In which I spend some time on Oprah's message boards, amongst other masochistic activities

So I'm well aware that y'all are enormous Oprah fans who never miss a show. But just in case your DVR broke down yesterday... on the Oprah show, a reverend, in response to a question from a gay man, said that "being gay is a gift from God." According to the linked article, this set off quite a discussion at the Oprah Winfrey show message boards.

And because I have much less of a life than I'm sure you do, dear reader (all 5 of you), I waded through some of the comments. The thread begins with a woman from the UK expressing her disapproval of the statement. It then, as I'm sure you would expect, turns into a veritable clearinghouse for Bible-thumpers, with an occasional reasonable voice poking through.

What almost interests me more, however, is that the 18th post was from one of the moderators of the message board, reminding everyone to respect each others views... and that the terms and conditions of the website prohibit people from defaming or insulting people, or posting abusive or hateful comments. Again, that was post #18.

(The following are a random assortment of comments, helpfully paraphrased by me... unless I use quotes... obviously):

Post #26: Leviticus gets dragged out, queers get called an abomination.
Post #30: More like a gift from satan.
Post #34: Knows a lot of gays, all of them are miserable! Can't be a gift...
Post #36: "Women have a whole [sic]... Men have a stick." Not really offensive, but couldn't resist mentioning it.
Post #61: Lifestyle's a choice!!!
Post #63: "Grave sin."
Post #74: Mentions murderers, rapists, child molesters, cannibals... I have to admit I had a hard time following this one. But abomination was definitely in there.
Post #77: "This is like giving [gay young people] a green light."
Post #78: Queers compared to alcoholics and people with anger management issues.
Post #120: More rapists and child molesters.

I could go on (really, I could... there are like 18 more pages of this), but I think you get the point... and the site keeps crashing anyway.

Ok, so here's my question: In what universe are the above comments not insulting, abusive, or hateful?

And I don't mean to just pick on Oprah... this happens on a lot of other sites that have comment sections and message boards and happen to post something about the queers. But what really kind of aggravates me about this is that a moderator felt the need to reiterate the terms of the site because it was obvious that people were/were about to post unkind things... but since that moderator's post, there's been no enforcement of any kind (at least not that I can tell).

I always find myself coming back to the notion that maybe poster #34's legions of gay friends are miserable because they have to continually see and hear crap like this.

Thanks, Oprah.

***

Moving right along. I have to give this article a mention because one of the author's arguments against giving gays the right to marry is this:

"There is also the danger that misusing terminology long agreed upon in western thought will impoverish the language to the point that it is incapable of expressing nuanced thoughts and concepts."

Gays marrying will destroy the English language as we know it and lead us all to become idiots.

Yeah.

***

Obama watch! Our next president has appointed another gay! This one will serve as the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison.

I like to consider myself a fairly intelligent human being, but I'd kind of appreciate it if Obama would appoint a queer to some position where I could understand what the hell the job is.

***

This has been floating around for a couple days, but from the AP: 9 men in Senegal have been sentenced to 8 years in jail for "unnatural acts and criminal conspiracy."

(That means they're gay.)

While admittedly an improvement over the Gambian president who wants to decapitate all gays, I can't say I'm exactly encouraged.

One of the problems with the LGBT rights movement... wait... One of the MANY problems with the LGBT rights movement (at least in the US) is that it tends to be focused on only the US. Perhaps understandable, but a lot of really bad things are happening in a lot of places, and the fact that no one is aware of it is kind of frustrating to me.

***

And finally, something not gay. So I received my student loan check today, and am somewhat ashamed to admit that my first thought was: What can I buy? I managed to restrain myself somewhat, but did end up downloading "Visiter" by the Dodos. I had been a bit wary of the cd from the snippets I had heard on the iTunes. But enough people recommended them to me that I decided to check it out... and it's all kinds of awesome. Although it incorporates a lot of elements from the music I love, it still manages to sound very different... and I mean that in the best possible way. If you're interested in learning more, here's the Pitchfork review.

Until some other time.

Cheers.