<p>Watch me being surprised.</p>
<p>Do they not have free speech in Merry Old England?</p>
<p>Imagine if they tried to do that in America. Just imagine.</p>
<p>Wow... that's really lame...</p>
<p>That would never happen in this country thank GOD!</p>
<p>It would. Word "nigger" is already banned in New York.</p>
<p>^^^^it might be "banned" by some lame ass NYC proposition, but it won't get the cops called to your house</p>
<p>This is not political correctness. The person who received the e-mail obviously felt sincerely offended and called the cops. The cops being public servers and all they had to do something so they just paid a visit to the boy's house.
This story doesn't seem that big of a deal to me.</p>
<p>It just shows the trend that people are very easily offended nowadays. Muslims and reaction to caricatures; feminists and all the various crap; minorities whining when they are not granted access to college (hence the AA).
If someone calls you a "nigga", why is that offensive? Nigga is a street word for African-American; it is truth; you are nigga. As much as I am "whitey" and "commie", and all other pseudonyms for white Russian. And if someone calls you "gay" and it is not true, why do you become offended?</p>
<p>PS. For mentally gifted: I'm not racist or sexist. I think, and science agrees, that people of different sex and race are VERY different. However, I am not that dumb to not understand that each person has its own, a very huge path and only idiots can put people of all races under same stereotype.</p>
<p>PPS. I'm sorry if I am resent; I need to get it out somewhere and this looks like right place :)</p>
<p>Russian in gerneral are pretty racist. It has to do with the culture. Russian immigrants always seem to have that "I am better than you" attitude, it so annoying!</p>
<p>PS i am not racisit</p>
<p>
[quote]
Russian in gerneral are pretty racist.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That might be a slight generalization.</p>
<p>Calling someone "gay boy" is offensive. Besides, it’s not up to us to say if something is offensive or not, it is the recipient who makes that judgment. </p>
<p>In this case, the person who received the e-mail was offended, so we can’t just disregard their feelings because we think they should be different.</p>
<p>I don’t even see how this story is all that newsworthy.</p>
<p>Excessive? Yes. But this doesn't happen to everybody who uses "gay" in a derogatory term. Anybody who has heard a friend use the term "gay" negatively and DIDN'T see the friend suffer any consequences for his ignorance, raise your hand. Yeah, thought so. </p>
<p>Before you pull out the PC card, think of what the alternative is. A world where gays were ridiculed, intimidated, and sometimes even killed? That pretty much describes our society before the most recent of times. So yeah, before you go on a masturbatory crusade on how the Bill of Rights gives you the privilege of bullying any minority in the populace, just think about that and shut your mouth.</p>
<p>The boy probably did send it, and feelings probably were hurt, but the police involvement is stupid. I see all of that, however, as irrelevant.</p>
<p>When in the world did the police become the magistrates over speech? There are a lot of things that may be offensive, but language is language -- the government has no business regulating the use of such outside government-run properties. Last time I checked, the Internet was still free property. The law itself is just plain stupid, and if politicians want to start this crap, then people are just as likely to come up with new words.</p>
<p>Why is it that conservative-minded people think that these isolated and rather bizarre cases involving groups like gays, Blacks, Asians, etc. are so dangerous to free speech, when their own party, the Republican party, has no qualms about tapping phones, torturing innocent people, marginalizing whoever disagrees with them, etc.? I'll tell you why. Because they're looking out for their own, and PC-ness is a threat to the dominance of the Straight White Male, while the crimes of the Republican party generally target others.</p>
<p>...um...I'm an Asian female, albeit straight.</p>
<p>And I identify myself as a libertarian. That too, is irrelevant to my argument, but if you think that all Republicans believe this, then I suggest you stop talking about what you don't know.</p>
<p>Conspiracy theories, much?</p>
<p>The reason it's a big deal is that it wasn't a parental conversation. The boy who got called gay didn't have his parents call the other boy's parents. The police got involved and that's ridiculous.</p>
<p>Yes. But let's also come to an understanding that this doesn't get filed under "Political Correctness." "Thin-Skinnedness" -- definitely.</p>
<p>But this isn't an objection to the use of a term as a pejorative. The parents weren't complaining that the language used was an insult to homosexual people. They were ticked off that the other kid was making fun of their kid and insulting him and/or harassing him. All because he was called "a gay boy."</p>
<p>Now if you're extremely open-minded, then you wouldn't find "gay" (or even "a gay boy") to be an insult. It's descriptive. The complaint would be about the tone and the derogatory intent. Indeed, it's much more of an affront to gay people for the family of the alleged "gay boy" to take such extraordinary offense that someone thinks their son is gay.</p>
<p>This did not arise -- or escalate because the choice of words "gay boy" were used in a way that the gay community believes is inappropriate. It was a personal reaction to language in an e-mail that was offensive to a single family.</p>
<p>Yes, people do get into trouble with their choices of words all the time. Rarely, however, are the police called in to intervene. (Of course I have to confess that some of the word choices I've seen here on CC from time to time have made me yearn for a button the could summon a Vocabulary Riot Police, complete with tear gas.) But every time someone gets in trouble -- with the law or otherwise -- for an insult or poor use of words -- does it mean that the reaction is inspired by PC zealotry. In this case, you can choose from among (a) short tempered parents; (b) thin skins and overprotectiveness; or (my choice) (c) lots-of-baggage-from-a-long-personal-history-we-don't-know-about.</p>
<p>The only problem with that argument is that if the word "gay" was not in that email the police would have never been involved. Thats why, as the original poster intended, this is an example of PC gone over the top. </p>
<p>And to those of you who cant see that police speaking to a TEN YEAR OLD about words he chose is insane, YOU are insane. . What a rediculous statement that its not a big deal that the police got involved because maybe the other boy was <em>offended</em>. So thats the standard now. Any time your <em>offended</em> we call out the police? Several of you have that idiotic view point because you are part of the band of bozo's that brought us PC in the first place.</p>
<p>Disagree Wally (with the first point). The reaction was that the parents felt that their son was being harassed. This was not about someone attacking someone because they were gay. It was about an individual feeling harassed. You could substitute any number of terms in there and the problem is the same...the parents felt that another child was picking on Junior in (I assume) a threatening way. </p>
<p>The cops were called because parents felt Junior was "attacked" -- not because anyone felt that gays were being slighted or because Junior is, in fact, gay and he was being disparaged for being gay. That's when you'd move into the "hate crime" zone.</p>
<p>This was nothing more than name calling. You can take any word and turn it into a pejorative by altering the tone or context. The cops weren't looking into whether the one boy is into bashing gays. They were looking to see if the kid was inclined to take his angry e-mail to another level.</p>
<p>This does bring into play some serious free speech issues. It seems nuts that the cops were called in -- though there's more to this than what we see, if you read to the end of the story -- but I'm not seeing a "political correctness" issue here. Show me one person who thinks the problem was with the way the one boy might not think highly enough of gays. That's not part of the equation. It's that he was rude to another boy.</p>