Well you're right on the fact that this does fit into the Pool Room, but think about a gay pride parade.
It's carried out by a group of people who want to be viewed equally and want their sexual orientations to be ignored and accepted by society and for the rest of the world to not make a deal about it in any way, and to accept them as the same as everyone else. And yet, just the concept of a gay pride parade contradicts what they're looking for.
Its a parade, meaning people will come out in groups and watch these specific people, it's a pretty big and can be an impactful event. But the fact that these people, who want to be viewed as the same as everyone else, would go out and parade down a street with banners and floats and whatever else they have in parades is doing one major thing: its making them stand out. All a gay pride parade does is points out the fact that these people are gay, and that they're making a big deal out of it and thinking their sexual preference is worthy of a public celebration.
A good example. However, those type of people have to make a deadly choice between inactivism- a lifetime of weird stares, teasing, and general oppression; or trying to take a stance to show ignorant people that yes, there's an elephant in the room, namely the stigma and stereotype against gays. Of course it makes them stand out! If you're protesting a treatment, wouldn't you want to stand out and be heard? A parade is like working within the system to solve the system's problems - aka legal actions.
You're saying that gays won't truly be assimilated until they start acting like they are assimilated. But they can only be accepted when every member of the society knows their facts about homosexuals, that they aren't some sort of evil, sinning, errant presence that corrupts children.
The benefits of a parade are: It gives those who are 'in the closet' hope that someone hears their cries and knows their pain, and it gives the rest of the society knowledge that there NEEDS to be change. Most people don't even think mistreating gays is a problem, just like most people thought slavery was fine in the 1800's.
Also, remember that people on smashboards aren't necessarily the same as people in a parade. Just as religion has hundreds of thousands of sects, each person has his own view.
A perfect example: in Christianity, there's a Church called the Westborough Church. This piece of **** was publicized a year ago, and their messages: god hates gays, god hates america, and god hates sweden, are what they truly believe is right (sadly). Then there are others who can tolerate, love, and accept. Similarly, some people may flaunt their sexuality, but not everyone does.
Your last paragraph I think is just a plain misinterpretation. The entire goal of having a parade is to educate and make people aware of this problem. Sure they're making a big deal, if your freedom and rights were at stake you would make a big deal too.
If you want to be accepted as everyone else, you can't try your best to stand out like that. There's nothing wrong with being openly gay, but to flaunt the fact that your gay and create a big parade just because you're gay and want to feel proud of it, all that does is create a sense of gays being different from everyone else in the eyes of the mainstream "norm".
To solve a problem, society needs to know that there IS a problem first. A parade may misrepresent gays, just as the westboroughs misrepresent christians. The mainstream norm needs to know what gays face first.
While this one thread isn't doing it to the same degree, it's got the same idea of a gay pride parade. Its better than just a gay pride thread, where all people do is post the fact that they're gay and making a big deal about it. But for gays to want to be able to interact with everyone else, and then make a thread specifically for gays to talk about things there are already threads for, is making it seem to most people that gays are different, and NEED special treatment. There are threads for talking about relationships and love, and they aren't specifically labeled "Heterosexual Relationships", its just called "Girls/Guys/Relationships" or something like that. I'm pretty sure all of you fall under that category, so why make the attempt to seperate yourselves even further by creating a thread seperate from the all encompassing relationship thread, specifically for gay relationships?
While there's absolutely nothing wrong with whatever sexual orientation someone has, what you've done here has just helped to differentiate gays from everyone else. And someone said if I were in the minority, I'd understand, but whether someone is in a minority or not doesn't mean making seperate areas for your minority to communicate amongst yourselves and exclude almost everyone outside of that minority is going to help your minority status be forgotten. It doesn't matter if the majority feel the same way as you or not, you're all people, and there's no reason you should have to have a seperate thread to discuss your relationships and life, when there are already such threads available.
This separate thread got a lot more responses in a shorter amount of time than the girls/guys/relationships did, simply because it was more controversial, and the responses more needed. This thread CANT differentiate gays from the norm more than society does, and remember, most of the gays out there are too afraid to show it. Threads like these are NEEDED to break stereotypes, that gays aren't just those colorful, happy, silly people. Don't know about you, but if I was suffocating from oppression and misinformation, I would let people know, rather than die silently.
By the way, gay parades don't exclude everyone outside the minority, just as this thread doesn't say 'If you're not gay, don't bother posting'. For the most part, they're far more accepting than the majority of straight people.
Wait, the majority's views dont matter?! That's a new one. I was under the impression that the majority completely affected the minority through their actions, feelings, and sayings. ("i love you, no homo"). When mainstream society is so CLEARLY wrong about stereotypes, that's when minorities need to take action. That's why King was celebrated, because he stood out and spoke for appeals to equality. Slavery took physical and mental tolls on people, and homophobia does too.
) that I don't really know. It's weird.
