From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:30:10 -0800 (PST)
To: freedom-knights@jetcafe.org
Subject: Re: Dale disses gays.
In-Reply-To: <199702140501.XAA28650@manifold.algebra.com>
Message-ID: <330484AC.5E5@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> Dale Thorn wrote:
> > I worked for a gay man in Beverly Hills and Encino for 3 years.  I
> > learned a lot about "signals" during that time.  Bigot?  I don't
> > think so.  One of my favorite customers, a nice lady who is Jewish
> > (and who grew up where I did) told me she could spot 'em every time.

> This is a typical case of overconfidence on her part.
> If she thought about it for longer, she would realize that she cannot
> benchmark her gay-spotting performance very well.
> If you presented her with, say, 100 unknown men and 50 of them were gays
> and she'd identify everyone correctly, I would be impressed.

If you really intended to do this as an experiment, this method would
not work.  The way it works (and what she meant I believe):

1. Start with 100. Observe them very briefly and pick the most obvious
   candidates from immediately-discernable features. How accurate this
   would be is not so much hit or miss by misidentification as it is
   making too broad an evaluation on the first round.
2. Now that you've eliminated the most obvious of the gays and the
   most obvious non-gays, take only what's left and observe for
   somewhat longer, and you should be able (if you're as good as her)
   to pick off quite a few more.  In the end, of course, there has
   to be doubt about quite a few, which is the whole point of having
   a non-discriminatory policy, so that nobody feels compelled to
   make judgements where they are not warranted.

If you think I'm carrying this too far, check out the comedy movie
with Tom Hanks and Sally Field, where Hanks identifies a Jewish
doctor by superficial appearance alone.  It's my only point.