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Originally Posted by MrFriendly
The thing is, I don't feel that being gay / bi / straight, should define you. I was recently asked by a friend what would happen if I suddenly found myself in a relationship with a man. To be honest, I wouldn't change a damn thing about me. I'm not going to start going to gay clubs because I hate clubs in general, and I'm not going to start going to gay bars, because gay culture really isn't my thing.
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I think the problem is that people who don't know gay people assume they have some kind of "lifestyle." That gay/les/bi folks live their lives in a substantially different way; that "they" have kinks and fetishes and immoral tendencies different from "us." Ignorance and primal fear is what it boils down to, in my experience. Then you have the folks who interpret the Bible and Koran in ways that make this sexual minority out to be dangerous deviants who are going to Hell and should be kept away from your children.
The existence of a given gay community is a response to this cultural ostracization, not an organic thing. Safety in numbers. Kinks and fetishes beyond the norm of what you see in the straight world are typically a symptom of the psychological pressure that goes into being gay in a straight world. A guy walks around in leather chaps not because he's a wierdo, but because society has kind of messed with his mind and/or he wants to stick it to the squares. Gay pride parades get visually outlandish both to celebrate
and to provoke awareness. You can't say, "Well, it doesn't help for them to dress and act like that," because it's mainstream society that has contributed to the formulation of this image. Kind of like the Butterfly Effect.
Everything is connected, we're all people in the end who want similar things, like freedom, privacy, and opportunity, and the sooner we accept how connected we all are, the sooner society as a whole can improve. How we treat the minority is indicative of the overall human spirit.