Disclaimer: I know I said that I would not discuss this topic anymore, but hopefully this one won't offend anybody. If it does, let me know, and I will remove it.

I think that daniel_the_smith's post gives some good perspective to me, somebody that doesn't have a lot of expertise in homosexuality.

What actualy made more sense to me, though, was a slightly different exercise than what daniel_the_smith mentioned - I can imagine the current situation I'm in with my wife.

As some people may be aware, my wife is from Korea. Some people are a bit conservative there, and are against the idea of interracial marriages between people from Korea and people from outside of Korea. As such, some people may consider my own marriage to be tabboo.

I can think of the perspective of these conservative people. Me being with my wife may seem unnatural or weird. It may not seem like an ideal situation - or one that people should steer away from.

But would I say that this makes my marriage any less valuable or sincere? I don't think so at all.

Coming back to the genetics issue, thinking of things in this light, I don't think that genetics makes a difference, either. Was there some gene inside of me that made me want to marry a Korean person? Or did I choose to marry a Korean person because of my upbringing? It makes no difference, of course. The fact of the matter is, I love my wife, and I find our relationship totally valid.

If I think of homosexuality from this perspective, I think that I can understand it much more clearly - and I can better see how my questions from earlier may have been offensive.

Am I on the right track with this analogy?

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be immersed

FWIW, I don't think your prior post was terribly offensive all by itself-- but those sorts of questions are often asked by people who really aren't curious at all as lead-ins to an offensive position, so it is understandable that people would be offended.



Maybe people see things that way, but it's not an accurate picture of reality. There's just not going to be a clear line where genetic influence stops and psychology takes over. For one thing, there are more than just those two factors (e.g., the neo-natal environment could have a large effect, too, etc).

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Here is what I think is absurd. Two people are in a KGS chat room. Everyone in the chatroom knows that both people are male.

One says "Gotta run, I am going to lunch with my girlfriend's parents"

One says "Gotta run, I am going to lunch with my boyfriend's parents"

Are you seriously suggesting that the second statement carries sexual implications that the first one does not?

No. One of the major points of my post was that BOTH carry sexual implications. How is that not clear? I'll even quote the final paragraph of my original post:



Deja analogized talk about homosexuality to:



I disagreed that the analogy was that general. I agreed that the analogy applies to talk about heterosexuality and heterosexual relationships and hence still agreed with Deja's ultimate conclusions.

EDIT: Hence in my response:



--------------------------------------------------------



Yep, that's pretty much my experience of how people usually operate.

Why is homosexuality a sexuality and heterosexuality not? Is it because the partners of the former have the same chromosomal makeup and the latter do not? If that's the justification, please explain how that makes orthogonal-chromosomal-attraction sexually deviant and differential-chromosomal-attraction normal?

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

with 7.5 komi i want to play white!

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长考出臭棋.

I'm curious, how do they react in the French room if someone comes in typing kana/
kanji?

Reiterated again, without the intervening sentence:



This is all from the original post. Did I accidentally write it in Klingon or something? This is the last time I'm quoting myself. I highly suggest you go back and actually read my post(s) if you want to have further discussion.

I even said in the post prior to this one that I though heterosexuality is a sexuality (or at least carries sexual implications in the same way as homosexuality).



And I said it in the post before that!


All I disagreed with, which I made plenty clear in all of my posts was that I did not think it generalized to ANY human relationship, which does not mean that I deny that it generalizes to SOME human relationships and in order to make this clear I even specified that I think it does generalize to heterosexuality, hence why I agreed with you even if I thought your argument relied on an absurd premise.

they will ask you to stop talking, either speak french or keep quiet.
It's the same in EGR, some poor french guy spoke french there were told to go to Salle Francaise.
There was someone in Japanese room typing English, and people complained about it as well.
The only exception i knew was chinese room. It seems no one has issues with english speaker there, and most of the time the converstaions were in english.

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长考出臭棋.

Monadology: it is only in specialized contexts that there is a point to saying "your argument is unsound, but if you weakened one premise, you would establish the same conclusion (or the conclusion you need)." In general, it just invites confusion, as you have found. I got what you were saying, as did many others, I'm sure, but it's kind of a weird contribution to a discussion.

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Occupy Babel!

Well, there would be a point to it if we were to say that it's good to allow talk about relationships in general, but not anything that could be seen as sexual. However, even if we thought this was a good idea, it's hard to draw the line on what could be seen as sexual. You could be having a sexual relationship with whoever or whatever you are talking about.

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be immersed

In my experience making sweeping statements with a lot of emotional vigor tends to cause touchy subjects like this to become more unstable and explosive. I was trying to curb that possibility.

Sometimes I can make overly specific points and be unclear about that fact, but in this case I feel I was perfectly transparent and as such I'm not going to take the blame for any confusion. Especially when it persisted after I distilled my opinion more than once. It was my right to add my opinion to the discussion, as it was a remark directly relevant to the conversation at hand.

