You challenge people to posit why they are ‘against gay’ lamenting they would have no argument – and then you say imply that to be anti gay must mean that one is a ‘closet gay’.

Your upside down premise (‘Mr Math’???, really???) of asking people to provide ‘valid arguments’ and then spewing something such stupid and childish positions that don’t deserve a reasonable response – in fact only validates how you and the ‘gay agenda’ are miserably ideological.

I’m not making an anti-gay statement.

I’m making an anti-gay supporter statement.

You losers claim ‘morality’ and then go on to make absurd claims.

Homosexuality is a disease. It is the misalignment of gender, and sexual orientation. Just as most complex forms of behavior are learned – they can be unlearned. We are in fact biological machines – and we will one day have the ability to create an adaptive environment that creates outcomes we desire – including sexual orientation.

That we don’t yet have the ability to correct homosexuality, and that gays can live otherwise healthy and normal lives, does not change the fact that it is a medical condition that would otherwise be cured.

100 years ago, were someone to have discovered a cure, or therapy for ‘gay’ that worked – gay simply would not exist for the most part, certainly not the extent that we have a disproportionate minority of bit&es in the media raving about it all day.

So you know Felix? Why would you make a new account for Reuters? Why not post under your usual name? Why not just make yourself known then and “come out” and debate rather than berate?

Felix isn’t the angry little man here, I assure you dpw516…

If you know Felix just a little bit, you know that it angers him to no end that folks CHOOSE to keep their sexuality private. Felix equates privacy with shame and that it is HIS moral obligation to expose the truth, regardless of the consequences or the wishes of his subjects.

This is typical of gay journalists; they resent those who hide in the closet and retaliate with a keyboard and blog.

Felix, you angry little man, please crawl back under the rock or rectum you came from. We don’t care.

I am flabbergasted. How come every gay American doesn’t just jump to Europe? Here it is illegal to refuse a gay couple a hotel room because they are gay.

But anyway… “The closet is an institution designed to protect LGBT individuals from scorn and hatred”

Only half true. I know quite a few gay people who are pretty at ease with who they are in social and professional life, but who wouldn’t want to explain it at home. The closet exists for all sorts of reasons. Many of them exist largely in the closet builder’s mind.

Is Tim Cook, himself, the authoritative source of this “known fact”? If so, do cite chapter and verse.

Why is it wrong? Answer that. And be honest, for a change. For every single one of you, the real answer is that you, personally, are uncomfortable with confronting the blatant heterosexual privilege in the society you live in. You are uncomfortable with admitting that, yes, we straight people get an awful lot of advantages merely by being straight. But you don’t want to admit to your discomfort, so you hide it behind nice-sounding platitudes. You blather about privacy, or decency, or you pretend to be offended for Mr. Cook’s sake.

This is an important subject that shouldn’t be hidden away. The reason being that homosexuality is not the least bit abnormal or indecent. It is you closet homophobes (for lack of a better term) who are the real problem, not Mr. Cook nor the article author Mr. Salmon.

Really? Where? Which clause? which article? Some judicial decisions have found a right to privacy IMPLICIT in the constitution, but they have had to talk about “emanations” and “penumbra” in order to do it. And you do know the difference between “implicit” and “explicit,” right?

It any case, although that right is understood to protect one’s sexual activity, prophylactic decisions, etc., … it has never been understood to impede anyone else from talking about those aspects of one’s life.

If “privacy” is supposed to be a right to shut people up it sounds like tyranny.

The right to privacy is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is explicitly protected by the US Constitution. That one is the CEO of a major company does not vitiate that right in matters irrelevant to the performance of one’s duties.

The assertion that not debating the topic will perpetuate “the false idea that Tim Cook is straight” is amazing. It is objectionable not merely because it is irrelevant, but because it is such a tortuous twist of illogic put forth as an excuse — a feeble one, at that.

No-one, journalist or otherwise, has the unilateral right to publicize what is private, and utterly unimportant to the public at large, contrary to the wishes of the individual concerned. It is inappropriate behavior in a civilized society. It’s why we object to hacker groups and why online commentary on the demise of the News of the World is almost universally “good riddance.”

Bringing up this subject *at all* has turned a completely unimportant, nobody-cares irrelevance into an artificially generated “issue,” to the benefit only of the journalist, no-one else.

That is not ethical. It is despicable.

Sure… Except that I really don’t gossip much at work. (Yet another example that privacy and secrecy are different?)

“it’s up to you, TFF, to do something to indicate that it’s OK by you if this important person is a person of the same sex”

Hopefully by continuing the conversation naturally using whatever pronouns and phrasing the person I’m talking to used? Relationships are complicated enough that anything else is dangerous.

What is the alternative? Stopping the conversation, wide-eyed, and declaring, “Oh, you’re gay!” And then telling them, “But really, that’s okay with me. That’s perfectly fine. I have lots of gay friends, and would love to set you up with some of them.”

As for how someone’s gay partner might come up in conversation? Pay attention to the pronouns. If a person has been talking about another person who is important in his or her life for any length of time without using a pronoun, it’s up to you, TFF, to do something to indicate that it’s OK by you if this important person is a person of the same sex. At least I think so. Some people won’t agree. Some people might think that it’s somebody’s preference to talk like that.

First, I am typically the last person in the office to find out about stuff like that. I tend to focus on work, not social chatter, and somebody’s sexuality does not typically come up in work-centric conversations.

Second, I don’t know how I would “get the impression he may be gay”. Either he says something that leaves no question (mentioning a husband/partner/date) or there is no reason for me to even wonder about it. Furthermore, it would be pretty ironic for me to engage in that kind of speculation given the instances throughout my life in which somebody has speculated/accused me of being gay. (Yes, I am soft-spoken and perhaps a bit effeminate in my mannerisms. Works for me…)

Sports? Pet Shop Boys? Fixing him up? Whatever happened to WORKING in the work place? And valuing somebody based on their accomplishments? I’ve run across a dozen articles on Tim Cook this week, variously praising his background and wondering if he can keep Apple moving in the right direction.

Felix Salmon is the only journalist who seems to think his sexuality is relevant — and the only journalist who HASN’T prominently mentioned his talents and accomplishments. Praise can be just as objectifying as criticism, when it focuses on who somebody is rather than on what they have done.

We have very different perspectives on how the workplace should operate, it seems.