Pride Month Topics

Gay

Being gay is a crazy thing, a thing most straight people can't seem to wrap their minds around. Possibly because they simply don't have to. Some think we're born this way, others that it's a choice. I don't think all of us are strictly born gay, but I wouldn't say that anyone really chooses it either.

Gay people have always been around, since the earliest of civilizations. Many lesbians were often overlooked as women were inferior anyway. But the men attracted to men or "effeminate" men were treated poorly, and often brutally. As they were seen to have traded their superior masculinity for the inferior female role. The word homosexual joining common venacular in the mid-1900's.

It was soon added to the list of mental disorders. You know, back when a man could throw his wife in the loony-bin for ailments as minor as a headache. Yet for some reason, homosexuality as a mental disorder was still against the law. Imagine someone being arrested for acting on OCD traits. No, even clothing was grounds for arrest. If patrons of underground gay bars were caught not wearing three or more articles of their assigned gendered clothing, they were taken to jail.

In 1969 New York at the Stonewall Inn, a raid took place, as was common. But this time the LGBT community fought back, sparking the beginning of a long and on-going gay rights movement. Of course, some of the biggest opposition to such a movement has been the Christian community. Many of whom claimed to be loving and to care for all people, simultaneously tortured and abused gay people with practices like electroshock therapy among other methods.