“Mr Homosexual” would be an awesome name


At least, it beats “Mr Gay”, which sounds so frivolous. It seems the American Family Association, which you can tell from the name is yet another institution that has mistaken “patriarchy” for “family”*, was a little overzealous in their use of search and replace, and renamed an athlete named Tyson Gay briefly.

*Try it! Just mentally substitute “patriarchy” for “family” in the title of every right-wing organization that uses the term in their name, and it will suddenly make so much more sense.

Comments

  1. Wowbagger says

    There’s a story floating around – possibly an urban myth – that an editing program used to proof an article written about actor Dick van Dyke (this was a while ago) changed the name to Penis van Lesbian.

  2. Patricia says

    The number four remark about George Vagina and Penis Cheny is going to become a classic. That is perrrrrfect!

  3. Sastra says

    A Christian debate room I used to frequent once introduced a bot which was set to automatically kick out anyone who swore. Unfortunately, it was a little too sensitive and indiscriminate. I got ejected for using the word “analysis.”

    Analysis. ANALisis.

    Once I figured this out, I had fun. “Hey,” I would ask. “What’s another word for ‘man-made river?'” “Why, Sastra,” the respected and revered Christian in charge would answer helpfully,” that would be a ‘canal.’

    BOOT!

    We could also get the Biblebot kicked and banned for citing a passage on Balaam (with his ASS). They did fix it, though. To the chagrin of the atheists (and some of the Christians.)

  4. JoJo says

    The American Family Association played the “political correctness gone wild” game very well.

  5. says

    Sastra – were you on Austnet IRC, by any chance? I remember we’d do that to their Biblebot. Channel raids were entertaining on that network.

  6. David D.G. says

    Sastra,

    I had a similar experience once when trying to post a comment on the Disney website about something. The forum software wouldn’t post my comment until I got rid of all “naughty words” in it; since I hadn’t used any, I had no idea what it was talking about. Finally, I saw that it had highlighted the first three letters of the word “cumulative.” As you say, the nannyware was just set a little bit too sensitively.

    ~David D.G.

  7. MAJeff, OM says

    I’m not fond of Mr. Homosexual. I just don’t like the “homosexual” label because of its pathological roots. “Your Flaming Overlord” will work just fine.

  8. Kenny P says

    Maybe Mr. Gay will win a gold medal at the Olympics. If he thanks God, what will the fundies to for a headline?

  9. Janine, Disingenuous Jackass says

    I am sure that some of the older people here are familiar with Marvin Homosexuale.

  10. todd. says

    Some friends of mine got married at an evangelical church last summer. In the back of the room was a “lending library,” which featured the book on tape “Bringing back the patriarchy for the 21st century.” I thought that was both hilarious and appalling, so I asked the new wife (it was her church, not his) how she felt about it. She said it was a great idea. The best part is that she makes the decisions in their house.

    I guess certain belief systems just build a tolerance for contradictions right into you.

  11. Larry says

    I’ve set up my server to edit AFA in incoming articles. It changes every occurance to “doucebags”.

    No complaints so far.

  12. Owlmirror says

    ‘Kenny P’ – *raises eyebrow* – is it back, or is this a new one?

    “Kenny P” ≠ “Kenny/Planet Killer”

    You can tell from the absence of gabbling limpetness.

  13. Bride of Shrek says

    Mr Homosexual- the newest superhero in the Marvel stable. Does everything the other superheroes do but does it with STYLE.

  14. clinteas says

    I wonder what Mr Gay thinks about this,should he hear about it LOL

    @ Bride of Shrek :
    And Adam Sandler will play him in the movie adaptation !

  15. says

    I had a similar problem once. Spell check on a book report of Oliver Twist accidentally auto-replaced all incidents of “Fagin” with “Faggot”. I’m just very glad that I proof-read that VERY carefully before handing it in.

  16. Sastra says

    ceejayoz #8 wrote:

    Sastra – were you on Austnet IRC, by any chance?

    No, dal.net IRC. But it was probably similar.

    David D.G.: I never tried “cumulative.” That’s nice.

  17. says

    Bride of Shrek @ #20 said: “Mr Homosexual- the newest superhero in the Marvel stable. Does everything the other superheroes do but does it with STYLE.”

