Gay Pride ad a new 'equality gap'?

Terribull, I have just been reading that people with OCD were given shock therapy in the 50s and 60s to 'normalise' them. Can you imagine that these days?
Luckily we are more enlightened in some respects.

I think I might get a badge saying "Proud to be straight"

Ridiculous? Yes, exactly.

Unnecessary, rather than ridiculous.

Anniebach - your comment 're 'buggery'. I might find what you do with your husband in the bedroom absolutely disgusting but I would defend your right to do what you like in the privacy of your own home. Many of my gay friends do not practice it but many of my straight friends do practice it with their wives. It is not confined to gay relationships.

Oh please don't start that again. It's a sexual practice which is irrelevant to what's being discussed. And I'm rather afraid that some posters find reference to it tittilating

They tell you this, do they grumpyoldwoman? What frank and open friends you have...

grumpy old woman, my husband has been dead for forty years so what we do in the bedroom? Nothing

You and me both Annie but I'm not sure what it's got to do with the subject under discussion.

There are enough bad things happening in this world for us not to need to waste time being outraged about what happened in the past, unless they were unacceptable in their time

The past is another country. They do things differently there. Be glad of that.

I wonder what we are doing now that we consider commendable which will make two or three generations from now be glad they live in more enlightened times.

Monica, I do not understand your first sentence.
Being gay was unacceptable in its time, as was sending people to mental institutions because they were gay, and giving them aversion therapy.
All unacceptable in their time - if people had known about it.

Apparently we will never know how many people were treated in that way as the records have disappeared.

This weekend's Sunday Times magazine has an interview with Jamie Oliver, not everyone's cup of tea, but in this article he was relating how radom people who expouse veganism as a way of life, which he has every sympathy with, turn up at his restaurants and shove iPads with pictures of slaughtered animals under the noses of his customers. The analogy I'm making here is that there is an evangelism around these days on all manner of issues and on occasions there are those who simply do not allow another point of view. Perhaps that is what some of the NT guides felt, they wanted the choice to opt out for whatever reason, they didn't want to display the proverbial rainbow badge on their person as an obligation. As previously stated religion may well have played a part in shaping their mindsets, who knows but by banning their contact with the public the NT turned them into dissenters rather than people who merely didn't want to be part of a "one voice" for all campaign. There is a groundswell that seems to be gaining momentum (no pun intended) to make people who do not support certain issues pariahs. We have seen speakers such as Germaine Greer turned away from certain universities because a faction there disagreed with what she had to say or could have been upset by it. I believe Richard Dawkins also wasn't allowed a platform recently at an American University for the same reason and this sort of thing of late has become more prevalent.

My personal feelings are that I would not wish to be told to wear something that showed my afiliation to a particular cause, I had too much of being told how to think, feel and wear being brought up in a strict religion. I don't do badges supporting anything, neither would I display a political party poster in my window on the run up to an election because I have an ambivalence to all of them, maybe the NT guides also had an ambivalence to this particular issue. .

If it was discovered that in the 1950s, that someone was sending young children up chimneys to clean them it is reasonable to be horrified by this behaviour and and say anyone organising and taking part in it was a pariah because most of those living at that time would be horrified by it also. However if society as a whole (yes, I know there will be exceptions) accepted that sending children up chimneys is good way of them earning their keep and getting difficult chimneys clear, then while we make think it a dreadful practice we have to accept that that is how society worked then and should not start apologising to the families of the survivors or giving them compensation.

Interesting that the only person who replied to my post about wearing suffragette colours actually avoided the question. I can only assume that most wouldn't object to wearing them and therefore that not wearing the rainbow badge is purely to do with what it stands for.
So what you are saying M0nica is that there are no standards of behaviour that are completely unacceptable in a civilised society but all rules depend on a common agreement. Does that mean canabilism is OK if enough people want it? Doesn't that lead to things like the Holocaust?

Yes DJ read about the shock therapy awful, I think I read about one of JFK's sisters forcibly having to undergo such a treatment.

Ana......that's exactly what I thought!
Good posts Monica and TerriBull

I suspect that no posts, however excellent will convince a few posters that forcing staff to wear gay pride lanyards/badges was a bad idea. Fortunately, the NT have been convinced!

Lots of people had shock therapy treatment in the 60s and possibly beyond for all manner of mental and emotional ailments.

My friend's mother was hospitalised for about 6 months with depression and was given it - she was strapped to the bed (thankfully, she was put under before the actual treatment) and had several sessions. I don't know whether it had any effect, but there were women in the same ward being treated for schizophrenia and 'general malaise' with ECT.

I have only picked up on what people have said that I thought needed explaining. That is why I brought up the subject of sex. I didn't realise until I posted it that a few others had addressed it. Sorry for making a comment but I thought that is what these forums are for.

Regarding being proud of a gay family member. I think it is a big step to come out. I think society still expects that people will grow up, have a partner and have children, by saying you are gay you set yourself away from this and have to find your own path and this strength deserves acknowledgement. It is a path still being forged and sometimes the advance guard are a bit extreme. But if it is a choice between seeing men scantily clad or having people hidden and persecuted I'll put up with the men. After all there are half naked girls on the pages of many newspapers.

Ana Being gay is not a mental illness

"Good posts Monica and TerriBull" - I agree.
And to add to DJ's mention of shock therapy for OCD - around the same time aversion therapy was used to 'cure' homosexuals. Not shock therapy, but a medication that was injected to make the person vomit when shown photos of people of their own sex. I don't think it was very successful.

I wasn't implying that it was trisher - sorry, hadn't checked the original post about ECT, I was just posting my own memories of the practice.

I don't think Ana said that she thought it was did she?

It was djen who pointed out
Being gay was unacceptable in its time, as was sending people to mental institutions because they were gay, and giving them aversion therapy.
which we all know anyway unless we were sleepwalking and many of us thought that this was unacceptable even then.

You forgot about having to pee and defecate on their own beds, Tricia.
It's strange how people have managed to avoid reading those descriptions put on here, and think that being put under was a good thing.
The whole point about gay people being given the therapy was to make them feel disgusted about their own sexuality.

Ana were discussing how gays were treated in the 60sand you posted
"Lots of people had shock therapy treatment in the 60s and possibly beyond for all manner of mental and emotional ailments."
As gays had shock treatment I assumed you were regarding that as a mental ailment.If you didn't mean it as such it was very misleading.

Sorry I seem to have missed something you posted earlier DJ. I haven't read the whole thread.