I'm not surprised you or anyone else finds all sorts of things wrong with my post. I have an opposite viewpoint/opinion
It's easy when you get the facts wrong, has nothing to do with the opinion. (Though, if you really work with facts, and think about them, what you get is conclusions as opposed to opinions.) To wit:
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
--- attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others
There seemed not to be a super high level of persecution as there is today.
Yeah tossing Oscar Wilde (among many others) in jail for it (not to count the number of people who were sent to mental institutions) don't seem like persecution to me either. Oh wait, did you say being put in jail, a mental institution or maybe even killed? Yeah. That does sound like persecution to me.
See also: Alan Turing (pretty important guy for what were doing right here, right now.)
During the Second World War, Turing was a main participant in the efforts to break German ciphers. On the basis of cryptanalysis he helped to break both the Enigma machine and the Lorenz SZ 40/42 (a teletype cipher attachment codenamed "Tunny" by the British), and was, for a time, head of Hut 8, the section responsible for reading German naval signals.
Alan Turing was a gay man. In 1952, Turing admitted having sex with a man. At that time in England, homosexuality was a crime. He was tried and convicted of this crime in a British court. and was forced to make a choice. He had to choose between going to jail or "chemical castration" (taking female hormones like estrogen to lower his sex drive). He chose the hormones. But this made him impotent (unable to have sex) and made him grow breasts. After suffering these effects for two years, he committed suicide (killed himself) with an apple poisoned with cyanide in 1954.
Colonial America had a death penalty for homosexuality, and that did begin to be rolled back until 1978s, and in some states not until the end of the Civil War. It still remained criminal. In 1961 Illinois become the first state to decriminalize it entirely. Stonewall happened because the cops could raid the gay bars, because being gay was against the law and it was against the liquor code to serve alcohol to gays.
And of course places like Hollywood never fabricated heterosexual relationships out of whole cloth - including fake marriages - to cover up that many of their leading male stars (James Dean, Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift) were gay. Nah. Not even rock stars like Elton John.
a lot of the problems have been caused by the openness
Which is why, of course, that being gay was long refered to as: The love that dare not speak it's name. Of course something thought of as being a sickness, a sin, and a criminal act all at the same time, would be kept on the down-low, don't 'ch think?
whole spiel that it's a "lifestyle" as well.
Obviously you don't grok what they mean by that, so let me spell it out. Sure, being gay is not a lifestyle (as in conscience choice to be...), but being fabulous is (and this goes to all sorts of things beyond being gay). Classically speaking, what they were saying was...
They were no longer willing to live with someone else's shame for something they felt no shame over. They were not going to by into someone else's guilt, or antiquated moral code. To that end they were no longer going to lie, hide, sneak, evade, conceal, cover up, or apologize for what they are. They were not going to bull, con, fabricate, fake, falsify, misguide, misinform, mislead, misrepresent, misspeak, misstate, put on, put up a front, or string along anyone anymore. They were not going to only secretly be themselves anymore. They done with living a secret life. If other people had a problem with it, so be it. And that's a deliberate choice in how one lives their life, hence; lifestyle.
And, to the degree that we are bound with the gay movement is the degree to which the TG community also said:
We are no longer willing to live with someone else's shame for something we feel no shame over. I'm not going to by into someone else's guilt, or antiquated moral code. To that end I'm no longer going to lie, hide, sneak, evade, conceal, cover up, or apologize for what I am. I'm not going to bull, con, fabricate, fake, falsify, misguide, misinform, mislead, misrepresent, misspeak, misstate, put on, put up a front, or string along anyone anymore. I am not going to let my real self be reduced to secrecy and fear. I'm done with living a secret life. If other people had a problem with it, so be it.
protest a different way than parade out in pink hotpants doesn't mean I'm not for gay rights.
The Parade was never about a protest, it was a celebration above all else. And as long as we're on the topic...
Believe me, I'm about the farthest thing from a prude but I also don't believe that bringing a sign to a rally that reads, "Yes I like to get f**cked in the ass!" is really beneficial to the movement as a whole.
I'm really tired of hearing about the parade - and by 'the parade' I mean the two, one in NYC, and one in SF. You're never going to get that anywhere else, so quit worrying about it. Omaha is never going to have a parade like SF, because Omaha completly lacks the necessary personal. They long ago moved out of Omaha and to SF/NYC because of who they were, and what those places are. Omaha couldn't buy that parade with Warren Buffets money, so cut it out with the parade stuff already - it's an unusual localized occurrence only. Get over it.
BTW, I've never seen a sign like that. The people in our parade are much more clever. And really, as a ProTip, if you're wearing nothing but a jock strap or leather chaps (and nothing else) you don't need the sign.
And day in and day out there are people in 'the community' (whatever) who are working on legal issues, AIDS and other health issues, working to lobby the government, working to provide jobs and all that other very mundane stuff that few people do because the work is hard, mostly boring, and seemingly, not very well appreciated. Certainly doing legal research and writing briefs does not carry the kind of Film at 11 thrills our parade does.
However where you will see that sign is at the Folsom Street Fair, which was the most over the top gay deal anywhere ever. But it's not even that anymore. It's become a totally pan-sexual deal, from gay leather liberation to a total fetish liberation fest - a true Dionysian bacchanalia - and that's part of a huge expansion that began with gay rights, but is not ending there.
Everyone is going to have to accept the fact that it's a multi-cultural, multi-sexual world now, and the less we believe all this other moral bull->-bleeped-<- the happier we'll probably be.
And read some real history, start with:
Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (2003)
-- awesome, a huge work, very important understanding
Stephen O. Murray, American Gay (1996)
Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming
Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal
C. Todd White, Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights
-- For all that people seem to think the gay rights deal started in the 60s in NYC, this is an interesting read tracing a lot of it back to wartime LA.
