sgmusic said:

I hear you but since I'm Muslim and not Christian, Al Quraan (the holy book of the Muslims) and Haadith (the lessons of our prophet) explains that in Allah/GOD's eyes each sin has a punishment fron Allah/GOD for mankind/womankind and such. Point taken, nuff said ...

WaterInYourBath said:

_____

The point is it's just as upsetting and offensive for gay people to be stereotyped. You might be offended that I'm comparing Prince's gesture to that of the minstrel display in Australia but it's just as hurtful. Flicking his wrist like a woman while he sings "gay" is a tacky display of steroetype.

JesusFreak said:

People have black friends, but they'll still lock their car doors when they go to the north side of town and a black person is crossing the street.


And therein lies the question of whether being gay is ungodly. Being a born-again Christian, AND a gay man, I find your blanket statement highly offensive and ill-informed.

All of that aside, it in NO way justifies Prince making an anti-gay hand gesture, if that's what he did (I believe he did). Jesus didn't make fun of the prostitutes and socially unlikeable people he hung around. You think he called people "gimpy" before he healed them? Do you think he called them "crack ho's" before he told them to "Go and sin no more"?

You cannot judge who is a"true follower of God". Nor does everyone who abides by all His rules loves everyone. There's a HUGE amount of judgment in the church, especially among its own members. And there are also a huge amount of gay folks in the church, in the choir, playing in the band, ushering, etc. The church needs to get their house in order before they start getting a "house by house raid" mentality.

brightlight said:

There is nothing beautifully said about such ignorant comments. It's obvious you only view gay people as sexually charged individuals devoid of love and commitment.

thanks2joniandu said:

exactly! brightlight says they have gay friends too

matthewgrant said:

wonderfully put!!!!!

ernestsewell said:

'crak ho's'



one name: Jeanne D'Arc

thanks2joniandu said:

Very well said.

Just to expound on what you said:
Eddie Murphy said it best...."A faggot is a guy, and he'll kick your ass." We're far from sissies or pussies. And why is it BAD to be "like a woman" anyway, to people like Prince? Madonna really addressed that thought in her song:

Prince has been looking like a girl, a fancy lesbian, since the early 80's. What regular dude was walking around Cincinnati or Houston or Levenworth, KS was wearing lace, eye liner, and 4' heels? NO ONE. Prince was though.

As a gay guy, I don't want to be a girl. I never have. I've never talked like a girl, I've never had a purposeful lisp, etc. I like being a man. I like having a dick. I like standing up to pee. I like not having babies. I like not having a period, or tits, or whatever. I like having hair on my chest. I like having facial hair. I like being tall. I like having a deeper voice. I love that women are different than me. I love that they DO have boobies, that they do have higher voices, and softer skin. Frankly I'm a bit jealous at their ability to wear fantastic hair styles while men's styles are relatively the same.

However, I'm a man. I'm a grown man, who loves being a man. I have no desire to be a girl, even though I'm gay. Gay doesn't equal "want to be a girl". Sorry, we're not all Nathan Lane characters from The Birdcage. We're not all drag queens a la Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

Being a girl isn't "less than" being a guy, it's just a difference I chose to not encompass. Not many women want to have a dick, chop off their tits, have hair on their chest, grow a go-t, or have baldness (sans the people who want to change their gender, which is another show.)

To bring it home, Prince thinks that men acting feminine is "gay", as referenced by his hand gesture (women CAN make that hand gesture and it's fine, because it's a girly thing, thereby it becomes derogatory to think a GUY does that..."Oh, you're acting like a girl!") People who do the limp-wrist thing as a rude gesture to gays are not only degrading gay people, they're also degrading women.

sgmusic said:

This post really isn't ok, I'm afraid you've just shown an alarming ignorance.

Many men who are gay and now elderly were born in a time (at least in the UK) when to be gay was illegal, it would have been foolish to indicate their sexuality and so the culture went underground, became furtive and principally sexual. Long term relationships were impossible.

The laws changed but the promiscuity hadn't and around 25 years ago a huge proportion of a generation were wiped out by AIDS. While the numbers of couples flourished the UK laws made it economically very difficult for gay men and women to stay together as they weren't afforded the tax breaks even unmanrried hetero couples were.

Again things have changed and same sex marriage has now been recognised and we're nearing some semblance of equality. However the prejudices still prevail and some gay couples I know still struggle with public displays of affection due notions of how they will perceived. This is all way over simplified but hopefully points out there are myriad reasons why elderly gay couples are less visible than straight couples.

Nevertheless I do know a good handful of elderly homosexual couples who all posess same thing that elderly heterosexual couples have without the sex: Long lasting love.

