Bláskógar

So the following is a disappointing display of fucktwattery  that took place on my Facebook page over the course of a week. This person is the boyfriend of a mutual friend of Andrey and I. I always have fun hanging out with him, but when all I wanted to do was update my Facebook status, this is the deliberate bigot-spew that he not only muttered in response, but by which he persisted to irritate my friends and I for days. I was calm until today — I’m sorry, Andrey, Olya, if this complicates our get-togethers, but I really don’t ever want to see him again. No camping, drinking, etc., and I hope he never comes to our apartment because I won’t abide such vitriol in our home.

Sadly, the following is an example (all too familiar to me) of general (though certainly not all) Russian sentiment on issues of sexuality, identity, and minorities in general. The original status post by moi: I’m disgusted with Cali.
Kirsi , Ray and Zak like this.

Ryan at 2:59pm May 26: Likewise. So so sad.

Thaddeus at 3:54pm May 26: A constitutional amendment intended purely to restrict the rights of certain people shouldn’t happen in the land of liberty.

Yuliy Muchnik at 5:30pm May 26: I am not!
Yuliy Muchnik at 5:30pm May 26: …and for god’s sake, California has much bigger problems to worry about these days.

Thaddeus at 6:00pm May 26: So…civil liberties for minority groups should be denied because there are also other things happening in the state???

Yuliy Muchnik at 7:23pm May 26: what i am saying is that, in the scheme of things, the problems that your gay buddies are having there don’t really matter much. do i make myself clear this time?

Ryan at 7:25pm May 26Wow Lauren! Your status has turned into a debate! LOVES IT!!!!!!!

PS: Whether you support it or not, you need to sit and think about some things. ie. if you loved someone and weren’t legally able to marry them. or how you would feel if you had that right and then it was taken away. Think about it. :) SMILES!!!!!

Yuliy Muchnik at 7:32pm May 26: man, that’s a total eye-opener! how did i never think about this before?? now, speaking of this, i love my cat. i really really do. when will it finally be legal in california for me to marry her??

man-cat rights!
man-cat rights!
man-cat rights!

Zak at 7:54pm May 26: Because a cat can sign a legal document moron.

L at 9:21pm May 26: Yuliy, stop it. Civil liberties are always salient issues, whether they immediately affect *you* or not (not that all of Cali’s other issues do). The fact that it *is* an issue of this scale is testament to the system’s flaw that Thad so clearly stated.

It’s unlike you to tout the illogical arguments of the Fundamentalists. Next you’re going to tell me that if abortion is legalalized, all the liberal women are going to get knocked up just so we can all have abortion parties.

Sometimes, Yuliy, you say things I only expect out of a small-town Russian homophobe who thinks women and gays are taking over society. *sigh*
L at 9:25pm May 26: (after thought) maybe the crazy rightist zealots secretly desire inter-species sex? Maybe for them it *is* the next logical step? Cause, honey, all the homos and sexual deviants I know (and that’s a LOT) really just have a thing for homo sapiens. Mmmmmm, homo sapiens! Yummy, mostly hairless bipeds, and their sexual dimorphism!

Ryan at 10:15pm May 26: Thank you Lauren. ♥ !!!

Thaddeus at 11:57pm May 26: California is not sinking into the ocean, there is nothing SO pressing going on there that they’ve just GOT to prevent one group of citizens from marrying each other.
Consenting adults (both of those words being essential) should be allowed to marry whomever they wish.
I’d say “consenting adult *humans*”, but like Lauren pointed out, it’s only the anti-gay marriage crowd that has any interest in bringing animals into the mix.

Yuliy Muchnik at 12:18am May 27: why should i stop it? why is it that the podium must solely belong to those who believe they are enlightened and sophisticated enough to understand that the true meaning of life lies in attempting (hopelessly, thank nature) to procreate with species of the same sex?

the only problem with the system that i see is that it even allows such things to be seriously debated. i have nothing against abortion and other traditionally “liberal” issues, but my opinion is definitely different on this issue, and i have no problem voicing that opinion.

p.s. the logic behind man-cat rights fits perfectly; no wonder nobody ever attempts to rebuff it on its merits.

