Rick, you mentioned that you thought RR is a bubble. I don't completely agree with that. If you read as many different sites as I do you will find many of the same discussions and the same ideas expressed. In the early days, even coming out anonymously online, seemed like an act of courage.
I remember a particularly foul troll on Yahoo! back in the late 90s, whose screen name was "lopshisarmsoff" (nice, huh?) He used to post the most disgusting gay bashing messages on every gay forum. He would post in explicit detail what he would do (or claimed to have done) to gays. It made me physically ill. He would be banned and then pop up again with another alias (all with the word "lops" in the name - he was really into dismemberment fantasies, apparently). There were straight people on many of the forums that were there to ask sincere questions. I would engage people, then lops would show up and the whole thing would degenerate into horror. Today, lops would not last very long anywhere, and it wouldn't be just gays driving him out. A lot of times I'll see an anti-gay themed thread somewhere and think "I better jump on here" only to find that there are already dozens of defensive posts from self-proclaimed straight people.
Despite the (narrow) passage of Prop 8 and a lot of ugly rhetoric out there, gays are not the social pariahs we once were (even 10 years ago).
The 1988 Republican National Convention was a nightmare if you were a gay American. I watched that year with my father and couldn't believe the openly hateful speeches from Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan. To a young gay man, they were calling for all but my death on a National platform. That convention could not exist today without major criticism.
Today, people are up in arms that both Biden and Obama said they did not support gay marriage but supported equal rights for gays and lesbians. I see that as progress. We were even included in Obama's acceptance speech. Clinton was the first time in my life I remember hearing anything positive toward gay people from the President (of course The DOMA and DADT were both implemented under Clinton, so... take that for what it's worth). The point is that we really are much more accepted now than ever in my life. We are embraced and supported by our straight friends and family members and defended more strongly than ever before and not just here on RR, but most everywhere I look. Prop 8 was a disaster, but it has really opened up the dialog on a National level and probably for the first time in my life, there is more vocal support than I've heard before on any gay issue.
The people who still hate and bash gays are dinosaurs, they will be on the wrong side of history. The people who supported Prop 6 thirty years ago were wrong and they are STILL wrong AND they are using the same arguments that were not true then and still aren't today.
Trust me, things really are a LOT better than they used to be.
Last edited by Jeffro; 12/17/08 01:36 AM.
