Oh, heaven forbid!

[yendi]

""I don't think it's right seeing women kissing in public. If I had my family there, I'd have to explain what's going on."

That would be Jim Ridneour, a Seattle taxi driver who is one of the people shocked and appalled that women might go to a baseball game and kiss each other. I would hate for him to have to explain to his family that lesbians exist; surely, things would be much better if they could keep their blinders on and pretend that anything that upsets their oh-so-delicate sense of propriety is the stuff of fiction.

And don't get me started on the fact that the Mariners were willing to threaten to kick someone out of the game for kissing her partner (apologies after the fact are nice, but completely useless).

I'd love to know if the Mariners are also one of the teams that uses the "kiss-cam," showing couples on the Jumb-o-tron and trying to get them to kiss in front of everyone.

Dan Savage has more details here.

(Yeah, it's my anti-creationist icon, but I don't have an anti-homophobe one. Then again, we're looking at heavily overlapping ven diagrams here.)

Comments

[mycroftca.livejournal.com]

And hooray for the California Supreme Court not bowing under pressure to stay their decision about homosexual marriages in this state.

It's a pity that George Takei's wedding won't be televised...

[brak55.livejournal.com]

Maybe Jim should move to Iran because, you know, there aren't any gay people there.

Idiot!

[28bytes.livejournal.com]

I just love the logic that "I might have to explain that to my kids" = "Bad."

[jerel.livejournal.com]

That's almost as good as the logical of the woman who complained about "The Vagina Monologues" appearing on a theater marquee. She drove by it and was put in the awkward position of having to explain what a vagina was to her passenger--her eight-year-old niece.

The worst part of it was that the theater changed the marquee. It then read "The Hoohah Monologues." I swear I am not making this up.

[28bytes.livejournal.com]

I remember that!

Which, in turn, reminds me of the Virginia legislature (http://28bytes.livejournal.com/351006.html) reacting to some dad's inability to explain to his kid what testicles were.

[solcita.livejournal.com]

The story I heard had it that it was a concessioner/usher who took it into his own head to threaten to kick them out, not supported by the park or the team as a whole.

(I'd take everything Dan Savage says with about half a handful of salt, too, by the way. He's not the most reliable source in town.)

[litch.livejournal.com]

He's not the most reliable source in town.
Do you have any examples of him being incorrect?

[ponygirl118.livejournal.com]

Ugh, know what I hate? Seeing straight people kissing in public. Because then, I have to explain the strangeness of it to my family!

*growls* Sorry, I'm a bit cranky

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I would support that.

I have no problem with prudishness. (Well, not NO problems, but, in practical terms, in the United States, it's a decent first-approximation.)

I've got problems with unevenly distributed prudishness.

I think that it is unfair that men can go around topless in most of the country, and women can't. I would therefore like it to be illegal for men to go around topless. (My actual position is more complex than this: it involves the idea of situaltionalism -- but evenly applied. You could have a nude beach, or a topless beach, or a tops-required beach, and it would be applied evenly to everyone.)

I am uncomfortable seeing two men kissing on the street. I am also uncomfortable seeing two women kissing on the street, or one man and one woman, or any combination built from those. Therefore, I'd be just fine if people didn't kiss in public.

[litch.livejournal.com]

.I'd be just fine if people didn't kiss in public.

Ever consider talking to a shrink about your discomfort with PDAs?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It ain't MY problem -- it's society's. Is it my fault that everyone ELSE has lost the boundary between public and private?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

[GRIN] I'm actually half with you there. Intellectually, I know that the whole concept of "privacy" is a fairly late human invention. But my desire for it is so strongly programmed, along with my embarrassment around other people who feel no such desire, that... well... It would be great if we could come to some kind of mutual accommodation. It don't want to harsh other people's squee, I just wish they'd do their squee-ing when I'm out of earshot.

Traditionally, civilised societies (in the literal sense - ones built around towns & cities where people can't just avoid these kinds of issues by not meeting each other) have a three-tier approach to privacy: What you do in your own home is pretty much nobody's business but your own; What you do in someone *else*'s home is pretty much nobody's business but *theirs*... and then there's that whole messy middle ground, called "in public", where what you do in the presence of others is neither completely up to them nor completely up to you. What goes on there is largely decided by (often unconsciously arrived at) majority consensus, except when a few individuals manage to acquire enough power to start dictating their preferences to the others. Problems occur whenever there's a significant shift in where the majority of folks (or the most powerful folks) think the line should be, away from where the line currently is.

[litch.livejournal.com]

I think privacy is an artificial construction that is going to fade away slowly, sort of like racial segregation.

But then I'm big into transparency,

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"If I had my family there, I'd have to explain what's going on."

Sir, I believe you underestimate your family's ability to figure out what's going on by simple observation.

Perhaps its their ability to reconcile said observations with your previous (quite probably factually innaccurate) expositions of a particular ideology that you should be more concerned about?