Ryan at 12:55am May 27: Actually, it doesn’t fit perfectly. A human/cat relationship is ridiculous. Two humans that love eachother on the other hand, is NOT ridiculous. Think about stuff before you say it. ♥ !!!

Justin at 1:14am May 27: Ok whos the hick who wants to fuck his cat and call it normal? I think this person seriously needs heavy psychotherapy and a real lesson on what should and should not be ok for two people to do. If this is a problem for him because he is religious then why not sell everything you have and give all you time to the poor. Biblical realism is dead hunny get off your soapbox! If its not about the bible I really have no idea what to tell you. Your a waste to society evolving as we have for thousands of years.

Preeti at 3:28am May 27: join the club

Thaddeus at 10:50am May 27: In this case the “podium” is Lauren’s facebook page. She is entitled to ask you to stop. No one is trying to deny your right to free speech though as I doubt Lauren would try to quell your opinions if this was your facebook page where you were spouting your bigotry.
The only way that the “man-cat” point is the least bit logical is if you consider cats to be equal to humans. Do you think that cats should be considered full citizens with voting rights and full legal protection? If you don’t think that cats should receive those things then you must think that gay people should have them taken away because otherwise there is nothing “logical” about your argument.

Yuliy Muchnik at 12:13pm May 27: Ryan:
Man/cat is just as ridiculous to me as man/man. I have thought about this enough, thank you very much.

Justin:
I am not at all religious, but I have common sense. Technically, the only waste to society are creatures that cannot procreate. And on that note, you can go fuck yourself.

Richard at 1:25pm May 27: Man/man is not ridiculous, especially not as much as bestiality. Two informed adults can consent to a loving relationship to one another, while a cat cannot.

Either you consider cats to be sentient and capable of making informed consensual relationship decisions, or you consider men to be subhuman and incapable of making said decision.

As a man, I am offended. I can make choices, informed choices about who I love and how I love them. If the other person is an informed consenting adult, I should be allowed to love and to commit to a long term relationship with that person, with all the benefits and rights that would be granted to anyone else who does the same. It should be without bias from the law in regards to race, politics, religion, economic status or gender.

Practice what you want with your own life, but don’t try to dictate your bigotry against men onto other people.

Thaddeus at 1:30pm May 27: The ability to procreate is not a requirement for marriage in the United States.

Richard at 2:36pm May 27: Nor should it be. Since infertile couples would be excluded as well

Thaddeus at 10:26pm May 27: And any women post-menopause. Not to mention all of the couples who get married, but don’t intend to have any children.

L at 10:41pm May 27: Yuliy, you’ve crossed the line with your comment to Justin. I’ll ask you not to be so crude to my friends who are currently in awe of your bigotry. When it comes to sexual and gender science, Russia hasn’t even worked through Freud yet. Note Thad’s statements about the ability to procreate above — any infertile male or female obviously should have to be screened before getting a marriage license.

The Western, post-modern human marries for love and economic reasons. It engages in sex for physical and emotional pleasure, and procreates by accident or intent both within and outside of marriage.

The *only* reason to prevent same-sex couples from getting married is to spare them from the joke that so many heterosexuals make of marriage anyway.
L at 10:44pm May 27: For your information, Yuliy, Justin (and the same percentage of gay men as hetero men) CAN procreate. They could easily donate to sperm banks or even have sex with women (sorry for the squick factor, guys) — to help those hetero couples who CAN’T

Yuliy Muchnik at 11:46am May 28: Lauren, I was keeping it impersonal all along, but your buddy chose not to. So what do you suppose I do with a piece of shit that calls me a hick and “a waste to society?” What he really needs is a punch in the head to help him learn to think before opening his mouth.

