Kiribati considers relocating entire nation -
The small Micronesian republic of Kiribati ([kiɾibas], something like “kitty bus”), noticing the fact that global climate change (which is of course not real) is causing the ocean to rise, potentially swallowing the entirety of their low-lying land, is contemplating how they could go about buying a new location for their nation.
This is a serious thing for a lot of people. Primarily, it is obviously a concern for the people who live in these low island/atoll nations like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and the Maldives (who have previously made news pondering buying land from Australia). But it’s also a concern for linguists. Diasporas are not conducive to language maintenance, and there is a world of underdocumented linguistic diversity that could easily be swallowed up by the sea in the next few years, and left to dwindle away immersed in foreign lands and cultures.
It’s worth reinforcing again that the desires of linguists are a secondary (or lower) concern here, but being a linguist my own self it is worth noting to me. But further than that, these languages are of value to the speakers themselves more than to us. The Kiribati people would survive, I’m sure, if they were relocated to Fiji, but in a generation or two the language might be drowned out by a much louder local sound.
Different cultures value their native tongues to different extents, and it’s not my place nor any other linguist’s to impose a standard by which this value must be measured. And the fact is, language change and language death are parts of language life. But when these events are foreseeable, it’s worth thinking about, can we do something about this? Can we fix this in advance? A stitch in time and all that? Maybe we can’t cool the world any time soon, maybe we can’t push the tides back down. But we can at least think about some of the things we might lose, and think about what’s to be done.
“Tonight during The Daily Show, Jon Stewart had two women on a bed French kissing, once again giving support to the agenda of the homosexual population. Now, I have had 1 cousin who died ofAIDS, 3 friendS who died of AIDS, a female roommate who was a lesbian, and a nephew would is gay. So, I am definitely not homophobic. However, this incessant focus on the gay lifestyle tends to lead youngsters who do stay up to watch this program that it is OK to experiment with gay/lesbian activities. And, if you don’t believe that, just watch “Will and Grace” which is on a main stream channel (ABC, CBS, or NBC, I think), as well as many of the shows in the so called mainstream media. It’s time for TV programming to get back to focusing on the vast majority of our population, the heterosexuals,and stop making it seem like the country is primarily homosexual…plus, the proliferation of these shows lead youngsters to believe that homosexuality is prevalent in our society, whereas it makes up a small portion of our population” —
All this and more from a huge list of complaints to the FCC compiled here.
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Conservatives yearn for the good old days of beating queers -
Seriously. That is not an exaggeration of the content of this dialogue. The speakers say that once upon a time, the normal male response to seeing a (biological) man in a dress, or being hit-on by a man, was to beat him. And they fear that “political correctness” has turned this into a hate crime. And this is a bad thing, that the “normal” response should still be acceptable.
But “We’re not promoting, advocating violence here.” Really.
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Tennessee State Sen., sponsor of the Don't-Say-Gay Bill, is the real victim -
This story is actually kind of a beautiful illustration of what irony looks like. Sen. Stacey Campfield is the champion of a bill to restrict the discussion of sexuality in Tennessee schools. He recently made comments that AIDS was caused by a gay flight attendant having sex with a monkey. An opponent of sex education making such an idiotically uninformed claim is about the equivalent of an opponent of anti-litter laws slipping on his own banana peal.
Now, for his crusade and commentary, Campfield has been banned from a Knoxville restaurant. But of course the is the real victim because liberals hate everyone that disagrees with them and they are the real bigots. The opponent of civil rights is the real one to have his civil rights violated. Also, the villains in Fiddler on the Roof were clearly the Jews, who shouldn’t have been living there in the first place.
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