What's this about a course called "How To Be Gay" being offered ...

...at the University of Michigan? Heard Hannity and at least one other radio wingnut ranting about it as proof of the "Gay agenda" of "indoctrination". I don't believe it for a second, but does anyone know where they're getting this shit? Weekly World News? :wtf:

I don't know much about it, but here's a link.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030818-122317-3268r.htm

On edit: Take all this with a grain of salt. It's from the Moonie Times.

and send a dollar to my PO Box in Battlecreek, Michigan and I will send you the "Complete Unabridged Gay Agenda" which includes instuctions on staging a commitment ceremony to get revenge on all your hetero friends who forced you to buy them wedding gifts. It includes instructions such as registering as MS/MS Clambiter at Nieman's and Tiffany's and includes pics on which one of you has the right body habitus to wear the tux.

There is also a special sex toys for nubians section with instructions and an additional bonus section on how to change your oil, shop for plaid shirts and cut your hair in the most andrgynous new styles.

It also has answers to the most frequently asked questions such as "mommy what's a lesbian?" Answer " I don't know, ask your father when SHE gets home."

....sorry...we are all out of harmonicorns but save your box tops and we will issue a raincheck.

A true LOL. But what does Microsoft have to do with it?

Does anyone hang on to them?

Vaguely, it's more about stereotypes people think they have to fit in order to be gay. You can't like car racing if you're gay or you have to like certain kinds of music or be good at doing hair. The title of the course is meant to be provocative I would guess.

The real problem is they apparently cut out a religious course but are letting this course in and that's not freedom of speech! Scarborough said that and he undoubtedly skewed the facts. Of course, if the religious course had been kept in and the gay course cut, we wouldn't have heard a peep.

..but why toss the wingers this sort of red meat? They'll have a field day with it, and Mr and Mrs America will be apoplectic. At least give the course a different title, fer Chrissake! This is totally insane, and will tar all of academia as Godless heathens.

red meat...why even worry about it anymore?

Used to make Mr. & Mrs. America apoplectic too. Now rock 'n roll music class is about the only time my kids get a glimpse into the 60's or lessons on symbolism, poetry, etc. Go figure.

I hear what you're saying, but there will always be something moral authoritarians want to bitch about. Who made Foxnews the Moral Authority for America anyway? And aren't they the Free Market people? If the students of that university don't want the course, they won't pay to take it. Let the Market dictate, that's what they always say.

I long for Ann Landers and her ever sound advice... MYOB. We could really use a few voices like hers now.

can you fill a semester with this?

What is so hard about using or applying a hand, mouth or other orfice to satisfy one's desire to get their rocks off? What's the big deal? When in doubt try everything you can think of.

Most of use don't need a connect the dots to have fun.

ButI couldn't get in because, aside from having too many teeth, I did not take the prerequisite: "Morans in Journalism: Will, Saffire, and Coulter."

While I understand the stated purpose of the class I don't understand what the professor is thinking. Initiation is, save recruitment, the worst possible word he could have chosen. I think a better and more defensable class would have been the study of stereotypes or something like that.

Indoctrination?

I still have Camille Paglia's comment ringing in my ears (C-span interview) where she said "Everything you've heard about the 'homosexual agenda...(pause for dramatic effect)...it's TRUE!". The she echoed the Pat statement (Buchanan or Robertson, it's late, can't remember) about how every culture that became open about sexuality perished. She did get her just deserts when the archaeologist called and ripped her a new one for this, among other, erroneus statements. With friends like Camille, who needs ememies.

One of my acquaintances worked with Halperin for some years.

Halperin is an activist of the extreme sort. He is unassailable in his academic field for having written some or much of the eminent "theory" of gay identity and gay literature in the 70s and 80s. It's heavily based on the French postmodernist intellectual fashion, Foucault and Irigaray and such. He took along the politics- "subvert the dominant paradigm" "the personal is the political"- which is bluntly immoralist. And used more to further egos and careers than gay causes in the real world.

To those who know him any course that Halperin teaches these days is expected to be largely another pushing of boundaries with the mainstream and flagrant insult of the conservative, and selfserving. This "course" sure looks like largely a gay hookup opportunity, during its meetings the participants can revel in gay expression/culture/whatever you want to call it in any way Halperin approves of, and at the end of the semester they write a paper on whatever they feel like about being gay. Thus getting academic credit and a grade for, well, being actively gay in whatever fashions the student feels like and/or can get drawn into. In course descriptions in previous years, iirc, there was even a part clearly asserting that 'traditionally' older gay men needed to teach the newbies everything about being adequate homosexuals. Take a guess at what that really means for the student. Let's just say that prior to his job at UM there was pretty good evidence that he had sexual relationships with his students- none of whom would admit anything or ever comment on the evidence.

What I have heard about Halperin's personal and professional life from this aquaintance and others is all pretty sordid and abusive, sheer scandal generally covered up by administration (think Condi Rice) and a verification of the worst Right winger stereotypes, full of violations of other people in all kinds of often terrifically injurious ways. (These acquaintances think it's all projected selfhatred at bottom.)

He's, to my thinking, an extreme of something that e.g. Matt Drudge is also. Their solution to the abuse the world has subjected them to for being gay is to strike back, to renounce morality and accept nihilism, then to grasp at power and try to strike out at anyone who has any true moral compass as a potential danger. Nixon, though not gay but a hater of all elites, taught a whole generation of hatred-filled people how to play that game of ruling via destruction. I imagine the Log Cabin Republicans are on the whole by far not as extreme nor covertly even close to as sociopathic, but that's the sort of road that takes some extraordinarily cynical gay men into the ranks of the radical Right. Yep, I mean you, Lindsey Graham.