Regarding procreation – what matters is the spirit of the idea. Childless heterosexual couples = a fluke of nature, homosexual couples = not meant to be in nature.

L at 1:36pm May 28: As the ‘moderator’ of my own page, I’m allowed to decide when a little sass is ok — saying ‘go fuck yourself’ isn’t even arguing anymore, it’s resorting to the level of white trash banter. So – no more of that, from anyone.

Regarding procreation — the spirit of the idea is hardly reality, it’s mere sentimentality. If you want to talk about nature, we can talk about nature, I have a degree in Anthropology and am pretty damn familiar with primate evolution. Even using language like ‘meant/not meant to be in nature’ belies your ignorance in this matter — it’s far more complicated than that.

L at 1:46pm May 28: The point of all this, by the way, is in deciding what is lawful and constitutional — not what fits an individual’s sentimentalities or aesthetics. Do you believe interracial marriage should be legal? People tried to use the same arguments you are decades ago about that issue.

Yuliy Muchnik at 1:58pm May 28: often, you don’t need a degree in something to be able tell what makes sense and what is nonsense. it is really that simple.

i’m not sure what point you are trying to achieve by continuing to make personal remarks such as “white trash,” “small town homophobe,” etc. I don’t remember calling anyone (especially you) a fag here, eh?

the only reason same sex marriage is not explicitly unconstitutional is because the founding fathers, i am sure, could not in their wildest dreams imagine that one day something like this would even come up. and finally, it really isn’t up to us to *decide* what is lawful. that decision has already been made.

L at 2:43pm May 28I haven’t called you anything – read more carefully. I’m trying to tell you how your comments sound. You’ve been sassy from the beginning, for no good reason.

The Founding Fathers probably didn’t foresee 50 states and emancipation, either. That’s a matter of futile personal interpretation better used for musings only, anyway. They’re dead.

What we DO know from their writings and other documents are their thoughts on the nature of civil liberty — the law exists to protect people and enable them, not limit their freedoms — this is the context from which we ask “is ______ constitutional?”

Cultures DO decide what is lawful. The decision has been made by *whom*? Processes don’t make decisions. Besides, societal law is never fully based on what people think is ‘natural law’ (that has changed over time, obviously); this is impossible in the case of humans, as they are prone to reflexive contemplation.

Thaddeus at 3:51pm May 28: It *is* up to us to decide what is lawful. We live in a democratic nation with an evolving culture. Laws are made and changed by the people and to serve the people.
The founding fathers did not give women the right to vote because they did not conceive of a time when women would be living on their own and forming opinions that were different from their husbands. They didn’t think that women were stupid or incapable, but rather thought of households as only having one vote. Women voters would mean that some households got stronger votes which didn’t seem fair to them.
However, our culture evolved and by the 1920s it was becoming clear that women needed to vote too.
The Founding Fathers were products of their culture, but they were also VERY rational men and extremely progressive for their time.
Thaddeus at 3:57pm May 28: Childless heterosexual couples are NOT a fluke of nature. They are a very common and prevalent part of our modern society. As a species we boarder on over-population and it is no longer necessary for our survival that all biologically capable society members procreate.
Some amorphous and no longer relevant notion of the “spirit” behind the institution of marriage cannot serve as a logical determinating factor in who may now engage in the *modern* institution of marriage.

Yuliy Muchnik at 4:11pm May 28: when i said “the decision has been made,” i meant that the people of california and the california supreme court have made themselves clear. if you think that your opinions expressed here are somehow more important, you are kidding yourself.

likewise, on the issue of what is and what is not meant to be in nature, i have also made my point clear. the sophistic arguments that you’re using to try to rebuff it make no difference.

the idea of looking at the “spirit” or laws and rulings is very common, and very relevant, in the american legal tradition. just because you wish it was “no longer relevant” does not mean that it is :)

Justin at 8:20pm May 28: To Yuliy: I am very sorry that I called you a waste to society. Fighting ignorance with anger will never solve anything. I just get very upset when I hear heterosexual people compare what I am to the nature of pedophiles and bestiality. I could not ever imagine what would happen to someone if they ever compared you (a Russian, whether natural born or immigrant) to an animal or someone who demoralizes children by sexually molesting them. If you want to be technical you would be unnatural to america had the people who founded this nation not had a dream for america to be a resting place for anyone who felt unwanted or just needed a place to go.