I don't think any of these men would have chosen their sexuality since for many of them it's caused them great difficulty throughout their lives yet that's how they were born and they're certainly not ashamed of it.

As you say: Love is love, we can't control it and if it isn't harming others how can it possibly be a sin?

I say this as a non religious straight man and while I'm open to hearing what you have to say you're sounding uninformed. Chat to a few more gay people and ask a few more questions and you'll soon see how actually we're all the same.

ernestsewell said:

No one can't judge. My sister was heavy in drugs still is. I took her children in an adopted them. One child has Cerebral Palsy and a seizure disorder. Rett's
and she is so pretty.I have 5 brothers 6 sisters that does not help me with them.My Father and Mother disowned my sister so since they don't call they disown the kids she has. I took off of work to raised them. My point everyone has a story. But if Prince did something to offend anybody on this earth thats on him.I don't attended church and people will stay that's bad.Mostly you will find judge mentally people. But if you truly belief in you heart that a love that is most greater then all of us Ernest it's beautiful. Thank You
[Edited 10/15/09 12:57pm]

I must say that this discussion needed to be addressees just for the sake of getting it out in the open. In all fairness, this may be much ado about nothing, but it also may be a telling, non-verbal implication from Prince as to where his mind-set is today.

Kudos to eelco for being part of the discussion and not posting and running, like so many other Controversial (pun intended) thread starters.

The follow up posts themselves have been fairly cordial and seemingly heart felt, until the Bible "historians" started to prop themselves up with their fictitious tome.

IstenSzek said:

Very true - something very acidic and condescending about him in recent years.

Somebody said he acts liek a chosen messenger...could be that he thinks he is

http://www.newyorker.com/...lk_hoffman



SOUP WITH PRINCE
by Claire Hoffman

NOVEMBER 24, 2008

he thirty-thousand-square-foot Italianate villa, built this century by Vanna White’s ex-husband, looks like many of the other houses in Beverly Park, a gated community in L.A., except for the bright-purple carpet that spills down the front steps to announce its new tenant: Prince. One afternoon just before the election, Prince invited a visitor over. Inside, the place was done up in a generic Mediterranean style, although there were personal flourishes here and there—a Lucite grand piano with a gold-colored “Artist Formerly Known as Prince” symbol suspended over it, purple paisley pillows on a couch. Candles scented the air, and New Age music played in the living room, where a TV screen showed images of bearded men playing flutes. Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked, sidling up to the counter. Prince’s voice was surprisingly deep, like that of a much larger man. He picked up a copy of “21 Nights,” a glossy volume of photographs that he had just released. It is his first published book, a collection of highly stylized photographs of him taken during a series of gigs in London last year. “I’m really proud of this,” he said. Short original poems and a CD accompany the photographs. (Sample verse: “Who eye really am only time will tell/ 2 the almighty life 4ce that grows stronger with every chorus/ Yes give praise, lest ye b among . . . the guilty ones.”)

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. “I have a lot of parties,” he explained. In the living room, he’d installed purple thrones on either side of a fireplace, and, nearby, along a hallway, he had hung photographs of himself, in a Moroccan villa, in various states of undress. At the end of the hall, a gauzy curtain fluttered in a doorway. “My room,” he said. “It’s private.”

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring, after spending years in Minneapolis, holding court in a complex called Paisley Park, where he made thousands of songs, far away from the big labels. Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. “I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” he said. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”

Prince had his change of faith, he said, after a two-year-long debate with a musician friend, Larry Graham. “I don’t see it really as a conversion,” he said. “More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’ ” He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. “Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it,” he said.

Recently, Prince hosted an executive who works for Philip Anschutz, the Christian businessman whose company owns the Staples Center. “We started talking red and blue,” Prince said. “People with money—money like that—are not affected by the stock market, and they’re not freaking out over anything. They’re just watching. So here’s how it is: you’ve got the Republicans, and basically they want to live according to this.” He pointed to a Bible. “But there’s the problem of interpretation, and you’ve got some churches, some people, basically doing things and saying it comes from here, but it doesn’t. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got blue, you’ve got the Democrats, and they’re, like, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ Gay marriage, whatever. But neither of them is right.”

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

Later, in the dining room, eating a bowl of carrot soup, he talked about an encounter that he described as a “teaching moment.” “There was this woman. She used to come to Paisley Park and just sit outside on the swings,” he said. “So I went out there one day and I was, like, ‘Hey, all my friends in there say you’re a stalker. And that I should call the police. But I don’t want to do that, so why don’t you tell me what you want to happen. Why are you here? How do you want this to end?’ And she didn’t really have an answer for that. In the end, all she wanted was to be seen, for me to look at her. And she left and didn’t come back.” ♦


_____


Prince later, sort of retracted that statement by saying that he "studies the Bible with his gay friends".

