Re: CHAT: closet conlanging >> definitions?

Matt Pearson wrote:
>
> Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> >What I wanted to say is an odd thing I saw since I began unhiding that I
> >was gay: my friends all accepted my homosexuality without a problem, with
> >only some surprise, but when I say I'm a conlanger, they look at me as if I
> >was mad! (even my gay friends do that). I find this situation quite weird.
> >After the Gay Pride, shall we have a Conlanger Pride?
>
> Perhaps!  I've encountered this situation as well, and while I'm completely
> out as a gay man, I'm still fairly closeted about my conlanging.  Even
> after having been on the conlang list for years and having shared my work
> with countless people, I still often feel a knee-jerk sense of embarassment
> and discomfort when revealing my conlanging inclinations to the uninitiated.
> The Maligned Art, as Sally Caves puts it.
>
> Matt.
>

Perhaps that's why we (I'm also gay) get into conlanging?  As a kind of
lightening conductor to convert homophobic flak into conlangophobia!

As for sodomy, I agree with Christophe that sodomy (in English, as in
French) refers to anal sex, regardless of whether it's male-male or
male-female.

Steg was right to give the origins, in the Biblical story of Sodom.  But
it should be noted that homosexuality / homosexual abuse was not, I
believe, originally seen as the main or only sin of the Sodomites.  As I
recall, their main fault was total regard for others, so that someone
could die on the street without being helped (Steg can maybe help in
terms of whether this is Biblical or Talmudic in origin - I don't have
time to check). In that sense, how ironic that many of those loudest to
condemn sodomy (especially among the American Right) are the same who
promote just such a society, on the pretext of encouraging enterprise or
protecting the basic human right to own a gun and kill people with it.


        Shaul