Straight Pride

Zachariah Chilly Mulberry wrote: »

And there you have it ..... Tolerance is only tolerated if you agree with gay agenda...and it is an agenda!

And what is that agenda, Zachariah Chilly Mulberry?

Zachariah Chilly Mulberry wrote: »

I wondered why I was being called straight but my sexuality isn't what defines me.
As for not being perjorative( had to look it up) , it really depends on whose doing the naming and why. It can be as demeaning as anything else.

Why is it when one says homosexuality isn't normal that one is defined as a homophobe ( another perjorative term). I can separate the act from the person quiet easily and I don't have a phobia about people, neither do I hate homosexuals.

Your sexuality is not what defines you but your sexuality can be defined by one word or another - if you're a heterosexual person, then in ordinary vernacular English, you're straight. Human beings are taxonomic animals - we feel a need to classify things because that's how we make sense of the world, we categorise everything and apply words to things to differentiate them from one another. Your sexuality might not define you and you might not consider it to be a part of your identity, but for the purposes of a conversation about sexual orientation, you have a classification like everyone else. If you didn't, it would be necessary to invent one.

I would disagree that it can be demeaning, I cannot think of a context or situation where calling someone "straight" would demean them, partially because being straight has never been seen as bad thing by any society. The opposite is true for other sexual orientations, however.

The problem is that the word normal carries a certain value - if you say that someone isn't normal, it's implicit that you consider them to be abnormal, that there is something wrong with them or unacceptable about them. Normal does not just mean usual or conventional.
There is a difference between saying that gay people aren't "normal" and saying that gay people are not as common as straight people, for instance. Red hair is the most uncommon hair colour, but no one would say red hair is not normal. People with red hair are normal, and they are not as common as people with black hair.

This is why people would think of you as being homophobic if you say that homosexuality isn't normal, because it illustrates a certain-closed mindedness. For most of the modern era, heterosexuality was the only legitimate sexuality - it is an "organised" sexuality. A huge number of social interactions and rituals were and are organised around it. Marriage was open only to couples of the opposite sex, child-rearing the exclusive remit of a mother and a father. There is a thread right now in After Hours which has been about how lots of men find the idea of two men kissing repulsive, for the last 4 pages or so. Boys kissed girls back in the day. That's what kissing was about. It was for straight people.

So when you say that homosexuality isn't normal, it indicates (or tends to indicate) that you don't view same-sex relationships or attractions as legitimate.
And you can't really separate the "act" from the person. It's too big a part of them even if it doesn't define them. The doer came before the deed, they had to.

Personally I think the word homophobia is a poor descriptor for a dislike of homosexuality or a lack of acceptance of it but it's too late to change that now. But just as you might not like being labelled a homophobe (and I'm not saying you are btw), LGBT people don't particularly like being told they're not normal, because there's nothing wrong with us.

wiggle16 wrote: »

This is why people would think of you as being homophobic if you say that homosexuality isn't normal, because it illustrates a certain-closed mindedness. For most of the modern era, heterosexuality was the only legitimate sexuality - it is an "organised" sexuality. A huge number of social interactions and rituals were and are organised around it. Marriage was open only to couples of the opposite sex, child-rearing the exclusive remit of a mother and a father. There is a thread right now in After Hours which has been about how lots of men find the idea of two men kissing repulsive, for the last 4 pages or so. Boys kissed girls back in the day. That's what kissing was about. It was for straight people.

And come to think of it, this is why a straight pride parade should rub you up the wrong way. There is something very triumphalist and supremacist about having a straight pride parade in a world already designed for and catered to the convenience and comfort of straight people. Just like a white pride [white power] parade in a country where white people hold a dominant and pre-eminent position in society, such as the US. Or a Loyalist parade/Orange Order march in Northern Ireland.
It should leave a very bad taste in your mouth.