Do you guys honestly truly think this world is becoming more excepting?

[oldster]

well as i see it yes things have changed fantastly when i was a child you had to be 21 in california as the age of consent and some states were still at 25yo i had never heard of tollernt parents or of any family it was still the eara of the shock treatment till they
had been changed to hetrosexualty. Or ship them off to san fransisco so non of the familes
friends will ever see thos blite on your familes tree mant times the family name was changed for the outcast I was shoked when i found tollrant/even supportive parents of
aguy i stayed all night with that i couldnot beleive it when they wanted to ask me if he was good in bed i was like 18 at the time and i just made anexcuse to get out and to my work and out of that placeinstantly now days i read about many guys that had supportive parents
and would think they were the first people in a guys life to be supportive of their child no mater what now things have changed so much still bashers out there and other bad people
but we have progressed lots from my point of view. I just hate things like gay as foke show and anything that is that in your face and start showing some true love stories like i med a guy that his teen lover was in car accident and he was there every day to help him for the next 40 years where i worked in a flower shop we sent him fresh flowers every week
just so happend the owners knew the kids innvolved in the tragity thoes years ago and so wanted to continue to show their love and support for the couple but if we can get the message out there that we are human beings and not just sexualy driven preverts we will even be better accepted andas more people come out and people see we are just people too
we will be more accepted and less feared.

[dfiant]

I sometimes wonder if gay rights organizations are focusing too much on marriage and the military while gay teens are killing themselves. But maybe focusing on these things has led to progress. We have a long way to go.

Double edge sword that one. I often do look around at all these protests for gay marriage and the money being spent on 'conscience votes' and the repealing of the DADT laws, then 5 minutes later read about a 14 year old commiting suicide as a result of homophobic bullying and wish there was a middle ground that would benefit both ends of that spectrum.

Which issue is going to lead to greater acceptance if we focus more on it? I mean don't they say that if you start teaching tolerance to the young that you set the ball rolling for future generations?

My personal opinion, I think we could focus more on the youth issues and put it up there as just as important as Gay Marriage and DADT.

As far as the world becoming more accepting...when I was a teenager Homosexuality was illegal and a mental illness. Gay 'meeting places' were haunted by groups of thugs.

[Zip]

Like other minority groups ~women~African Americans~ things were worse in the past. We just don't see the progress because it is slow. I have had older guys tell me about being busted just for being in a gay bar. This has never happened to me ~ in fact I have never even heard of it happening in recent times, have you?

[TommyinKY]

I think it has become a lot more accepting in the years I've lived. In 1991 i was 14 and I had just admitted to myself that I was bisexual but in that same year a KY state trooper was convicted of consensual sodomy for a liaison with a school principle. A year later the sodomy laws where repealed in Ky making it the 4th state to rule it unconstitutional.

A few years ago the KY governor signed an executive order ensuring that government employees where protected from discrimination based on sexuality and Gender Identity.

We just saw Dadt repealed, but we still have Doma.

I figure its only a matter of time before its gone also

Visibility and education are the best tools we have. It may take awhile but anything lasting and good tends to.

[musicman2229]

Like the many issues of marginalized groups that have come up before our community, the cycle has been a gradual upwelling of discontent, a climax of widespread social tension, a significant shift of public opinion, and the gradual acceptance compounded by each subsequent generation until the original opinion in question is seen a ludicrous. It seems to me that the stage we are in is immediately after the significant shift of public opinion. As has been pointed out in many previous posts, things are better for us than they used to be. What will make the world the way we want it to be, fully accepting of us as people, can only be time. Probably one or two more generations and society will have re-defined the 'F' word. I'm too young to wax poetically about how bad things used to be for us. My earliest memory of gay/straight conflict was 80% of my high school senior class staging a walkout because the school wouldn't let us elect a very popular lesbian couple prom queen and queen. But I can observe the data, and if history is any indicator, it's going to be a few generations before we are fully accepted.