[HN Gopher] Stonewall Nation
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Stonewall Nation
Author : samclemens
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-08-17 20:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| chromaton wrote:
| In case anybody's interested in trying this, Loving County, Texas
| has an official population of 64, with 66 people (that's right)
| casting votes in the 2020 election.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_County,_Texas
|
| https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/historical/loving.shtm...
| mahogany wrote:
| But also according to your link, it has 111 registered voters,
| a much higher number than the official population. What am I
| supposed to take away from this? That the census isn't counting
| people correctly, or that you can be registered to vote
| somewhere but not live there?
|
| Edit: according to this[1] PDF, Loving County, TX had an
| official population of 67 in 2000, but the voting data link in
| the parent comment says that 156 people voted. Hmmm.
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/phc-3-45.pdf
| jdminhbg wrote:
| The Census Bureau fuzzes numbers for privacy reasons, which
| becomes more apparent the small the district is. Liberty
| Island (home of the Statue of Liberty but no actual people)
| is listed as having 48 residents for example:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/data-
| scie...
| wyldfire wrote:
| The census only happens once per ten years. Ordinarily I
| wouldn't expect a region to double in size but if there's
| only 60 at baseline it's not unreasonable to expect ~60 more
| in ten years.
| chromaton wrote:
| Either the Census count is inaccurate or there's voter fraud.
| chromaton wrote:
| "Voter turnout is always a hundred percent, sometimes more"
| -- https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/not-so-
| loving-cou...
| mahogany wrote:
| But what would be the point of committing voter fraud in a
| county that had 60/66 votes for Trump[1]?
|
| Seems more likely to me that the Census is incorrect or
| that there is something going on with multiple residences.
|
| [1] https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/texas/
| mcguire wrote:
| Or some number of the residents are away at college, in the
| military, or otherwise have an official residence in Loving
| but are not living there.
| elliekelly wrote:
| A Texas Monthly article[1] from 1997 is cited by the
| Wikipedia article and alludes to unusual voter residency
| rules in Texas:
|
| > Thanks to Texas' domicile law, people who don't live or
| work in the county can still vote there if they own a piece
| of land--and there's plenty of land in Loving County for
| sale. "All you need to do is claim one of these little old
| deserted shacks or even a tree that you can eat your supper
| under as your own," says one woman, who asked not to be
| named. "It's all perfectly legal."
|
| The whole article is worth a read. It's wild. Especially
| considering it was written before social media.
|
| [1]https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/not-so-loving-
| cou...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| More likely (given other references in the wikipedia article
| to "non-resident males") there is a discrepancy between who
| gets counted as a resident by the county and who can be
| registered there by the state.
|
| Additionally, Texas might or might not have a habit of
| purging dead or emigrant voters from their voting rolls,
| which would skew the number of registered voters.
|
| Lastly, yes, the census is almost certainly an undercount,
| including in the more (shall we say) government-counting-
| everybody-skeptical rural regions of the country.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| It doesn't really work at the city level. You have to control a
| county. Most Americans really have no idea just how powerful a
| county sheriff is within their county. They are only 2 levels
| of command in the executive branch removed from the President.
| trhway wrote:
| as an example of successful capture of governmental power by
| private individuals - a city which is basically a fiefdom run by
| one family and their friends. They had population of something
| like 50 people, and new people who tried to settle there were
| actively not welcomed (by the city police). According to
| wikipedia it looks like some changes were forced upon the city
| very recently though (if i remember in response to this city
| scandals CA was mulling 150 people cut-off for incorporation or
| something like this):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon,_California#Recent_hist...
|
| "In an effort to modernize the city and stave off the potential
| threat of disincorporation in the future, for the first time in
| the city's history Vernon has opened its doors to new residents
| from the general public."
| del82 wrote:
| See also Kiryas Joel, New York:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryas_Joel,_New_York
| TchoBeer wrote:
| I spent some time in chassidic communities in Israel a few
| years ago; that 13.2 median age figure is very believable.
| duxup wrote:
| Outside of say a religious cult, or forced migration / war, I'm
| not sure this is a very viable process. I think for most people
| moving someplace by choice has to have more than just "hey we're
| going to make it about people like us".
