Continuing To Confront the Fake-Outrage Brigade; and Getting Just a Bit Sappy

So I don't have much time to be writing today; I'm about to rush off to a local gaming Con sponsored by the city government; yes, Uruguay has turned into one of those weird socialist countries that have state-sponsored Gaming events.  Since I was especially invited, I'd best not be more than fashionably late.

But I can't avoid addressing yet again the assholes who continue to try to slander me as a homophobe, making up that lie because it is much easier to get a (righteous) response from people at the suggestion that I'm a homophobe or transphobe than it would be to give anyone to give a shit that I hurt your feelings about elfgames.

It pisses me off immensely, these rpg.net and SA-goons spreading this meme about me being homo- or trans-phobic.  And you'd think that the fact that, as far as I know, I'm the FIRST fucking guy to ever put a transgender character on the cover of an RPG rulebook would be proof enough that they're full of shit.

Luckily, the tide seems to be somewhat turning. A significant number of people have spoken out in support of me, in exhaustion at the Outrage Brigade's antics, and in condemnatory suspicion of their utterly unsubstantiated claims.  Even in some of the places where these guys reign supreme, they've actually had to face people demanding that they offer up some kind of proof.

So apparently, these guys have scoured my blog with a fine-toothed comb in a desperate effort to come up with some kind of evidence that I'm in fact the raging LGBT-hater they want to make me out to be. You'd think if their claims was true that would be easy, but of course, that hasn't worked out for them.  Instead, they've managed to come up with only two frankly absurd exhibits that they want to try to make people believe is 'proof', one extremely old the other very recent.

The first is something from the archives of my old blog, a throwaway comedic line from a blog entry where I was bemoaning the shift in demographics in gamer's ages that happened in the 90s. There, I commented along the lines that before White Wolf's games came out, the average gamer was 13 and obsessed with barbarians, big guns, mecha, etc., and the hobby catered to that; after White Wolf, the gamer being catered to was a college kid "wearing all black, listening to the Cure and questioning their sexuality".  The point being that the shift in age-range from making games to draw in young teenagers to making games for pretentious college kids did not have a good effect on the hobby.

Now let's note something: this was from a blog entry that I wrote something like 8 or 9 YEARS ago.  Eight or nine years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were against gay marriage; as were the majority of the population of the U.S. (I'll note that even 8 or 9 years ago, I was FOR gay marriage).

I could point out that right around that same time, I made a blog entry about a kid named Zach Stark who had been forced by his parents to be interned in a 'gay reparation' (read brainwashing) clinic against his will. Some of you might remember the case, you can read about it here. I wrote about that too, expressing my outrage and trying to draw attention to what had been done to him, linking to a campaign that tried (and failed) to get action to have him released (in the end, as you can see in wikipedia, the 'therapy' didn't work, surprise, surprise).

So right around the same time, you see me trying to defend the rights of a gay kid. 

But more importantly, in 8 years language and humor have changed, I probably wouldn't use that line about "questioning sexuality" now in that same exact way.  Back then, I sometimes still used "gay" as a synonym for "lame", which I wouldn't do now either.  The point is, even in the context of history, while I've continued to evolve, by the standards of 2005 you could say I was already ahead of the curve in terms of a straight guy supporting gay rights.


The only other quote they got to use against me? A line from a very recent DCC campaign update; where it's not even my own words, but a 10 year old who's a player in that group.  I reported how he's playing a wizard that changes gender when he spellcasts, something he's been not at all bothered by;  I was inspired by that (and trying to make sure that the kid saw his character's gender fluidity as something not unique in the setting) to introduce an order of wizards who are all in some form or another not 'cisgendered'.
Now, I called these guys the "Grand Inclusive & Non-Hierarchical Azure Order", which maybe some people interpreted as mockery; the thing is, anyone who's been reading my DCC updates knows that the entire campaign has been a little bit silly, and this order are just about the least silly thing in it.  As I've said in other DCC updates, the Azure Order are both powerful and the 'good guys', using their powers to help protect the helpless from the many horrors of the post-apocalyptic fantasy setting they're in.  But it would have stood out like a sore thumb if they weren't at least a tiny bit silly, because EVERYTHING in that campaign has been a little bit silly.
The part that has been used as proof against me, somehow, is that my young player, when invited to join the order, said "no thanks" because he felt completely comfortable and included in his current group (the PC party).  He later changed his mind and joined after all, I'll note, when he cannily realized that he could raid the Azure Order's library for spell research purposes.  That's a good gamer if ever I saw one!
Oh yes, he also referred to his character as "trigendered".  I don't know where he got the term from, but it was his term, not mine; so really, if you have to resort to using a term I quoted a fifth grader as using (and not one I see anything particularly wrong with!), you've pretty much got nothing.

Seriously, if this is the best they can do, it's pathetic.


But anyways, it always pisses me off when the anti-pundit crowd resort to making up lies about me to try to "get me"; but this particular bit of libel bugs me a lot more than most.

I have to admit bothers me in a particular way; maybe more now than it ever would have in the past.  I don't have kids of my own, but in the last two years, for the first time, I've had a couple of kids (one in his mid-teens, the other the aforementioned 10 years old) playing in my gaming group.  They're the sons of a very dear friend of mine; whose family we've spent a lot of time with. I'm very close to both of those kids and would be proud if I were ever to have a kid like either of them. 

The older one identifies as straight, the younger one has not said outright one way or the other but has been really happy playing a wizard who changes into a girl when he spellcasts.  And just the thought that, if either of them were in fact LGBT and should happen to end up finding something on the internet that would suggest to them that I would hate them for who they are, it absolutely fucking sickens me to think that for a second they might imagine (because of these what these assholes wrote) that I wouldn't accept and love them unconditionally.

Sorry for getting sappy there, but it's true. And I want it on record as much as possible, just in case.  For my awesome DCC player, for any theoretical future kid, nephew, niece, whatever.  Don't believe for a second I wouldn't be on your side, don't ever think you couldn't tell me anything.

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