Whether something is normal to you is truly for you to decide but please step aside and let me and people like me (GLBT) have our rights as you do.

Thaddeus at 2:17am May 29: Try to remain consistent, Yuliy. We were discussing the “spirit” behind the institution of marriage; not the spirit of the law. It isn’t the same thing.
While I dispute that the “spirit” behind marriage was ever primarily geared around procreation and even more strongly dispute that procreation is the “spirit” that drives the modern institution of marriage let’s assume for a moment that what you are saying is true: The purpose of marriage is to foster procreation.
What does that mean? That marriage is a socially and legally recognized entity that exists to encourage men and women to procreate by establishing a system of legal benefits and protections for both the parents and children, yes? Would you agree with that?
Thaddeus at 2:22am May 29: Guess what? Like Lauren said, gay people can have children too. And furthermore, many of them DO have children! By denying them the right to get married the system is failing in its obligation to provide the legal benefits and protections that you claim exists purely to promote procreation. This isn’t hypothetical, I know real people who have raised children together, but because they couldn’t get married the non-biological parent had no rights. If something had happened to the bio-parent the other parent might likely never see their children again.
Thaddeus at 2:26am May 29: Sorry for filling up your page with my posts Lauren, it’s just a topic that I feel very strongly about.

L at 12:30pm May 29: That’s ok, Thad. Yuliy, the science of biology is what it is. You’re using the popular arguments that the lay population uses, so they make perfect sense to you. However, what we’ve learned from the last twenty years of evolutionary biology and primate sexuality indicates a far less black and white world. These arguments DO matter.

Let me ask you this — what does it mean that Neandertals were supporting their elderly, maimed, and otherwise incapacitated group members? These individuals created stress on the group because they could not contribute to hunting or other activities, and they are not selectively ‘ideal’ sex partners … why use vital resources to keep them around?

Your argument about procreation is debunked, and I get the sense that you are arguing for emotional reasons (as you don’t really address anyone’s arguments other than to say you don’t care). You probably haven’t come to terms with the fact that homosexuals (and probably intersexuals) exist at all.
L at 12:38pm May 29: The fact is, homosexual acts can be observed throughout the mammalian world and even others — birds, for example, engage in homosexual acts. Humans, like other mammals, display a very liquid sexuality — one’s preferences and habits can change over one’s life time. By that I mean human sexual and romantic (pair mating) choices fall on a continuum and rarely stay the same. Included in this continuum is same sex sexual acts and pairing. Sexuality, contrary to what popular American culture dictates, is neither ‘gay’ nor ’straight’, but amazingly complex. The beauty of this complexity is that it encourages us to refrain from categorizing people into clearly delineated groups, but take into consideration the individuals within those groups.
L at 1:24pm May 29: Marriage, as it were, was never about procreation alone — it was (and in many places still is) a contract designed to protect the interests of two families or two individuals.

What is significantly different about most of the contemporary Western world is that individuals a) decide who they wish to marry and b) can decide not to get married. Human children need a stable emotional and physical environment in which to develop, so having two parents and combined income is often key in places like the United States, where single parents may not be able to financially support themselves and a child.

Sweden has a different cultural and structural model — funds are allocated to provide for single or unmarried parents. Thus, the trend in Sweden is that most people no longer marry. This doesn’t preclude that these couples/parents are estranged, just that a binding contract isn’t necessary to provide for children.
L at 1:32pm May 29: And, of course, in much of Western culture it is perfectly fine to choose not to have children — I personally know plenty of heterosexual couples across generations who have *decided* not to have children or adopt.

