The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #119441   Message #2591758
Posted By: Midchuck
18-Mar-09 - 10:41 AM
Thread Name: Homophobia in Playground Rhymes
Subject: RE: Homophobia in Playground Rhymes
Children's playground rhymes have always been built around what was most forbidden and what they thought would upset "the grownups" most.

Live with it.

If you make a big deal about rhymes, jokes, etc., that pick on homosexuals (or blacks or jews or polacks or blondes or lawyers), you'll just give rise to more of the same.

An attempt to forbid something that a lot of people choose to do, simply drives it underground and makes it, possibly, more exciting. And deprives you of any chance to limit or control it. You may be able to diminish it considerably by education, and regulation of doing it in public, as with smoking in the US. But that's a different approach.

The US should have figured this out from the Prohibition experience. Obviously, we didn't.

Peter