: Aye, but do you get hetero pride marches?A few years ago, New York City's annual "St. Patrick's Day Parade" explicitly banned the participation of a group of homosexual Irish-American New Yorkers. While the explicit theme of the parade might not have been "straight pride," the implicit theme was "Irish-but-no-queers pride." The difference is a rather too subtle one for my feeble mind, I'm afraid.
: Do you get heteros racing around in parks or public toilets making their private lives public issues?
I worked in a pub here in Seattle for over a year, and I can honestly say yes, you most certainly do get heteros gettin' jiggy in public restrooms. In fact, I had several episodes of drunk, horny straights in the stalls, and not a single episode of gay sex in the men's room.
: No everyone gay or not shouldnt make their private lives public business.
Speaking from an anthropological perspective, every article of clothing, piece of jewelry, hairstyle, accent, learned mannerism, etc. is communicating something about yourself to those around you. Most social/cultural anthropologists now believe that it's functionally impossible for humans to avoid broadcasting personal information through their appearance and behaviors. Most of the information that is broadcast in this way concerns group membership (e.g. "I'm in this gang, not that one"). This is part of our glorious primate heritage, I'm afraid, and it seems to be something we can't avoid (unless you're proposing mandatory uniforms, which doesn't strike me as the type of thing you'd support, to be honest). We may not like the messages we recieve from others, especially when these signals are claims of membership in a group that we can't join, but we should try to be aware that at the same time we receive these "offensive" messages, we are each sending messages of our own. In other words, the "I'm a breeder" signals (clothes, hair, musical tastes, etc.) that you are sending are just as blatantly obvious to any gays you encounter as their "I'm gay" signals are obvious to you, and they may be considered equally as offensive. The majority has no more right to restrict the expression of opinions of the minority than the minority would have the right to restrict the expressions of opinions of the majority. You don't have to like it, but it's counter-productive to try to make it go away, since repression almost always results in renewed vigor in the repressed community, you know that.
Put another way; this morning, I saw a picture of Theobald Wolf Tone, and he looked like a total pansy to me. That was the fashion in his day, in his community. I can't criticise him for looking swishy by my community's standards, because he isn't a member of my community.
-Floyd
None.
