Gay Pride ad a new 'equality gap'?

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!

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.

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?

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.

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. .

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Unnecessary, rather than ridiculous.

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

Ridiculous? Yes, exactly.

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.

How does that make any sense at all?

He's obviously not still doing it now...

"What you are in the privacy of your own home is up to you."

Remind me where Ketton-Ceber's home was.
Remind me where these people were, who refused to wear a badge acknowledging that he was gay.

I grew up in a town that had a number of what were previously known as "mental asylums", now all closed and redeveloped as housing. I knew there were ex servicemen who'd been in these places for years and who had ongoing problems due to shell shock, how bad that must of been for them, this was the sixties so possibly some of the older men were WW1 veterans. It was only of late that I became aware that people could be incarcerated and institutionalised for years for being deemed a "loose cannon" so that would have covered a whole gamut of what are now everyday "norms", homosexuality and young girls becoming pregnant outside marriage. I would recommend "The Disappearing Act of Esme Lennox" by Maggie O'Farrell for a greater insight into that.

Turning to "Gay Pride" marches, I don't like being confronted by anyone in a state of undress in public, whatever their sexual orientation, I think as glammynanny described, the shock tactics that are sometimes associated with the dress or lack of it with such celebrations will put some people off. Although gay people holding hands or kissing doesn't bother me one iota. In a similar vein, I remember passing through Malaga airport a few years ago with what seemed to be umpteen stag and hen parties, British of course many loud and pissed with it all hanging out. Sorry quite possibly that makes me an old fart, but good god whatever happened to decorum not everyone wants it "in their face"

How do you manage to misread posts so thoroughly djen?

I agree we shouldn't be proud or ashamed of someone's sexuality, but we might be proud of the way they handle the prejudice and hostility they experience. I was proud of the way my brother dealt with the disabilities inflicted on him as a result of a homophobic attack. But he wanted people to know why he had been attacked so it was important to him that his sexuality was public.

As I said in the same quote, his family should not have to hide away the fact that he was gay.
Obviously some of you still think they should.
40% of the population in one survey I saw.

That's why Gay Pride is still necessary.

Yes you would assume so Jalima.

It seems that some people would prefer "this is my niece. She is gay... and I am so proud, she's Bob and Mary's daughter"

I think, even now, I would be proud of my daughter for 'coming out' if she was lesbian (not for being lesbian per se), even though times have changed.

durhamjen I think you may have missed my point. I was referring to the fact that the pair of them were 'wearing' scraps of cloth smaller than my dog's bandana with their bottoms in full view. Yes hubby and I have been known to walk down the street holding hands but I don't think the world is quite ready for the sight of him in a leather thong. I see lots of same sex couples walking around holding hands and it never crosses my mind to take to social media to complain about such things.

There's a difference dj between a family hiding homosexuality away by let's say refusing to acknowledge and/or accept it and setting a family member apart by emphasising their homosexuality by being proud of it.

We are proud of someone because of who they are and what they do. We shouldn't be proud or ashamed of someone because of their sexual preference.