So, Gay Pride has come and gone in NYC. We went to the dance, saw some of the parade, the normal things one does on Gay Pride Day. But I want to thank my straight friends and family.
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The reason there is a "Gay Pride Parade" and day is to commemorate the random beatings and subsequent anger at a bar in New York 30+ years ago..
The reason to remember is so that gay people don't have to go through this again.
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In the US, at least in New York and LA and Chicago and San Francisco and Atlanta and most other reasonable sized cities - gay people are accepted. Not as "gay people", but as "people"!
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That was the whole point. The whole desire of the gay movement.
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Gay bars are closing and gay neighborhoods are disappearing because in many way they aren't needed an more. Young gay people are just people and don't need "safe" neighborhood or bars. They are fully incorporated into life now.
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And that is due to gays working hard for acceptance by also by straight people accepting them. It is due to my friends, my neighbors, my countrymen and women deciding that who someone sleeps with should not define who they are.
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So here is to you all. Through the work of people like me and Ed and the acceptance of our striaght friends and family - here is to a life where kids growing up dont' see the big deal. That is the greatest gift we were able to give. And we pretty much gave it to them.
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Yay!