Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenRivet
only the truly ignorant deal in such blatant absolutes.
its the typical "agree with me or your a poopoo head" mentality 
its as big a deal as one chooses to make it. IMHO, it was a slow news day perhaps.
I havnt any problem with the guy being homosexual... i was eating a cheeseburger in a local venue when this came on the tv... the place was packed and the general mood of the place seemed to be a collective "meh"
my concern about this guys sexual preference is at a zero  |
QED
Brace yourself, but your opinion on the matter means nothing. There's always going to be individual people for or against an idea. We care about individual instances more when they reinforce existing social problems because everything -- our thinking, our practice, our policy -- ultimately derives from our culture. One of the main methods to solve social problems is to change the culture by restricting and chipping away at the negative reinforcements.
This is something that confuses many people, who initially look at actions as discrete instances and not in a broader social context, or who don't hold that culture has a profound real-world effect.
The broader social institution holds that gay people are deviants, and not worthy of being able to marry or adopt kids, or any other number of actions that society doesn't blink an eye at when straight people are involved.
So to bring it home - why is it a newsworthy event when a pro sports athlete announced he's gay? Our culture has long decreed that straight men are macho hunter/gatherers and homosexuals are effeminate deviants who have no place in the "normal" world, much less the testosterone-driven sports world. For someone to come out and break that mold - the first person to do so - that's newsworthy.
Things that can seem like a "who cares" event when analysed in a vacuum can make perfect sense when you look closely at their context.