I agree that the gesture is a tad insensitive, but Prince has been using that gesture for years. Long before it was considered insensitive-Knowing that he has been using the gesture for so long, puts it in perspective. I don't believe Prince intended to be insensitive. Things change and in the USA the word "gay" sometimes is used to describe something stupid-which is wrong, so very wrong. Even the use of retarded is used to describe dumb people which is wrong, very wrong. Not to mention the term "Indian giver"-very wrong. All these terms/gestures are used to marginalize a particular sect or people to make a certain group feel superior while marking the other group as inferior or unworthy. Or maybe we have to much time on our hands and our reading to much into a gesture.

ernestsewell said:

Ernest! I like the way you think (not always but many times) but this is just ridiculous!! First, to speak with your words, since when do you know what Prince thinks? Second, based on that bold sentence of yours, this would basically mean that Prince calls himself gay, he's criticising himself so to speak. If there's any-one who always acts feminine, it's him, you know his pictures, some are soooo gay.

He embraces a gay appearance, else he wouldn't be acting so damn gay all of his life (that's my opinion, I don't know 100% if he's straight, bi or gay)

It was just a gesture.

One motion of the hand can cause all this? People have been doing that for years whether inappropriate or not. Hell, some gay people even do it-give the man a break

djfine said:

OK - You seem to have a bit of an open mind so...

First of all let the record show - I have known and worked with and been friends with "gay" people. I do understand more than you know.

They're not hurting anyone? Is someone committing suicide harmful to no one other than themselves? Yet suicide is wrong. Why? It is wrong for more than one reason. First of all you do not have the right to take a life that is not yours to take. God made you and to kill yourself is murder. Who are you really hurting? Suicide hurts the person who commits it but it also hurts family members it hurts people in the community who may have had to witness it. It hurts in ways I can't begin to inumerate here. It hurts the potential of what that person may have accomplished. God does not make mistakes and everyone is born for a reason. A reason that is bigger than them. No one can do what God made that person to do.

Secondly - No one is born gay. Homosexuality is a choice. Just like having sex in general is a choice. Just like abstaining from sex is a choice. Sex is not a pre-requisite for living. It is not essential to remain alive. It is not a vital life function like a beating heart. You can choose not to have sex. You can't choose not to be black or asian or hispanic. There are people who are not able to have sexual relations for health reasons. Their not having sex is not detrimental to their living long healthy fulfillng lives. It is not a need. It is a desire.

Love is not the sin. But love is not just a feeling!. It is a decision! Feelings change. Love does not. Part of the sin is deciding that you will do what you please rather than what God has required. You will let your desires be your god and do what makes you feel good. That goes for us all. In every area of sin. There are people in the world who will tell you that to have sex with a child or an animal or someone else's wife or husband is ok. They will also say that they feel "love". There are standards. There are limits. God is the one who makes the rules. I do not.

It is the same old arguements that we hear and participate in over and over again. Everyone will make excuses for the things that they want to do. It is human nature. It is sinful human nature. It will never change unless you let God change it.

When your hero Prince was asked about his 180 in the area or sexuality he said "there was a time when people were doing it with whomever they wanted and sticking it wherever they wanted and God came down and said enough and wiped them all out."

Pretty basic way to say it but it says it.

By the way - I'm not the one on the high horse loved one. Jesus is..I'm just pointing to Him.

Revelation 19:11 NIV

The Rider on the White Horse

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war.

For fuck's sake. I can't BELEIVE people think this is a topic worthy of 6 fucking pages!!!

Have you people ever seen Prince live???

Have you people ever seen Prince perform Controversy live???

He's been using that gesture for YEARS!!!

Does that make it right? Probably not.

But to keep going on and on and on about a non issue like this makes me think that you people have nothing better to do with your lives than pick out small hand gestures.

If he would've given the middle finger. Which is a much worse and offensive a hand gesture than what he did. NOBODY would give fuck!!!

Prince is just a man, so stop nitpicking every fucking thing he does. Everything he says and every move he makes doesn't have to have a meaning!!!

He could say something as simple as "I'm hungry", and there would be 10 posts all with 10 pages worth of discussion here into the deeper meaning and the hidden cryptic agenda in the phrase "I'm hungry".

