Milk Anti-gay Slurs Fly Freely at Free Republic

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I could have added to that alliterative headline with another favorite Free Republic "F" word, but would rather not get censored by Blogger as an adult site. And no, not the sexy "F" word, but the slur against gay people.

As part of my job as editor of this blog, I do a bit of reading of right-wing blogs and sites. It isn't possible to have a well-rounded opinion without seeing what the contrary opinions are. But the experience is at turns scary, appalling, shocking and at times unintentionally humorous. Free Republic is one of the most popular and strident of the right-wing sites, and its denizens--FReepers--are proudly not politically correct. But there is a difference between un-PC and being blatantly bigoted, and rude.

People who are outside the mainstream (and here I'm not talking about FReepers, though they certainly are) will often notice that the media--left, right and center--is a bit peculiar. We all know that newspapers and magazines are written at an 8th or 9th grade level. But they are also written from a very white bread perspective. Read any article about any minority--gays, blacks, atheists, whatever--and you will find that it is written from a white, heterosexual, usually Christian, often male perspective.

Any allusions to terminology or activities within minority communities are spelled out as though the reader has no familiarity with them. The assumed reader, by all appearances, is a white, heterosexual, Christian male. It's difficult to spell out exactly how I come to this conclusion, only that as an irreligious gay person, I can see it daily in newspapers, magazines, web sites, television programs, everywhere.

By one example, imagine an article about Jessica Alba. She's a pretty girl, but it wouldn't be unusual to read that "any red-blooded, American male finds her sexy." Of course that excludes me, a red-blooded, American gay male. It also leaves out all the red-blooded, American lesbians who probably think she's hot too.

That's a simple--and largely frivolous--example, I'll grant. But that's how the assumed reader is addressed. At more niche publications or web sites, like the afore-mentioned Free Republic, this phenomenon is magnified. There, writers and commenters address readers like the media does, but offer no deference to anybody not in the majority. You would assume, reading their posts, that nobody in their audience is a minority, has any minorities in their friendship circles or family, or that they'd take any offense to blatant bigotry.

And here, I have better examples. Of the two minorities I'm in, both are regularly savaged by FReepers. There are a slim minority of FReepers though, who are believers in evolution, and they do manage to steer religion vs. science arguments a bit. But there is almost no counterpoint to the anti-gay bigotry on the site. Take any gay subject: marriage, adoption, pride parades, employment, it doesn't matter. The insults and (mostly juvenile and ignorant) attitudes fly unfettered.

Today, I happened into a discussion about a review of the movie Milk. It's just about a review about a movie, and here is a sampling of some of the nastiness it inspired from FReepers.

"All time Queer Movies: 1) Humpback Mountain 2) Got ‘Milk’ -— The San Francisco Treat"

"Onward! Rump wranglers!"

"The murder of Harvey Milk gave us Dianne Feinstein. Harvey would have probably died of AIDS sooner or later, now we are stuck with Dianne for the foreseeable future."

"Do they hand out barf bags at the box office?"

"More fa**ot fodder for fruits and nuts in Hollywierd."

"Sean Penn-cil head works from “experience” no doubt. He’s another fruit-loop, light-in-the-loafers, anti-American, whack job."

Nice, huh?

Source: FreeRepublic