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Grant had some ulterior motives for this of course - anyone who knows Grant will also be familiar with this (sometimes) infuriating habit of his - in that he wanted to find someone willing to take a walk down the garden path of anti-gay prejudice without them knowing they were being "studied". Grant hoped to see how such a person would develop their arguaments, and whether their opinions would go somewhere or just fizzle out into the common anti-gay rhetoric. (For those of our readers who need an excellent primer on the subject, we can really do no better than point you to the very readable site of Dr Gregory Herek who is one of the leading experts on the interaction between homosexuals and "heterosexual" society. For those of you needing a primer on bigotry, try this site or try this one).
The internet and email is great for this purpose in many ways. It allows people some anonymity and, of course, allows you to chat to others across the World at little expense to either party. So Grant started searching.
- Firstly, the subject needed to be a fundamentalist Christian because it is from within these groups that organised campaigns against gay men and women largely originate in Australia.
- Secondly, the subject needed to be from the US because it is here that the religious extremists (Christian ones anyway) are most strong, most well-funded and most active and are therefore most likely to be the original source of anti-gay material.
- Thirdly, the subject needed to be educated to some degree so that the correspondence could be reasonably expected to advance somewhere. There are more than enough truly stupid people out there making anti-gay statements, but they actually have very little to say when you break it all down.
- Finally, Grant needed a subject who appeared likely to not respond immediately with mere invective when he or she found their opinions challenged or blocked (Thanks all the same, but Dale and Grant get to hear more than enough of this just living out their daily lives - we hardly need go looking for more!).
After some searching and quite a few "duds" Grant hit upon what seemed an ideal candidate...a 24 year old male student with a website overflowing with fundamentalist Christianity and with a particular and somewhat flawed focus on homosexuality. Deliberately neglecting to mention anything about his own sexuality, Grant emailed... |
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