    Have you actually read a super hero comic book? They already do things with that special touch of style. We’re talking about heroes who wear brightly colored underwear as outerwear, or who dress up in black leather and cosplay as furry rodents while beating up tough men. I don’t think you’re proposing a new development ;)

  18. says

    I think we need a Constitutional amendment to protect the word “family” from people who want to redefine Family to include bigoted homophobes.

  19. black wolf says

    So, when will we find “hoChristianbes”?

    (if you don’t get it, research ‘Of Pandas and People’)

  20. Wowbagger says

    #26:

    The results for the first round of the FA Cup:

    Hull, 1
    Svaginahorpe, 0

  21. Geral says

    @12- Haha awesome! I can see it now..

    I also find it funny, and quite sad, they have to filter their news for more desirable language. As if news isn’t naturally filtered as it is, these guys go one step further.

    How sad.

  22. MAJeff, OM says

    A Christian debate room I used to frequent once introduced a bot which was set to automatically kick out anyone who swore. Unfortunately, it was a little too sensitive and indiscriminate. I got ejected for using the word “analysis.”
    Analysis. ANALisis.

    What, have they never heard of Tobias Funke?

  23. Crudely Wrott says

    I posted the following a bit earlier at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Since I thought it was worth saying once . . .

    The Search/Replace comedy is really a hoot! Where, pray tell, were the proofreaders? Or does AFA rely on praying for an ISS* doing it for them?

    I enjoyed another hoot this morning while skimming the headlines. Came across a wire story from AP (I’m pretty sure) announcing that “Phelps and Gay” had set new records. Now, if you’re like me (doesn’t that phrase just turn your stomach?), who springs to mind at the mention of the name Phelps? And he did what with Gay? Set WHAT record?

    For the record, swimmer Michael Phelps set a world record in the 400m individual medley, touching the wall in 4:05.25.

    Wonder how ol’ Fred might have reacted to the news . . .

    *Invisible Supernatural Spook

  24. says

    Well, I did mention that only Batman gets away with dressing up in a neoprene suit and mask and cruise the backstreets with a teenage buddy looking for action without getting arrested.

  25. Buttbuttin says

    Making mbuttive buttumptions about the context in which words appear is a clbuttic mistake, really. It can result in all sorts of embarbutting mistakes.

  26. Crudely Wrott says

    Confused echoes from and old movie and an old comedy routine:

    “My name is MISTAH Homosexual and I’m nobody’s sweetheart!”

    Can’t help it. Incomplete recall.

  27. NinjaDebugger says

    Every time I see “Mister Homosexual” I can’t help but think that it’s a machine for turning people gay, from one of the Spaceballs outtakes.

  28. MAJeff, OM says

    Every time I see “Mister Homosexual” I can’t help but think that it’s a machine for turning people gay, from one of the Spaceballs outtakes.

    I’m sort of picturing a leather-daddy Mr. PotatoHead.

  29. MAJeff, OM says

    “Mr Homosexual” would be an awesome name.

    Well I doubt that it would help a guy pick up women.

    It works great; women hit on me more than men do.

  30. Amplexus says

    , “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.”

    Remember the old Mnemonic about anal sex “Ease it in, like a gentlemen’

    His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance

    It happens to us all sometimes :(

    Homosexual didn’t get off to a particularly strong start…He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday

    Yep I’m no stranger to “way too soon completed shut-downs”

    …Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: “A little fatigued.”

    It’s alright we all feel a little fagged out after a run.

  31. Bubba says

    A few years ago I went to the Mesquite Championship Rodeo (barely east of Dallas). They start each rodeo with a prayer (“Lowerd, don’t let the meanole bulls kill are cowboys!!”) but I was even *more* amused that the Bible-totin’ audience didn’t even blink when they announced this rodeo is owned by GAYS (Don Gay, Neal Gay…)

  32. commissarjs says

    Janine, Disingenuous Jackass @13

    You have won the thread. Adding the e at the end was just too perfect. I’m going to be giggling all night now.

  33. inkadu says

    Let’s try the search and replace feature on this little article from USA Today

    ‘Patriarchal Values’ Lower on Agenda
    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney likes to talk about “patriarchy” — his own and his country’s.

    The future depends on “the work that goes on within the four walls of the American home,” the former Massachusetts governor says. In one ad, he says “marriage must come before children.” His wife and five adult sons, highly visible on the Internet and in his campaign, amplify the message.

