It's amazing what people will get themselves worked up over.People of Lesbos take gay group to court over term 'Lesbian'Then your sister just needs to step out of the closet, dude.
ATHENS, Greece - A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.
Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.
One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.
"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou.
Unless, of course, you mean she literally can't say it. Perhaps she has a speech impediment - some sort of lisp. "My thithter can't thay thhe ith a lethbian." If that's the case, it'd be cruel of me to mock her. I bet a tranthliterated lithp lookth cool in greek - all thothe bonuth thetath.
Seriously, though. The word has a meaning in common usage that makes very few people actually think about the island, so therefore common sense should be all it takes to render that notion nonsense. This is like the Parmesan region of Italy suing cheese-makers in America, or Egypt trying to copyright the Pyramids or landowners suing airlines for overhead trespassing. It's just plain dumb.
In related litigation news:
- Bundle of sticks sues gays and homophobes alike
- Swedish Society For Transvestitism sues Tim Curry
- Christ sues all Christians
- Mythology Professor sues NASA over Apollo program
- Sesame Street Sponsors sue NASA, and all other acronyms, and words, and Sesame Street
- World Wildlife Fund sues World Wrestling Federation
9 comments:
Thanks to rising seawaters, this problem will solve itself. The inhabitants of Lesbos will eventually have to build sea-walls around the island to protect it's ancient villages and archaeological sites. Pretty soon everyone will just refer to it as the Isle of Dikes.
That's funny.
P.S.: My apologies to the women in the photo. My attaching it to this article kinda unfairly implies something about their sexual orientation, when truth is I know nothing about them. I'd been looking for women in front of a courthouse, and this was the most interesting photo on the front page of the search.
P.P.S.: My apologies to Odysseus. Despite the label on the courthouse wall, Ithaca is not on Lesbos.
P.P.P.S: Gotta admire the courage of topless women posing in front of a court house and a police car. You go, grrls!
But 1979 Nobel prize winning poet Odysseus Elytis was from Lesbos.
And with that we conclude the latest round of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Greek poetry edition.
In reference to your comment about lawsuits involving planes flying overhead, there actually were a few. When planes began to see active use, the American government had to craft laws to allow them to fly over people's lands legally.
Just a bit of history I learned from PBS.
About the airplanes, I actually knew that - it's why I mentioned it.
All three examples are real. Egypt really did pass a law claiming the pyramids to be a "national copyright". The link I provided was to my frustration over the nonsense of copyrighting something your ancestors did thousands of years ago.
A couple months back a cheese-producing company (outside of Italy, don't remember where) got sued by a dairy company in the Parmesana region of Italy for claiming their cheese was Parmesan despite not having been produced in Italy. They claimed the word Parmesan is a trademark. I don't know if that's been settled yet.
According to Larry Lessig, the airplane thing wasn't solved by the legislature, it was solved by the judicial branch. The link is at TED.org somewhere. A case went to trial in the 40s, and the Supreme Court threw it out on the grounds that interpreting property law in such a way would unreasonably limit the march of progress and technology. The common sense needs of the people outweighed the possession claim of any single person (especially in regards to property the person couldn't inhabit without the aid of the very technology they were trying to sue over) ...Or you could interpret it as the Court ruling in favor of big business over individuals.
Re: the airplane case. This is a classic case of possession versus property. Since one can not generally possess - as in, use or control - the space far above or the ground far beneath his or her land, then it is only real property if society as a whole consents to recognize and take responsibility for defending it. You may own property in a legal sense, but if you can't control it yourself or with the help of consenting associates then you don't possess it; you depend utterly upon the largess of government to defend your property for you. Therefore, a plane flies over your property you are powerless to stop it unless the government steps in beforehand.
On the flip side, there are many instances of possession which are not recognized as legal property. Drugs, squats, and certain types of weapons come to mind. One step further, one could argue that since the police rarely act in cases of petty thefts and burglaries, especially in poor communities, the concept of property rights should more aptly be called property "privileges".
These are the questions that occupy the minds of anarchists when we contemplate a world without some form of centralized hierarchical governance to control these things.
I thought we were supposed to be drawing up lists of the people whose asses were gonna be up against the wall when the revolution finally comes. Did I miss a meeting?
Nah, we solved that problem at the last meeting. We just decided it would be easier to draw up a list of those who won't be up against the wall when the revolution comes.
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