Paris9748430 said:

Wow. There are sure a lot of folks who don't like certain topics discussed, and actually seem upset about it. Interesting indeed.

squirrelgrease said:

He really can be a total cock at times.

thanks2joniandu said:

I'm not trying to imply that people can't be offended by his action during that lyric. Yes, Prince displayed an ignorant stereotype, that's rather ridiculous considering he looks and acts like a woman himself. However, regarding the overall issue, I just don't think general disagreement with or misunderstanding of homosexuality is equivalent to racial inequality and oppression of the past or present. In most cases, people are able to hide their homosexual orientations to avoid persecution from those who oppose them. As far as anatomy is concerned, there is nothing visibly "gay" about a human body that can attract prejudice. It is voluntary action (displaying same-gender partner, clothing, public demonstrations, etc) that can produce discrimination or unfortunate hate crimes. On the other hand, unless you're racially ambiguous, even if you speak or dress like another culture you can't hide your color or any ethnic physical features to avoid being attacked or abused by racists, as known in history.

thebumpsquad said:

Nothing a team of psychiatrists and some prescribed psychotropic medication couldn't attempt to fix.

squirrelgrease said:

Let's also remember that the person who wrote that article was quickly discredited because they didn't tell the whole story. Even Prince came out and rebutted that part of it, and the interviewer finally told the rest of it. That doesn't take away from Prince's statement, but .....

ernestsewell said:

Where was she discredited?

ernestsewell said:

-----
I do not need to know you I read your post and you are oversensitive.

I do not know Prince and neither do you but that does not seem to stop you from reading into everything he does.
Seems like it is okay for your to assume but not anyone else.

I also recall Dez Dickerson mentioning that back when was with the band P did make mention of the press getting on his nerves with the gay question so I can't read P's mind but I can read what a band mate had to say on the subject.

I live in the real fucking world my friend where people are not PC and you need to try joining the rest of us in the real world. I have worked with and know many black homosexual men who walk around with their wrist turned down.

I never said all homosexual men do it but some do and I am not the one calling them "pussy boys " you are so I think you may have some issues you need to deal with.

I do not walk around pretending that some black folk are not fuck-ups destroying their communities. It is not a sterotype it is real just like some gay guys are very limp wristed. Get the fuck over it.

lezama said:

--
Co-Sign Next it will be post about how Prince is offending people who use canes

Some want to think this silly hand gesture is offensive, then lets take the next step and just say the whole damn song is offensive and homophobic. For if there's NOTHING wrong with homosexuality, why is HE even questioning what people think he is.

Sometime I think people take political correctness to places it don't need to go.


If I wanna be REALLY politically correct, it should offend me that my african-american president can go out in public wearing SUCH NICE clothes when THROUGHOUT history, african americans were denied that right because they GOT NO WAGES. FOr what makes him better than others....CRIMONY PEOPLE>..give it up Diversity is a good thing. It seems that over the years people are being forced to like and agree with everything. Being human just don't work that way. We are all by nature different and that includes differences in ALL things including views, desires, hates, dislikes.

if it's nice or not, a limp wrist...A ROUND THE WORLD...seems to symbolize that someone is gay. Accurate or not. EVERYONE knows that all gay people are not feminine. Seriously, peole...WE ALL KNOW THAT. Should black people not be called black people anymore because of the negative connotation of the word Black...or african american....that says I'm something "other" than american...that's offensive too for white people arent called caucasiaqn-american or. It's offensive to call a white person white cuz they arent actually white....am I right all U white people. Your skin ain't the color of "white" paint or tile...all y'all ain't as pale as MJ.

U seem to want to go through a day without being offended...If U go a day without being offended...U aren't living.

Tolerance begs for tolerance. A homosexual wants one to be tolerant of their behavior but isn't tolerant of the intolerance.

it all boils down to one big huge slippery slope, that ends with NO ONE speaking ANY opinion and after 1,000 years our lips fuse together cuz we no longer have to speak.




this is riddled with typos and i don't give a rats ass...i was gonna fix 'em but what ever.
[Edited 10/15/09 14:24pm]
[Edited 10/15/09 14:25pm]

laurarichardson said:

remember when he offended all the one legged pirates and or stroke victims during ONA Live with the ozzy ozzburne dance!


Fuckin prick. I'm rolling over all the records with a steamroller...TOMORROW!

nurseV said:

Thank y nurse..i was reading all the posts till i came to yours.
Give it a rest ppl. It's not the first time he made that gesture he did it in London, on Live television and not one Homosexual in all of London(and u know theres a bunch of em) was offended by lil ol Princey. I surely was'nt.
I think the only ones bitching bout it here are the tired ol Queens, (U KNOW WHO U ARE)
We love u anyway
Peace.