Balance

Is something like this really so controversial?

"Hooray for NBA player Tim Hardaway for saying what's on a lot of people's minds. He would not willingly play ball with a homosexual, and neither would I, nor would anyone I know. "

I'm not so sure about that last part. Chances are there's a few gays and lesbians in that cowboy's neighborhood up in Gold Canyon. Lee A. Prins has surely shook a few gay hands in his life, as have we all. His own family likely has a few members who prefer the company of their own sex. They are just too smart to come out to such a raving bigoted homophobic ignorant jerk.

Lee's numbers are wrong too, and here's why:

"Tom W. Smith's much more recent study, Adult Sexual Behavior in 1989: Numbers of Partners, Frequency and Risk, conducted among a full probability sample of the adult U.S. household population, reported that "Overall... less than 1% [of the study population] has been exclusively homosexual."

It's a thing with some right-wing religiously intolerant websites to try to downplay the demographics concerning gays. It's psychologically like a nice warm baby-blanket for them to minimize their opposition. The real numbers are likely much closer to the original Kinsey estimates:

"The 1993 Janus Report, the first broad-scale scientific national survey on sexual behavior since Kinsey, concluded that 9% of males and 5% of females had had homosexual experiences more than just "occasionally."

The 1993 Yankelovich Monitor Survey, considered the first nationally representative survey to reflect what percentage of the population identified itself as homosexual, indicated that 5.7% described themselves as "gay/homosexual/lesbian."

The 1994 Sex in America Study Self-identified gay and bisexual men accounted for 2.8% of the surveyed respondents, while 1.4% of the women identified as lesbian or bisexual."

The link does a good job of noting the problems confronted by those who would explore this demographic issue. But despite those difficulties, it's certain that Lee grossly underscores the number of gays as a percentage of the population.


But that's not my point.

Immediately after this LTTE the Arizona Republic editors placed another one to "balance" Lee's paranoid and hateful screed:

"When I pay to see Melissa Etheridge sing or to see John Amaechi play basketball, I really don't consider whether either or both might want me to go home with them.

They aren't interested in what I do and I am not interested in what they do.

Bless them for their talent." - Mike Epstein,
Phoenix

You see, according to the Republic's apparent letter-publishing policy, sane and compassionate sexual mores like Mr. Epstein's cannot be allowed to just stand on their own. They must be "balanced" by the lunatic ravings of a person who seems very overly-concerned about his rectum.

By putting this issue in a tit-for-tat, black-versus-white, my-opinion-is-as-good-as-yours frame, they are quite deliberately legitimizing Mr. Prins' illogical and malignant fears.

This technique works with anything. The craziest position can be legitimized just by "balancing" it with an often weak but at-least-presentable opposition view.

Nancy Pelosi Eats Christian Babies With a Plastic Picnic Fork.

"Hi, I'm Chris Matthews and here with me in the studio today we have Doug MacEachern from Phoenix, and to argue the pig-headed radical-liberal side, Satan is with us from our Kansas City affiliate studios."

"Tell me, Doug, how many babies have the Democrat leaders killed in this way?"

MacEachern: "Well Tim, or Chris, whatever the fuck your name is, we think that any number of babies destroyed in this manner is an affront to American family values."

Matthews: "I'm Chris. Tim has shorter thumbs. That's how you can tell the difference. What say you, Lord of the Underworld?"

Satan: "The facts speak for themselves, Tim, and the facts have a distinct liberal bias. We've examined the financial records of Pelosi's office and have found no invoices for plastic picnic knives, and Pelosi is on record saying that she prefers chopsticks, which are not easily employed in child cannibalism."

Lather rinse repeat. Why do you think they call it "fair and balanced?"

Anyways, isn't it nice to know that the largest newspaper in the state of Arizona is using this "get both sides of the story" frame to maintain the loyalty of its most homophobic readership and advertisers?

Tim Hardaway is the greatest thing to boost the hopes of American homophobes since Pee Wee Herman got caught snacking in a movie theater.

"Snacking" equals cleverly deliberate typographical error.

Hehehe.

Of course all this is just my opinion.