beastie wrote:Do we give Wade the opportunity to grow and change, or do we still judge him from old posts?
As for myself, until I witness him acting like this again, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
From what I have observed, Wade has been the target of multiple cheap shots and weak insults.
One - Wade has never disavowed his former sentiments concerning homosexuality or "anti-mormon bigotry". He just doesn't talk about it ad nauseum the way he used to. Wade goes on kicks, and that's not his current kick. His current kick is trying to point out how exmormons are psychologically troubled. It amazes me that some of you don't recognize what he's doing.
Two - Wade's current "conciliatory" posts also tend to contain self-congratulatory statements embedded in superiority, as well as containing digs against the poster in question. I don't think he's changed at all. I think he's just decided to be a bit more subtle.
I still see the Wade of old, the Wade who used to actually troll boards for homosexual men and preach to them. He was saying truly repellent and disgusting things about homosexuality, and then pretending to want to "help" them. They wisely called him on his BS and were quite rude to him, which he deserved. Likewise, I still see the Wade of old who considers even the mildest exmormon critic like Analytics to be a "bigot". After watching his behavior for years, I will never take him seriously, and will continue to call his BS when I see it. He's just learned how to pull back a bit.
For those interested, I spent a small portion of two evenings about 7 years ago, posting a couple of investigative questions on several gay boards. That is the extend of my "trolling".
The "repellent and disgusting" things I said about homosexuality consisted simply in classifying homosexuality as a sexual attraction disorder (SAD) along with what I considered to be other sexual attraction disorders (pediphilia, necrophelia, etc.). The classification had only to do with whether the sexual attraction may reasonably be considered a "disorder" or not, and was entirely silent in terms of severity (morally, ethically, or otherwise) of acts that may result from the disorder. Many, including Beastie, completely misconstrued the classification as equating homosexuality with pedaphilia et. al. And since that misconstrual caused emotions to run high, and since the parties with whom I interacted were suprisingly closed-minded to being corrected by the source (Beastie in particular), the misconception stood, and I got what I supposedly deserved.
As for my considering ex-Mormon critics in general, let alone the mildest exmormon critics, to be a "bigot", that is entirely a figment of Beastie's imagination (as I thoroughly demonstrated on the thread she linked to above). Not only did I suggest no such thing, but there is ample evidence in the thread where I clarrified repeatedly just the opposite, and my Anti-Bigotry web site specifically said just the opposite. But, yet again, Beastie imagines it differently, and is closed-minded to being persuaded otherwise. And so the fabrication continues to be repeated, presumably in the hopes that it will one day be true.
I await the day that she blames me for the attacks on 9/11.
Thanks, -Wade Englund-