I looked for an appropriate topic on this, and couldn't find one(well, i found one DJ's epic RM=retarded inbreds thread, but its locked), so feel free to merge it if you need to CHUD.


Recently, the mayor of a somewhat affluent suburb of Detroit (troy) made the following statement on her facebook.


"I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there."


And of course there is an outrage over the use of the word "queer." She may step down (hopefully) and has already apologized for the word. But it really struck me as odd how caught up everyone was with the word queer... when to me, that's not even the most troubling thing in the statement. Not only is she showing a very vocal disdain for equal rights, she also is on some level attempting to be punitive to someone just for supporting it. Yet no one in the local media (or even the actual protests about the statement) seems to care about how awful the message, as a whole, is. Instead, they are just focused on the one word. And that is bothering me that we (as a society) have come to disregard the message based entirely on word choice- positive or negative.

What if she said "I love the queer community?" In that case, the message is positive, but i imagine she would have been condemned the same way. Unfortunately there are many people who don't keep up with what word is offensive what week (there is a black lady who works for me who said "Jewed down" the other day- without a second thought for the racism implied in that statement). and sometimes say something with no ill intent. It just seems that so often we look for that buzzword to get fired up about without focusing on the actual message.

I get the point you're trying to make, but I don't think the word "queer" gives the best example for making that point.

I would tend to think that a message and its intent has more of an impact than just the word itself.

for instance, when the woman said "jewed down", was her comment taken the same way as it would have if the comment was instead a hateful one?

also, was that woman's race significant in relation to her comment?

Skitch, in your example, the message is her expressing an opinion, i.e., she's against gay people's right to marriage. But since 'everyone' agrees that 'queer' is an offensive term towards gay people, that's what they hinge on.

You're free to have opinions, but not to blatantly insult people while expressing them, or some such.

Fair enough. It just bugs me that such an overbearingly negative statment is being lost because of the word choice. Instead of a debate about the issue and the statement, its a "well gay people get to say it!" argument.

I agree I think... but this is the current local story that inspired me to post.

I get your point about how the larger issue is ignored in favour of the smaller issue, but the ways of modern media dictate precisely that. We thought we had it bad with TV, but this social media nonsense is making things way worse in regards to people's attention spans and capacity to make articulate arguments.

I hate fucking twitter.

I love twitter!

Can I subscribe to your account?

it's not the word that's offensive, it's whatever context or tone it's applied in.

'Nigga please' isn't offensive, but i'm having a hard time trying to think of a sentence where 'queer' isn't offensive.
i've always hated that word.

Will she be forced to resign?

Maybe if you were black you'd think nigga is always offensive and you'd hate it as a word.

None of the black guys i know find it offensive..

they're all first generation African though.

can 'queer' mean strange anymore, or are we too far past that at this point?

Language evolves. That word definitely did. I think it is too far past that point.

It is sounding like she won't be forced to resign, but she also has very little chance of ever being reelected either.

and yes, Nigga Please would likely get you into trouble with just about anyone but a close friend.

My gay friends use the word "queer" all the time, to refer to each other. I didn't think it was particularly offensive.

My son recently pointed to a woman in a store...skinny, in her 40's, with a kid.

"Who is that girl?" he asked.
"That's not a girl," my wife corrected. "That's a mommy."
"No," he shook his head solemnly. "Mommy's are fat."

Words between the lines of age, my friends.

I like my beer cold, my tv loud, and my homosexuals fuh-laming!

True story: I never cared much for that episode.