The Bacchic cult was not small either, and it was not a "cult" by our standards. Their sexual practices were both heterosexual and homosexual and they were persecuted for much the same reasons homosexuals were persecuted today. But why quibble?
The fact is that while your government commits atrocities and while your money is used to kill people, you instead focus on the "crimes" of others, the same "crimes" that your government uses to justify its crimes. So whether you like it or not your voice -- helps to justify the crimes that we commit in order to oppose the crimes that you don't commit. Your first responsibility is to stop the crimes that you commit, or your government commits, then maybe you can begin to think about the crimes committed by your neighbor, or some government overseas.
But apparently you are unable to comprehend that our crimes are our responsibility mainly because the way to stop them would be to actually do something effective to stop them. As I said that is the basic moral question, only a little complicated by political realities, such as that your government happens to be in Washington and not in Havana and that your government, our, government happens to be the most violent in the world. And as I said we are in the same moral position of the hypothetical Roman. Only it is starker, because we potentially have more influence over our government than she had over hers. So actually our responsibility is greater.
Most else of what your write is irrelevant, no matter how hard that is to hear.
But I do want to say a few more things....
> As a non-queer you may believe this.
You know nothing about my sexual orientation, my sexual past, my desires, or who I have had oral or anal sex with. It is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
> What is
> hypocritical is to possess non-queer privilege and remain silent when
> queer oppression occurs so as to maintain your privileged status.
>
> > I set my hypothetical in ancient Rome because I thought the
> distance would abstract the situation from current ideological
> confusions.
>
> You failed.
You are correct. I failed because the moral question has been covered over by the usual ideological apprehensions.
> It may well be the first responsibility, but is it the only one?
>
> > Unless we can understand our own responsibilities and for whom
> and for what we are responsible, it is no use taking on the useless
> and empty burden of criticizing some foreign government whose
> people we are attacking.
>
> Why do you see opposing and speaking against queer
> persecution as useless and empty?
>
> Brian
>
You a United Statsian, residing here in the United States are speaking out against queer persecution in a country that the U.S. is attacking, and has committed acts of terror against decade after decade, and will continue to commit acts of terror against in the near future.
You are speaking up against a government you can only have control over, if your government increases its violence against Cuba.
Your government, our government, has been in more or less permanent war mobilization against the Cuban government since its inception. And you as a United Statesian, here in the U.S., talk to people who may oppose or may support that war mobilization; while you as a United Statsian also watch your country commit other atrocities around the world, day in and day out; and without stopping the exceedingly more massive atrocities of your government, you complain about the oppressive policies of a regime and a people that your government is waging war against and committing atrocities against.
It is irrelevant whether, here in the United States, you speak out against atrocities committed by other people not ourselves "over there", anywhere "over there", while your government is continuing to attack the people "over there", where-ever "over there" is! By doing so you are not helping the people "over there," who ever they are, you are only supplying ideological cover and pharasitical moral soothing for our crimes.
I am sorry Brian that you don't understand this.
Jerry Monaco -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20061226/0bda8f48/attachment.htm>