    Religious and cultural conservatives, unhappy about the rise of abortion and divorce, have made “patriarchy” a staple of Republicans’ political strategies for three decades. The phrase took on new life in 1992, when then-vice president Dan Quayle blasted fictional TV character Murphy Brown for having an illegitimate child. Patriarchy was at the heart of a 2004 drive to put same-sex marriage bans on state ballots and draw conservatives to the polls.

    Sounds good to me. And AP used scare quotes around “family values,” so I think even the complacent MSM is wise to the schtick.

    And I, for one, welcome my new Flaming Overlord.

  34. inkadu says

    MA Jeff:
    >”Mr Homosexual” would be an awesome name.
    Well I doubt that it would help a guy pick up women.
    It works great; women hit on me more than men do.

    Maybe “Mr. Almost 100% Straight Probably” would improve your luck with the men.

  35. MAJeff, OM says

    Maybe “Mr. Almost 100% Straight Probably” would improve your luck with the men.

    Or, “Republican Senator”

  36. MAJeff, OM says

    OH SNAAAAP!

    C’mon. Even if Larry’s movement has been limited, you know Lindsey is still getting his freak on, and Mitch, and …. well, we don’t even want to talk about what the freaky straight ones are getting into.

  37. Shadow says

    No, dal.net IRC.

    Ah, the DALnet Christians. *Nostalgic sigh* We got an entire channel banned from one of those rooms, once – the bot was set up to run a /whois on entrants, and if it caught you in this other channel, it would kick you automatically.

    What was this other channel, you ask? #FlamingManSex? #CircleOfSatan? Why, no! It was an out-of-character room for some role-players. Role-players who liked to debate. (Actually, I think we may have gotten the tavern itself banned, too.) They liked to question us as to why we felt the need to RP (with magic and alcohol and devil-elves), when God had made this wonderful world for us right here.

    I think the cake was taken by the AA discussion, though. AA? Not okay with them. Why? Because of the step that asks for admission in the existance of a higher power – but ‘higher power’ might not necessarily mean God, and by – er – God, we can’t be having that!

    Christian-AA, though, that was okay. Because it specified.

  38. NickG says

    When I was in undergrad, the two guys who were in charge of the LGBT tudent group were named Gay and Faggart. They were a couple and senior year they roomed together. Their answering machine said (no joke, and in a very femmy voice, and making faggart sound like faggot) “Hello, you’ve reached the gay faggot residence. We can’t come to the phone right now…”

    Nick

  39. Sophist FCD says

    I’m imagining this character as played by Sidney Poitier:

    “What do they call you up there?”

    “They call me MISTER Homosexual!”

  40. Paha Arkkitehti says

    Somehow still “on topic”.. My son has this Wii-game, Super Mario Galaxy, which is really nice actually. But check the cover art (google images) and see which letters have small shiny star.

  41. Steph says

    More fun with bad search and replace: there was rather comically inept translation of the manga Crayon Shin-Chan released a few years ago in which the translators, at some point in the production process, had changed the name of the dog, Shiro, to “Lucky” (his name in an earlier dub of the cartoon). They then decided to change it back by doing a global search and replace to turn all instances of “lucky” into “shiro”.

    I pieced out what must have happened after puzzling over lines like “This must be my shiro day!” in the printed version.

  42. says

    @Sastra
    I remember having signed up one day for a forum (I don’t remember what it was). The computer generated random access code that was mailed to me contained the combination ‘ass’. When I clicked on the the confirmation linked in the message they blocked my IP for access to the forum because of swearing. The joys of automated systems.

  43. Matt Heath says

    #31
    There was a school in Svaginahorpe* that had Net Nanny block it’s own website.

    *How Viking does that look, btw? “Scunthorpe” is already a Danish name but is I saw a Ryanair flight to “Copenhagen-Svaginahorpe” I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

  44. Nick Gotts says

    Not nearly as funny as the original, or many here, but another nannybot encounter: on http://www.realclimate.org, I used the word “socialism”, and got the comment rejected. WordPress, which hosts the blog, has a very strict nannybot, which most annoyingly doesn’t tell you why it finds your comment offensive, but by trial and error I found that this word was to blame. I initially assumed this was some very ham-handed political censorship, and raised it with the blog host. No, it’s because the nannybot sees it as soCIALISm, CIALIS being a proprietary impotence remedy. Nanny has a one-track mind!

