Perri475 said:
Equality was never the real goal, because of pride instead. Interesting premise, i'll give you that much, but if you were in a group of people who have been treated horribly up until pretty recently, would you not want to feel pride for who you are? The fact of the matter is that they should NOT have to march for equality in the first place, so showing unabashed pride for one's true identity is no problem in my opinion.
I just wanted to respond to this specific point, because it seems to me that as a society we're pretty clueless about these things sometimes.
Pride is, "a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of one's close associates, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired."
And of course, everyone is no doubt familiar with the phrase, "pride goes before the fall". Pride can be a "sin".
Well, is it wrong to derive satisfaction from one's own achievements? Not really. On the other hand, it's very, very easy to get carried away into, "I'm so wonderful, it's all about me", which is a pandemic in the modern world. Selfies, for example.
So, if you want to talk about gay rights, that's on target. Equality for gays? No problem. But gay pride? That leads to some of the more outrageous examples we see today: parades of people in gimp suits and dog collars being so "proud" of themselves that they march around in cities and even simulate sex acts in public. How is that related to equality? Were I to do the same thing, I'd probably be arrested for indecent behavior. That's not equality.
And I can tell you that my grandparents and their friends NEVER saw anything like what we are seeing today. That doesn't mean it never happened behind closed doors, but clearly Conchita Wurst was
not on TV 50 years ago. So, to say "it's all because of the internet" is at best rather naive. It's a common argument about everything from climate change to political nonsense. In the end, it's just an excuse to not think about what is going on because, "Oh, well, it was always there, so I don't have to worry about... Yeah, that's it..." I'm sorry, but no. You are free to ignore whatever you want, but you cannot require that the rest of us do the same just to make you feel better.
Yes, homosexuals have been treated badly for a long time, but that is NOT the way to go about being treated more fairly. It's exactly the kind of corruption introduced into such movements by pathological individuals to destroy the movement itself, as Pierre indicated in his article.
Today, this has been extended to, "Everything's okay!" You're a man who wants to be a woman pop star? Go for it! It's awesome! No one is asking the question, "WHY is this happening?" and instead we're just supposed to blindly accept it all as okay, or risk being labeled as "not progressive enough" in our thinking.
Personally, I was less concerned about the specific details and "proof" offered in the article, and more concerned with the various questions it raises. Even if the article contained 700 foot notes to thousands of pages of studies, it still wouldn't make a difference in terms of those who simply don't want to see what's going on.
It seems to me that there are many more questions we should all be asking ourselves about how best to move forward on this and many other current societal issues, but instead we tend to just go with the flow and get overly emotional when we see anyone not doing the same thing.
That doesn't really help anyone.