Pride Month

Looking into this aspect of the sexualisation of Pride events, and whether this is appropriate for children, I came across this 2021 column from the Washington Post.

The author of the column is a lesbian who brought her child to a Pride parade.

I'm just not persuaded by this, and very uncomfortable that the child - who was clearly in some state of confusion - is being forced to think about the sexualisation of some aspects of the LGBT community.

Which is precisely my fear on this matter; that what is passing as pro-LGBT may, in the end, prove counterproductive and damage the gains and acceptance that has emerged over the past couple of decades.

There's an almost religious nature to the month; a sort of gay version of Easter. It would be like 60-years ago where everyone was socially compelled to adhere to Catholic orthodoxy. Anyone who didn't go along with the way things were supposed to be was cast out as some kind of amoral heretic, a silenced pariah. As I said in one of my opening posts on this thread, you cannot force an attitude on a population; it must be done by consensus and consensus alone: bringing the population with you rather than smothering the population with why they must, must, must, must comply. Consensus was achieved over the course of the 80s, 90s, 00s etc. It worked, and acceptance of LGBT people was palpable. We got what we wanted, complete and total equality.

I saw this change in perspective in Pride a couple of years ago, but the problem seems to be becoming more and more acute in the past 2-3 years.

I think as long as Pride conducts itself along the lines of division - namely, talking about the rights of sub-groups and sub-groups within those sub-groups - it will alienate the rest of the population. When people are given no choice but to go along with something, they'll end up questioning it and eventually rejecting it.

What's needed is for LGBT people to blend into the population as equals, rather than to discuss the endless differences that exist within the community.

Dunno how a parade and a series of events celebrating the differences of LGBTQ towards "normal" society is going to do that. Anyway, you make it sound like the LGBTQ communities are fully welcoming and understanding of each other. They aren't. You should speak to bisexuals as to how they're perceived by G/L, or the Q by everyone, or the hyperactive and changeable T are perceived by the LGB. There's quite a bit of conflict within the whole movement, and even within a particular group, say homosexuals, there are a lot of sub-groups who see themselves as different from others.

Pride isn't going to bring any comfort for people who feel outside of society.. because they want to be outside of society. If that wasn't the case, then, they could mix quite easily with society.. it's not hard. Just stop waving your sexuality in everyone's faces, and demanding that they accept you. Stop that, and society will ignore you, just like it does everyone else.

For what to happen? Complete acceptance? Not going to happen. I've been to gay communes, and even there, you'll find gay people with biases towards how other gay people live or express themselves. Thankfully, humanity does not live in a strict society of ironbound rules, and expectations of behaviour.. otherwise LGBTQ would never have reached this point of freedom/equality. Bringing in such restrictions on other people, will generate the environment we so much want to avoid.

Legally we have equality. Socially, for the most part, there are very few problems, and they're generally avoidable with a little bit of effort. And while some will demand that LGBQ shouldn't need to avoid such, the simple truth is that they will always have to. Anyone who denies that, is simply being unreasonable and likely creates more problems for LGBQ in the long run.

I've lost count of the number of times I've cringed at seeing responses to social media stories about Pride, with, "When are we going to have Straight Pride?".

And they ask this question as if they're the cleverest person on the planet, and as if nobody else has ever said this remark before. They probably have a big smile on their face as they're typing it, not realising how stupid they look.

Anyone who asks that question - "When are we going to have Straight Pride?" - is monumental idiot, in my opinion.

It's utter, gutter-level cringe.