Re: closet conlanging

On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, And Rosta wrote:

> It's curious how there is a kind of metaphorical relation between
> conlanging on the one hand and masturbation and bi/homosexuality on
the
> other (The Secret Vice, The Love that Dare Not Speak its Name). When
> some months ago there were several people posting to the list
declaring
> themselves to be bisexual teenage conlangers, and I never got round to
> observing that bisexuality and conlanging are, like religiosity,
phases
> that many teenagers go through but few adults remain in.
And, perhaps it's a good thing that you didn't make that observation. As
a gay man, I don't feel comfortable with the implication that my sexual
orientation is an immature phase I should "grow out of." I would be wary
of making such sweeping generalizations about people's sexual identity
development. And there may be far more compelling reasons why relatively
few adults identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual other than
"maturity"--reasons such as the very real possibility of losing our
jobs, our families, our friends, our children (because we're considered
"unfit parents"), and even our lives (thanks to all the gay-bashers
lurking out there like the ones who brutally murdered Matthew Shepard
earlier this year). Oh, and did I mention that in slightly less than
half the states sodomy is still a crime and that nowhere in the world do
we enjoy full and equal marriage rights (not even in the Scandinavian
countries)?

--
Daniel J. O'Neil
M.S. Technical Communication
Instructor, Writing to the World Wide Web
Developer, Academy of Electronic Media
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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