Being proud = refusing to be ashamed and fighting persecution/judgement
Oh, agreed. If a gay person stands up against those who would deny him (or her) rights, then they should be proud, because they are fighting against inequality and injustice. I will be at their side, fighting for those rights as well. And I will be just as proud as they are.
I didn't take offense at your post. I thought it was made in good spirit.
Perhaps the best way to explain it is that the "default" status for what a society deems moral, ethical, strong, and perhaps ideal, is a white Protestant Christian heterosexual male who has been college educated and is over 35. If we look at the majority of people in power and the acquisition of their decision making power and money, it has been observed that these characteristics are considered the ideal.
And I think that is terrible.
Allow me to digress for a bit in order to explain this.
I was reading a book by Richard Dawkins (I think it was "The Greatest Show On earth", a great read), and he mentioned this idea of an archetypical member of a species. He used the example of a rabbit, specifically. He said that there was some supremely rabbity rabbit, that had the highest level of rabbitness that a rabbit could possibly have. it's not a real rabbit that actually exists. Any living rabbit is an imperfect version of it. Maybe its ears are too long, or its tail isn't fluffy enough. But the
idea of a rabbit yardstick, against which the rabbitiness of all real rabbits can be measured is a real one. It's similar to how there is an archetypical circle. Any circle you can show me is a flawed, imperfect shadow of a real circle. After all, a real circle is perfectly rough. But any circle you can show me will have imperfections. Any circle you draw, no matter how carefully, will have wobbles. And the line of the circumference will be a two dimensional line, with a length going around the circle and a width across the line, rather than the perfect circle, in which the line has no length.
But the trouble is that living systems like rabbits are not perfect like circles. To have an archetypical rabbit is to deny rabbit evolution, because it states that rabbits can never vary too far from the archetype. Or it says that evolution was somehow guided, aiming towards the archetypical rabbit from the rabbit ancestor millions of years ago. The only way around it is to claim that the archetypical rabbit is a constantly shifting thing, perhaps the average of all living rabbits, and as a new rabbit is born or an old one dies, the archetype changes with it. But that goes against the whole idea of an archetype.
Likewise, to claim that there is a "default" member of our society is to put us in the same situation. To me, the claim that the average member of society is "a white Protestant Christian heterosexual male who has been college educated and is over 35" is just as nonsensical as the idea of an archetypical rabbit. It is to ignore the vast and wonderful variety of people and ideas that mingle peacefully (for the most part) in our society, and I think it's limiting to think of our society in that way.
So, like black pride, native pride, women power (hear me roar), and other pride movements, queer pride is the collective reaction against the cultural distinction that being straight is how people should act, think, and measure their self-worth against.
I fully agree, and I'll add that with the exception of harmful things like theft, murder and other similar actions, there shouldn't be any limitations on what people "should" be.
We don't have Irish pride so much anymore since our culture doesn't discriminate against the Irish, though we used to quite a bit. GLBTQs are aiming to have the same happen for us. I'd like to be able to list someday on a census that I'm bisexual and have it be seen as typical as listing my address and how many people live at our residence.
Again, I agree. In a perfect world, this shouldn't even be an issue.
