance that normalcy will be seen with the participants. Babes result and through them the lessons of actual caring can be learned much more quickly. There is nothing more time consuming and demanding of altruism than a newborn babe or toddler. So this "normal" beats out the homosexual example in the "social matrix" litmus test.

And that litmus test is there to keep a curb on the flyers, bringing us once again full circle. They rely on upsetting the midpoint of the social matrix of "norms" to keep us fixated, preoccupied and dulled to their bite and sucking sounds. The "drama" that accompanies "obesity" of any variety in social systems is the happy sound of flyers feeding..

Here's a picture of a sexually-obese person at a sexually-obese pride parade. Look at him of course but also examine the faces in the crowd behind. They are learning a "new normal".

They are looking at someone behaving like an idiot, and so they have fun.

They are not learning a ´new normal´, jesus.

And the kid you have encircled doesn´t even look at this guy.

My thoughts are this, you are getting ´obese´ of your own ego.

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Zoom! What was that? That was your life, Mate! That was quick, do I get another? Sorry, Mate. Back to the world of dreams. Yes, dear? ...

This obsession with homosexual sex and eating seems kind of compulsive and vaguely perverted.

Your interpretation, Abe, is that they are "having fun looking at an idiot". That may be true on an individual and private level of some of them. But the more compelling thing to consider is that they are there to "support" "gay pride" [sexual obesity] as a group. Do you actually think they're there to stand in contrast to the rest to heckle these poor creatures? Every member of that group except perhaps the very young, knows what that means to be there as an onlooker. It means, "get in line with the program". Internally then they are rearranging their private convictions to match the group. The larger the group grows, the more potency it's "common mind" has on the individuals within it. Everyone knows a gay pride parade is where people come to cheer on the sexually obese. Get in line with the program Abe..lol..

This is how the foreign mind is inserted into the individual...in invisible increments, affected by "norms" woven patiently within the social matrix over just enough time to keep them almost unnoticed; not one giant bombastic leap. Used to be the flyers didn't have to be so patient but different times call for different measures..they are infinitely adaptable. Stragglers today are brought into line by classic peer pressure. [They will make fun of you and the bolder ones will beat you up]..remember? For example, you are "beating me up" by calling me names and acting aggressively as watergaze noticed. ZZZZ instead is poking fun at me. Together your teamwork serves to attempt to distract the thrust of this thread. And as such I ignore it except where acknowledging it serves the topic.

"Political correctness" is just really playground bullying without the punch in the nose. I think "political correctness" is one of the flyers best accomplishments. The change they can wield under that banner can sink really deep. Outright oppression and torture work well in the short term for bringing in stragglers, but the implied and insinuated threat of social banishment sinks the hook far deeper since there is less "reason" to resisit. And nowadays brutality isn't tolerated as well as it used to be..in our "civilized society".

There are some sour faces in the crowd but very few. The rest of them are smiling, relaxed and open to incorporating the whole affair. The crowd really is interesting to study.. The photographer was clever, or perhaps lucky. It looks like the sexually-obese man has his hand propping up the words "Fully Licensed" in the backdrop. He will be...it's just a matter of time...