Tuesday, December 13, 2011

I'm Christian, unless you're gay--an article

Have a look at this article that a friend posted a link to on Facebook:

I'm Christian, unless you're gay.

Also have a look at the powerful responses that the writer links to at the end of the article.

The odd time that I've written about homosexuality here, I've typically tried to speak out in defense of gay people who are mistreated. But thinking back quite a few years, I did, on occasion, say some things that would've been quite hurtful to gay people. I can picture one occasion, probably in junior high school, when I told someone who'd just said something anti-gay, "I'm homophobic and proud of it." In elementary school, I'd like to think I was a nice and accepting person, but I occasionally joined in making fun of the least popular kids. And based on Facebook, at least one of those people turned out to be gay.

If you heard me say hurtful things like these, I'm sorry. I'd like to think I've treated gays and other mistreated people reasonably well most of the time, but I know there have been exceptions. So once again, I'm sorry. And I want to assure you, if you're gay and you feel like you can't tell most people, if you tell me, you won't lose a friend like that guy in the article did.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

No more Facebook blogging

So Facebook recently removed their feature that imports people's blog posts onto their Facebook profiles. I had been using that feature, but I was actually considering removing it.

For one thing, it meant that I'd have two separate comment threads on each post--one on Facebook and one on the blog itself. The Facebook thread got more comments, but it would've been nice to keep them unified.

Also, I think I might get a bit more personal here if it's not being broadcast to everyone I know on Facebook. Sure, the blog is technically more public than my Facebook profile, but unlike Facebook, the blog doesn't announce everything I write to everyone I know who happens to log into Facebook. Now my thoughts will--in theory--only be read by people who want to read them, so that might make me feel more free to write what I want. We'll see.

And Blogger allows anonymous comments, so you can easily leave comments without a Google membership. If you have any trouble with that feature, try to let me know if you have a way of contacting me. But I just tried it, and it let me leave an anonymous comment.