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I guess if you've always been a member of the majority (sexual orientation, ethnicity, whatever) then you haven't had occasion to be specifically proud because you were never looked down upon or even reviled for that status. If you HAVE been in a marginalized group, spending a little time being proud is one way to promote your "okay-ness". It's only the non-marginalized who think these folks should just get over it.
I live in a regular suburban neighborhood full of young families that politically is middle of the road to right.
There is a gay couple a few houses down the road from me. Guess what?
Everyone knows they're gay and no one cares. They don't feel the need to fly a rainbow flag or have crazy pride parties or anything. They just live their lives like normal people. Guess what? The neighborhood treats them like normal people.
I live in a regular suburban neighborhood full of young families that politically is middle of the road to right.
There is a gay couple a few houses down the road from me. Guess what?
Everyone knows they're gay and no one cares. They don't feel the need to fly a rainbow flag or have crazy pride parties or anything. They just live their lives like normal people. Guess what? The neighborhood treats them like normal people.
Indeed, and that is exactly what all of the "loud & proud" LGBTQ+ have been working their fabulous little backsides off for decades for. The ability of people like your neighbors, to just live their lives among folk, without being ostracized or worse. Because BEFORE there were the Stonewall Riots and the Pride parades, back in the good ol' Leave it to Beaver days that some people wish we could go back to, what you describe here would have been completely impossible.
And the fact that is amply illustrated by a lot of posts in this thread, that plenty of people still see homosexuality, or basically anything but the traditional, hetero, nuclear family lifestyle, as being a mental illness, something they can tolerate if only they never have to "see it," degeneracy or deviance, against God's will, nothing but a sexual kink, and a host of other such obnoxiousness, tells me that the work they started isn't yet done.
When a gay couple has the same privileges, no more and no less, as a straight couple automatically gets in this society, then I might be more willing to listen to calls to pack up the rainbow flags and cancel the parades. But probably not, because honestly they are simply a good time, and celebrating the fact that a lot of people don't have to all be alike, to get along and be happy together in a community or a society, seems like a pretty nice thing to me. Though I personally believe that displays of an overtly sexual nature such as nudity, strap ons, and whatnot, are not appropriate in public spaces and public gay events that feature those kinds of things should really...not. Nor should more predominantly straight or other sorts of public events. I mean, unless we're going to make it just simply legal for everybody to be topless in public, which I think in general we should and we should de-sexualize breasts, then people should not be exposing them for instance. So when they change things at the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, and the Spring Break parties in Florida...
So WHY is it homosexual behavior has been observed in other mammals if the sole purpose of sex is reproduction?
That's not really how nature works.
Nature doesn't understand purpose.
Nature never created a drive in an animal with a purpose in mind.
Drives evolve on their own and lead to behavior, and if that behavior has a positive outcome (children that become parents), the drive that lead to the behavior will be carried to future generations.
Assigning a purpose to sex requires the uniquely human ability to conceptualize and the human inclination to do so.
Humans are tool makers.
To make tools we assign purpose to objects, and even people, so that they can become useful in ways they were not previously.
We even go so far as to modify people (especially ourselves) and things so that they are better suited to a particular purpose.
We educate our children, paint our faces, wear clothing, make use of fire, domesticate animals, create complex machines, build shelters, gather into groups and more so that purposes, once conceived, can be realized.
Assigning purpose, like sex, is an innate human drive.
This is where the homosexuality conflict comes from.
Homosexuality, for everyone except the homosexuals, serves no purpose.
This in itself doesn't necessarily make homosexuality wrong, but it does make it a useless activity.
As humans, we are driven to discard all the things (and people) for which no purpose can be found.
Is it something to be ashamed of? Proud of? Or neither of those?
Why does anyone have to have "a take" on anyone else's private business?
We are on this planet such a short time so if anyone can find someone to love, who cares?
More of us should mind our own business.
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