However, to prevent any further derailing, I'll try avoid posting further in this thread.

However, I think that there are many different moral backgrounds - not only related to this topic, but also to a number of subjects that are discussed on KGS. When it comes down to it, I think that admins just have to make moral decisions based on what they think is right or wrong. Some people may be very against some topic X, but it is impossible to please everybody. In the end, admins just have to make judgement calls.

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be immersed

My bad, Monadology. Sorry about that.

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

It might be easy to forget (though probably most of you don't), when describing people with a word that has the word "sex" in it, that one's sexual orientation is not necessarily the most important way that people define themselves, nor is it necessarily their main interest. Gays probably think and talk about sexual orientation more than others primarily because they are so often subject to discrimination because of it. If that wasn't the case, they'd probably spend all their time thinking and talking about go (or something else equally important), which is probably what they wanted to do in their room - i.e., not to talk about sex.

If I, as a chocolate lover, want to have a room where I can talk about go with other chocolate lovers, why not? Not many people think there's anything inherently wrong about loving chocolate, and even if they did, why should they care if chocolate lovers are getting together to talk about go? The issue does get a little trickier were I a cannibal wanting to get together with my buddies. Then we have a situation where there is a general consensus that we go players don't want cannibals among us.

The thing about gays is that some people see them as chocolate lovers, and others see them as cannibals. While most of us presumably find the comparison to chocolate lovers reasonable, and the comparison to cannibals ridiculous, this is something that we shouldn't take for granted. Gays have fought and are still fighting hard not to be vilified. Fortunately, nowadays, at least where I live, there is a general consensus that gays should have the same rights and duties as all other citizens. To keep it that way, we can show our support.

As I understand it, there is no longer a gay room (by whatever name) in KGS. When it reappears, please let us know so that we can join en masse to express our solidarity.

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Patience, grasshopper.

It seems that some are genuinely interested in this topic while others merely argue for arguings own sake.

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
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Another thing to point out is that, while it's true that homosexuals have much more to them than their sexual orientation, the word "homosexual" specifically points out this aspect of their being. In your example, for example, chocolate lovers may have many things that they are interested in and may not be mainly interested in chocolate. But the label, "chocolate lover", points out one aspect of their being: they like chocolate.

Earlier I compared the situation to my relationship with my wife who is from Korea. I could label myself as a "Korean lover" if that categorization was important to me. I personally prefer to think of my relationship as the same as others', and I don't care about making such a distinction.

However, deja pointed out to me that certain minority groups have a hard time, and it can be helpful to join together with others that have had a similar hard time.

So in this case, maybe pointing out a single aspect of their being (eg. I like chocolate) is not important, but rather if it's made publicly known that you like chocolate, you can find others that also like chocolate, and find some common ground of community. In my case, I don't care about finding other people that are in relationships with Koreans - but I don't feel that I am typically that discriminated, so I don't feel the need to find such a group.

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be immersed

@Monadology I didn't mean to blame you. Of course it's your right to offer what you see as a clarification, but you'll find that certain philosophically useful comments are prone to be misinterpreted. It's not blameworthy to offer them per se, so much as a question of whether they're an essential part of the discussion.

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Occupy Babel!

Hi, I thought I'd reply here because there seem to be guesses and rumours flying around which are worth answering. I'm one of the owners of the room.

The "Rainbow Friends" room on KGS is there because we want it and we don't believe we need any other reason. We'd prefer for it not to be private and to have a sensible name like "LGBT room"; however, since there is no admin in there (and the admins understandably don't want to have to deal with us every time someone is being nasty there), the reasoning is that we make the room less of a nasty-people target and have power to exclude nasty people ourselves. Rumour has it, long ago there was an actual public "LGBT room" with an admin in it. Obviously that would be better, but we make do with what we have.

Given that, it pretty much goes without saying that we don't seek to exclude non-LGBT people from the room, and there are plenty of straight people in the room. We will let almost anyone who wants to join in. There is no segregation going on, and the room does not represent any discriminatory KGS policy.

The room did disappear twice, first due to one of the owners going mad and removing everyone, and then shortly afterwards due to nobody playing in there for a certain length of time, which as far as I know is automatic (consult your local KGS admin for more details). Now it is once again alive and well.

If anyone wants to join out of interest, curiosity or (as daal puts it) solidarity, please PM me (Warfreak2) or CGBSpender on KGS and we'll add you to the access list.

I'm not really into one-color go, but it doesn't make me uncomfortable when others play it...

Is it necessary to privatize a room in order to give the room admin the ability to boot players? Public IRC rooms can still have admins...

Instead of closing the room off from public viewing, why not just hand over the boot hammer...?

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Tactics yes, Tact no...