Talk:Dennis Jernigan

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[edit] Terminology

Joie de Vivre, you’ve made many contributions with your edits. And I would truly like to thank you for those improvements. However, let me explain my use of terminology. Jernigan’s “testimony” centers on his understanding that he believed a lie about himself early on as a child. Thus I believe a more correct turn of phrase such as "deliverance from his mistaken self-identity" explains his personal situation as he sees it better than using the term "deliverance from homosexuality". Please know that I am not trying to use this term in a derogatory way. In fact, due to hearing Jernigan's testimony in person on several occasions, I've come to understand -- to some degree -- the pain, fear and hurt almost every (as you would term) gay person has felt in his or her life. This was especially true in Jernigan’s youth. He’s talked of being a youth involved in church ministry situations and overhearing adults talk about “What they’d do if they ever caught a homosexual in their midst.” Since hearing Jernigan’s message, I’ve come to reexamine my reactions to issues of this nature.

In fact, I think it would be a good thing to cross link the Jernigan article to any other GLBT article as you see fit. I think his story should be considered by everyone who has a personal interest in this topic.

--Mactographer 05:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for taking the time to explain. Here's the deal; even if "deliverance from his mistaken self-identity" explains his situation better, the only sourced quote is "deliverance from homosexuality". I understand that you want to be clear about what he experienced, that's fine, it will make for a better article. However, it must be done in a way that doesn't violate WP:BLP or WP:NPOV.

We have to be very careful about neutral point of view when describing someone's personal opinions. We can't state that his identity was objectively or empirically "mistaken", we have to frame it as part of Jernigan's opinion of himself. It's unencyclopedic otherwise.

The other thing is that WP:BLP is explicit in regards to how biographies of living persons must be handled. From BLP:

"I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons."

I'm not saying that the info you're including is negative, just that it's over the line with those two policies. I've reverted to my version, which can have information added to it. Is there anything you feel is missing? (thanks again for speaking up!) Joie de Vivre 21:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

* Thanks for the reply. I didn't see your message above until after I made a new tweak. (I think you must have still been composing it when I first checked the talk page.) As for mistaken self-ID, I base that part on this part of his very long testimony which can be found about 1/4 down his web site. " Because of this wrong thinking I came to believe I was homosexual." So I think stating that "he claims" a mistaken self-ID is a valid interpretation of his beliefs. I am very seriously trying to keep it NPOV. But that, as we know, is up to personal interpretation, especially concerning a hot button topic like this. Likewise, the written word will always have different interpretations to different readers. But I do appreciate a different POV in making something read as NPOV as possible. --Mactographer 22:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

* P.S. I've added that bit of quote to the main page now if that helps explain the self-ID issues. Thanks. --Mactographer 22:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

* P.P.S. I thot I was signed in for that "expanded quote" addition, but apparently I wasn't. Not trying to sock puppet at all. Sorry. --Mactographer 00:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

No worries. So, I've made a couple of minor adjustments to your most recent edit. One is that the word "homosexual" should be used as an adjective, not as a noun, as it sounds insulting (much like "Jew" rather than "Jewish" or "blacks" rather than "black people" sound insulting). Let me know what you think of the rest. Joie de Vivre 02:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

(undent) I've reverted a few of your changes because they violate NPOV. One important one is stating that his identification was "mistaken" or "erroneous". The way you had the sentence is here:

Jernigan further states that he believes his mistaken self-identity as homosexual was related to an erroneous childhood perception that he had been rejected by his father.

We can't say that. We cannot objectively state that his identity was "mistaken", nor can we objectively state that his perception was "erroneous". We can say that those were his prior perceptions, and we can state that he now believes that those perceptions were erroneous in nature. I have done this by moving the content about the perceptions being "mistaken... erroneous" to their own sentence, which uses those words to describe his opinion of those perceptions. I have used the quotations you put in to further illustrate those opinions. I hope this takes care of the issue, and I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make.

Another small edit is that saying that his ministry (an abstract noun) "takes" him anywhere is too informal for an encyclopedia.

Please let me know what you think of these changes. Thanks for communicating with me on this! Joie de Vivre 20:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Joie de Vivre. I'm not sure I entirely agree with your reasoning about NPOV. Seems more like an issue of semantics to me. But I’m not going to push it or debate it for now. In fact, if this is the worst of our disagreements, I think we’ve done pretty darn well considering what I’m guessing would be our divergent takes on this issue. I’m going to leave things as is for the time being and thank you for taking a very considered and reasoned approach to the perspective Dennis Jernigan’s music and testimony brings to the table on this issue. In fact, I have a set of Jernigan seminar tapes from a 1999 session where he goes in depth regarding his history. If you had any interest in hearing more about his perspective, just let me know and I'll dup the pertinent part of those tapes for you. Thanks again for your input on this subject. --Mactographer 10:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)