Quite true, and some of the Songkickers I knew in London said that Ryanair and Easyjet (two low-cost airlines) contributed immensely to European integration.

That said, as a homo I found the Onion's article Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years all-too-disappointingly funny. http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28491

Interesting point. I think people who are gay should come out to as many people as possible for this reason :)

Except it's not the life mission of every gay person in the world to fix everyone's prejudices about gay people. It's exceptional and brave when someone does (not that it's exceptional and brave to come out of the closet, but it's exceptional and brave to go around fixing other people's bigotry).

Of course not, nor should it be. It's just fascinating to think that there are so many bigoted people who care deeply about one or more closeted homosexuals -- whose world view would be shattered (and bigotry destroyed) if they found out.

Well, that's the optimistic outcome. The pessimistic outcome is that the gay child gets disinherited, the gay friend loses a close friend, and so forth.

Please note that this didn't work for Harvey Milk, for Alan Turing, for Matthew Shepard, and for many others.

Milk and Turing, especially Turing, were from different eras than ours. It's a lot more dangerous before the paradigm shift (and boy has this paradigm shifted). Shepard's case, from what I've read, was a lot more ambiguous.

Edit: I'm not arguing that there's no more anti-gay violence, just that the social context has changed radically. The aftermath of the recent incident in Fort Worth will be interesting to follow in this respect.

Times hasn't changed much, minority of all kinds always need to assert their equal rights.

Once gays are accepted into the mainstream, there will be other, oppressed, even more niche minority group.

This is the nature of our pyramid-like society. There will always be oppressor and oppressed.

I think this is a counter-productive attitude. The difference in the US between the 1850s (blacks in slavery, many women in abusive relationships with no legal protection or recourse because they were considered property, chinese and mexicans used as cheap labor but discriminated against mercilessly, gays all in the closet because their lives would be at risk if they came out, etc.), and the 1950s (gays nearly all closeted still, women’s lib movement not yet off the ground, Jim Crow and frequent lynchings, many top universities hardly accepting anyone not a WASP male, rampant discrimination in housing, hiring, politics, the mentally disabled brutally institutionalized against their will, and the physically disabled not guaranteed equal access to public infrastructure and instututions, etc.) and today is dramatic, and the trend is overwhelmingly obvious.

Sure, we still have problems with racism and sexism, and groups like transpeople and undocumented Mexican laborers are sometimes treated despicably by our society and its institutions, and we never managed to ratify the ERA, and various groups are still stigmatized and held back from various positions of power, so we shouldn’t stop the fight for justice and equality, especially equality under the law, but you can’t wave away all of the progress we’ve made with “Times hasn’t changed much.... This is the nature of our pyramid-like society.” That kind of defeatist attitude is not just sloppy reasoning but also damn poor public policy.

Shit, we have a black president, a female secretary of state and speaker of the house, numerous high-level officials and corporate execs and prominent ministers, etc. who are openly gay, a soon-to-be Latina supreme court justice, etc. Times have most definitely changed, and the changes run deep.

True. I wasn't saying it to criticize people for not making the very difficult decision. I have total respect for the difficulties associated with coming out, etc.