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| The sad truth is everyone wants to be around people "like us".
| Sometimes realities like economic opportunity supersede but
| given the choice humanity is quite tribal.
| musingsole wrote:
| Religious cult is really a spectrum, but that wasn't exactly
| the mindset of many American colonists?
|
| Some you could argue were religious cults, but I believe the
| majority were just wholesale communities who wanted more power
| for themselves than was possible in their existing communities.
| duxup wrote:
| >wasn't exactly the mindset of many American colonists
|
| No doubt, but they also were encountering persecution so
| there were a lot of motivations.
| djrogers wrote:
| Odd that Wikipedia describes this as a "separatist" movement,
| when there was no apparent plan to separate from either the state
| or federal governments. Anyone able to explain that?
| vmoore wrote:
| > a gay government, a gay civil service.
|
| It was a light hearted attempt to separate the official State
| from their little community. It wouldn't work in the U.S. You'd
| probably have to buy an island uncolonized by the British or
| the U.S to do that properly
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I understand this desire especially today. Less driven by lack of
| equal rights/access to education.
|
| But more that I think we've lost a lot of community and the built
| in 'family' that LGBTQ people build together, often because of
| rejection from biological family which is becoming far less
| common.
|
| With the mainstreaming of gay culture we've lost gayborhoods and
| our spaces have been opened up. Plus with more acceptance non-
| queer spaces are more accommodating too.
|
| I personally think increasingly appropriated & co-opted. by
| straight white women in particular e.g. obnoxious bachelorette
| parties who treat our spaces as zoos and us as animals: honnnnney
| yasss queen vomiting on drag queens without tipping behavior lol.
|
| Lesbian spaces have basically disappeared even in NYC there are
| only a couple left.
| lostdog wrote:
| Funny, this describes the immigrant experience pretty well too.
| First generations struggle to fit in and are forced to build
| strong communities, but after one or two generations, they are
| comfortable and accepted in the mainstream culture (sometimes).
|
| I had never thought of LGBT as immigrants to their own country.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| This is amazing, and, I assume, tongue-in-cheek:
|
| > According to gay rights activist Craig Rodwell, after the
| takeover of Alpine County was effected, work to take over the
| entire adjacent state of Nevada would begin by using the same
| process, only then involving tens of thousands of gay men and
| lesbians.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The Free State Project has a similar plan for New Hampshire.
| plushpuffin wrote:
| They successfully took over a New Hampshire town a few years
| ago. It didn't go well...
|
| The Town That Went Feral | The New Republic -
| https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...
| subsubzero wrote:
| If you are interested in a similar plan like this that did take
| over a town and put in their own government, highly suggest
| watching "wild wild country'. Basically followers of a guru named
| Rajneesh move to a rural area in Oregon and bring in thousands of
| followers, they then elect their own mayor and sheriff, not going
| to say how it ends but an interesting experiment in this type of
| moving to establish a singular community.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_Country
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The US has a long history of these sorts of movements. See the
| entire state of Utah for the most successful one.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Very interesting. Perhaps, since the US is large and population
| density is (compared to many countries) not so high, this model
| might lead to more harmonious relations between the different
| "warring" factions in American society. Less civil unrest, fewer
| marches, protests, etc. A sort of calming voluntary segregation.
|
| Given the country's vast size compared to European nations, and
| individual states latitude for difference, I can't help but think
| efforts to homogenise are both unnecessary and unlikely to
| succeed.
| nix23 wrote:
| That's exactly the point with smaller country's, where you have
| much more common interests/problems/culture than in big
| country's, and that's why i am absolutely against the EU
| (future united states of europe). Also if the Government is
| near to the people the can probe much better was has to be done
| (or not).
| grosswait wrote:
| My instinct is it would go quite differently. I suspect there
| might be less civil unrest, but much less harmonious relations
| in almost any other way. Just a guess of course.
| iratewizard wrote:
| I would have to agree. It's a breeding ground for squabbles
| over resources and punitive measures against one another.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| It should be noted that Malcolm X thought exactly the same. His
| Nation of Islam's goal was to establish a separate nation for
| African Americans within North America. [0]
|
| (not agreeing or disagreeing with the idea btw)
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Islam#Black_national...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| That factional territorialism can function if the features
| being selected on can be self-propogating within a community
| across generations (e.g. language, religion, culture and
| political philosophies) and concentrated into a specific area.
| For all of the upsides of the LGBT community, their defining
| features appear to limit fecundity, are not reliably propagated
| across generations, and tend to continue to crop up in society
| at large regardless of their concentration in a community.
| gurumeditations wrote:
| Thank you for talking about us like lab animals.
| rackjack wrote:
| Interesting analysis. The same reasons why it is difficult
| for LGBT people to form a state appear to also be why they
| are easily discriminated against across cultures.
| self_buddliea wrote:
| At the end of the article... "It has since been suggested that
| the entire Stonewall Nation idea was a hoax perpetrated by the
| Los Angeles GLF to generate mainstream publicity." I don't see
| the advantage in employing this strategy, it seems risky. You
| could be fairly confident that you would get criticism from
| within the gay community about the plan, but nothing more. It
| would be hard to predict the level of hostile reactions from
| people outside the community, and how hostile the reactions could
| get. To take this chance over a hoax sounds implausible.
|
| Edit: I've forgotten how to format on this site, sorry.
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(page generated 2021-08-18 23:01 UTC)