Re: CHAT: closet conlanging >> definitions?

In message <369C587A.5E91@...>, vardi <vardi@...>
writes
>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.
The same applies to me.  Few people know about this aspect of my life,
although I'm completely out as a gay man.  Even the Elet Anta web page
has no link from the drummond home page - you have to know it's there to
get there.  Those who know about my conlanging activities, even my
nearest and dearest, regard it as a fairly benign form of insanity, I
think.

>  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.
Of course you're a linguist, which I expect makes it worse.

>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.
In the UK the word "sodomy" isn't much used, but I think most people
would agree with this definition.  Certainly the idea that "sodomy"
includes oral sex would be regarded as fairly odd, I think.

>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).
I always thought it odd that in the story, although the people of Sodom
are condemned for demanding to rape the angels, it seems to be quite
okay for Lot to offer them his virgin daughter instead.

--
John Fisher   john@drummond.demon.co.uk   johnf@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Elet Anta website: http://www.drummond.demon.co.uk/anta/
Drummond ro cleshfan merec; fanye litoc, inye litoc