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100%. I'm just as confused as you about why it's receiving so much attention.
Because it's an unresolved issue that got traction. That's literally the main reason. Had it been resolved, the issue would not be discussed and things would likely be less messy.
Gay rights get a disproportionate amount of attention in the media because a lot of rich and powerful people especially in the media are gay. The gay community is also significantly concentrated in urban centers and it is easier for their voices to be heard since urban centers are where media organizations are often concentrated. A lot of LGBT people of color and white lesbians complain that their voices are often marginalized and that gay white males get the vast majority of attention in the media. Racism and sexism is also considered a major problem in the gay community but that gets almost no attention in the media.
I've heard ppl say the "gay rights movement" is the civil rights movement of our time. Nothing could be further from the truth. I haven't heard or seen anything about gays being sprayed with firehoses, attacked by police dogs, beaten and killed by police, or being completely segregated from straight ppl in public or private life. The fact the ppl try to relate the struggle of gays today to the struggle of blacks in the 60's is laughable.
Laughable? Apart from the death penalty, life imprisonment, public floggings and facial disfigurement for homosexuals in the early days of America?
Or the bashings, lynchings, murder, rape, police raids and brutal assaults, imprisonment, public humiliation, government sanctioned discrimination in employment, housing and the military, being categorized as being mentally ill, never being able to live their lives openly, societal vilification, especially religious vilification and virulent anti-gay propaganda and lobbying in recent times?
Add in the legal castration, lobotomies, electroshock convulsive therapy and imprisonment of gay and lesbian people in the 1950's...
Here's just one example of how gay and lesbian people were treated in the past:
Homosexual Dachau? This name doesn't have anything to do with World War II. More than any other mental institution in the United States, Atascadero State Hospital was a chamber of horrors for homosexuals. The tag "Homosexual Dachau" was well-earned for its forced lobotomies, castrations and brutal treatments practiced at that facility. Hundreds of gays and lesbians were forcibly sent by their families to be cured of homosexuality which, as recently as the early 1970s, was considered a sexual and psychological disorder.
The 1950's were an especially dark time for homosexuals. Because of the witch hunts by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Americans started passing horrible and oppressive laws against homosexuality. Same-sex behavior was linked to treason and Communism in that period. As the witch hunt spread across America, homosexuals with no politics were sent to the worst institutions imaginable.
The most notorious was a Dr. Walter J. Freeman who perfected the ice pick lobotomy. He jammed an ice pick through a homosexual's eyes into the brain and performed a primitive lobotomy. He believed deeply this was the only way to cure homosexuality.
A lot of LGBT people of color and white lesbians complain that their voices are often marginalized and that gay white males get the vast majority of attention in the media. Racism and sexism is also considered a major problem in the gay community but that gets almost no attention in the media.
Some especially good points here. Intersectionality is always at play, even in minority communities.
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