In fact, the world NEEDS more committed parents to raise the children who have none, just as it needs many people to to decide not to have children or have only one child.

One way to think about the modern phenomena of same sex couples (just for a moment assuming they won’t have children) is that it IS an adaptation of our species as we confront the reality of limited resources and the earth’s max bio capacity. Biology doesn’t work in a linear way — it seeks balance.

Marina at 2:04pm May 29: to Justin and Lauren-Russia(or other countries people come from) doesnt have to do anything with what person has to express period In my opinion,gay couple can be married (not in the church though)but they cannot have kids-a person has to be raised by male&female

Thaddeus at 7:55pm May 29: There are absolutely ZERO reliable studies to support the notion that a proper upbringing requires the presence of a mother and a father.
Should we forbid couples with children from getting divorced? Should we take children away from single parents?

L at 9:12pm May 30: Marina – growing up in a country and being enculturated DOES matter. There are people in Russia who think homosexuality is alright and support the decriminalization thereof — however, the dominant culture there either speaks of it the way Yuliy has or links it back to Christian belief (if you read Russian papers and blogs about the last couple Pride parades local GLBT community has tried to have, you know what I mean). Even if one’s opinion deviates from the norm of one’s dominant culture, it still is interconnected therewith.
L at 9:18pm May 30: Many cultures idealize two parent, hetero ‘parents’, while others do not for a myriad of reasons. If you think it’s better to have children grow up in foster care or an orphanage rather than have a stable, two parent home which happens to be comprised of two moms or two dads, I staunchly disagree. Besides, anyone who thinks the hetero marriage and parenting deal is ideal needs to consider the shit job many mothers and fathers do, from neglect to abuse or worse. I’d rather a child have loving caretakers devoted to his/her upbringing, whether those caretakers be a grandparent(s), single parent, biological parents, or adoptive hetero or homo parents. All of these potential devoted caretakers need to be supported by the law for the sake of the children involved.
L at 9:24pm May 30: Personally, I dislike the institution of marriage *because* it invokes religion — if it didn’t, this (national) debate would be very different I’m sure.

The whole point of this argument is that American citizens should be concerned with what has happened in California — Prop 8 was introduced a while back because a bunch of religious conservatives (both within and outside of California) collected millions of dollars in order to suppress a minority’s rights. Mob rule is one problem of democracy, and our courts are designed to check and balance that tendency — they failed. The reason citizens of all states are paying attention is because what is playing out in Cali is part of a larger cultural discourse on the issue.

Yuliy Muchnik at 11:52pm May 30: i don’t care what neandertals did with their old, and i don’t need studies to form an opinion on certain issues.

what american citizens need to be concerned with is one obnoxious group of people that whine and cry about their inexistent rights given every chance they can, and trying to impose their perverted beliefs on the society at large.

Thaddeus at 1:42am May 31: Nothing validates an argument like embracing ignorance.

L at 12:36pm May 31: NO ONE is imposing their beliefs on anyone, EXCEPT bigots (like you — yes I am calling you one this time) and religious fuck nuts. I’m sorry you don’t care — just recognize that your opinions aren’t based on anything factual, and that they are NOT well thought out.

You’ve commented on issues just for the sake of being a dick before, and I get the sense you’re doing the same now. I’m disappointed to discover I can’t have an intelligent conversation with you, and because of that any respect I had for you in spite of your persistent negativity (about *everything*) is exhausted.

Please don’t pretend to know what our constitution is about, or what the US should be concerned with.

Now I understand you a little bit more, and why you really don’t get out much. I do hope you get over this irrational fear of a minority population who really doesn’t give a fuck about you.

If you don’t care about actual data or people, why don’t you just shut your face next time?
L at 12:38pm May 31:
As this is my page, I’m going to kindly ask you with the last of my patience not to post here – again. I hope you’ll respect that, if only.