RE: LGBTQ,+P Pride Month
June 13, 2022 at 1:33 am
(This post was last modified: June 13, 2022 at 1:34 am by Belacqua.)
(June 12, 2022 at 9:02 pm)Lek Wrote: How is it that LG TQ+ individuals are so important that they get a whole month to praise them? How about Irish-American pride month? Have LBTQ+ Americans contributed more to America than Irish Americans? Have they contributed more than cisgender Americans. Are we not just all Americans? Why are LBGTQ+ Americans more special than everyone else?
I think the idea is that up to now, there has been way too much discrimination against LBTQ+ people, and now a lot of people want such prejudice to be over with.
There used to be prejudice against Irish-Americans, and that may be one reason why Congress made an Irish-American month. But since the discrimination is far less now, people may not feel the need to celebrate it.
It's just like Black Lives Matter. People who argue back "All Lives Matter" are missing the point. In the past the US treated black people as if their lives didn't matter as much, and it's good to speak out and emphasize that this should be rectified.
That's the idealistic explanation.
The cynical explanation is this:
The tide of public opinion has turned, and a majority now think that it's OK to be gay. To take advantage of this change, and to improve their own images, corporations make a big deal about how inclusive and LBTQ+-friendly they are. So you've got the companies that are polluting the world and filling it with evil weapons touting how woke they are.
I've seen this called "pink-washing." Northrop Grumman runs ads about how woke they are, while building the bombs that will wipe out humanity. Bomb companies running ads to say how much they appreciate Irish-Americans wouldn't have the same PR appeal.
There's a funny cartoon on Twitter: the Republicans want to bomb foreign countries. The Democrats want to bomb foreign countries, but the bombs have rainbow flags painted on them.
Or they say that the Republicans want internment camps for asylum seekers, and the Democrats also want internment camps for asylum seekers, but we want to be sure that half the guards are women of color.
I think the idealistic explanation and the cynical one can both be true. Good-hearted people want to show support for people who were formerly discriminated against (and too often still are). And greedy people can find ways to exploit this good thing.