  45. P Stamos says

    The best part of that screencap:

    “Close Call: Homosexual averts major flop”

    Silly conservatives.

  46. Bride of Shrek says

    Oh go on, knock yourselves out on dirty sounding place names. You know you want to.

    http://www.i-r-genius.com/rudeplaces.html

    Can I just point out,before you check that site out, for Anglo-Austral-Kiwi humour, that a fanny is not what you Amercians think it it is so many of the town references to “fanny” might not quite hit the mark. A “fanny” to us is, well, umm, a “front-bottom”. A ladybit. A twat. A camel-toe.

    You have no idea how funny it is to us when we hear that American tourists keep their passports in their fanny packs. So just stop it ok?

  47. says

    What I like about this story is the confusion I had when I first read it – I read ‘the American Family Association’ and got completely the wrong image. I’m sure they would be chagrined to find out that this Kiwi assumed that it was similar to the NZ Family Planning Association, which represents pretty much everything they oppose.

    (I am a great fan of the NZFPA, more so now that I live somewhere that has nothing similar.)

  48. DLC says

    Historical footnotes:
    Lone survivor of Torpedo Squadron 3 after the attack
    on the Japanese fleet at the battle of Midway:
    Ensign George Homosexual.

    Name of the bomber which dropped the first A-bomb on Japan:
    Enola Homosexual.

    Actress Marcia Homosexual Harden ?

    Whee! fun!

    For Bride of Shrek @20: Actually, there are a few gay comic-book superheroes. I don’t recall the names, but I listened to a documentary on the history of comic books one night at work and heard about a couple of them.

  49. Josh says

    #20: There’s already a bunch of Marvel characters styling themselves “Homo Superior.”

  50. astroande says

    Ha! Hilarious. Amazing they didn’t notice that little error sooner.

    Wonder if there are any “Gays” in the AFA, and if there are, would they change their name to say, Smith?

  51. dNorrisM says

    TKU Bride of Shrek, A coworker’s family member was almost arrested for warning his daughter, in an English restaurant, to “Stop doing that, or I will paddle your fanny!”

  52. Haakon says

    Focus on the Patriarchy seems more like a Feminist watchgroup to me than a patriarchal organization.

  53. says

    This just totally made my day.

    I am surprised they didn’t, you know, catch the TITLE when they posted it. Absolutely amazing.

  54. says

    @DLC/Bride of Shrek

    Marvel has, at the least, the character Northstar, whom I believe was outed by Scott Lobdell in the early nineties. DC comics has a few others, such as Tasmanian Devil and Icemaiden.

    Hmm. Looking around, Wikipedia has a pretty substantial list

  55. Lurky says

    @#58

    I just checked it out, laughing out loud now. I wonder if the cover artist did that intentionally :D

  56. Longtime Lurker says

    “Homo superior”- Josh, now I have that Pete Shelley tune in my head.

    A friend once bumped up against a “search and replace” feature which rendered the sentence “The company is now running in the African-American.”

    Spell check is for the week.

  57. ahunt says

    Speaking of the patriarchy…Folks, enjoy this gem from Ethics Daily, Baptist apologetics site.

    One reason that men abuse their wives is because women rebel against their husband’s God-given authority, a Southern Baptist scholar said Sunday in a Texas church.

    Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said women desire to have their own way instead of submitting to their husbands because of sin.

    Sigh.

  58. BlueMako says

    “Have you actually read a super hero comic book? They already do things with that special touch of style. We’re talking about heroes who wear brightly colored underwear as outerwear, or who dress up in black leather and cosplay as furry rodents while beating up tough men. I don’t think you’re proposing a new development ;)”
    And there’s the ones who are happily married… no, wait, Quesada said that never happened…

  59. Julie Stahlhut says

    I got ejected for using the word “analysis.” Analysis. ANALisis.

    I remember a story a few years back about a site whose nannyware banned a reader named Maryanne because her name contained the string “aryan”, and this caused her posts to be flagged as hate speech.

    I haven’t played NTN in years, but was once prevented from signing on with my playmaker under the handle “FRASS”. I suspect it was simply because the word contains the string “ASS”, and not related to my choice of a word that means “bug shit.” I doubt most of NTN’s word police are that entomologically (not to mention etymologically) sophisticated.