Gayness and Respect for Subcultures. From Joe Pixel's weblog:

How does the gay agenda expect to get any real respect when we see displays such as this picture? Highly concentrated gay events are known to commonly have public displays of body parts, open sex and many other examples of wild abandon. Gays are always going to be viewed negatively with this sort of communication. This is as effective as peace protesters who use violence and destruction to achieve their goals. A total oxymoron. [link]

The logical skeleton of this complaint is "if they do things I disrespect, then I will not respect them." Joe Pixel's premises include "their goal is to gain my respect." "Respect" is, of course, a weakly-defined sentiment. If we take this complaint to its ad absurdum limit, we arrive at "if the gay community continues being gay, then the gay community will not earn my respect." Joe Pixel will probably object that he does not intend to say this, but I believe his statement does imply this. They "gay" identity is precisely what is on display in a gay parade. Like most identities, it is adaptive and evolving. There will be disagreement among members of the community about what "gay" really means. For some of them, "wild abandon" is a part of the identity. In displaying their identity (or their version of it, at least), I think relatively few of them intend to change the opinions of anyone who is not gay. Particularly when non-gay people can pick all kinds of arbitrary things to disrespect about gay people. The point of a parade is not to suck up to your detractors. I'll now make use of the all-too-easy-and-convenient Jewish analogy: let's imagine a kinder, gentler Nazi regime which doesn't like Jews but doesn't take it to the level of the holocaust. They encourage (or at least don't actively discourage) discrimination against Jews, and they refuse to recognize Jewish marriages. The nice-Nazis further allow the Jews to have parades and public religious exercises. The nice-Nazis also don't censor the liberal press, which complains about the discrepancy in treatment of Jews. In response to this criticism, conservative editorials appear which argue "if the Jews really wanted to be respectable, they would do XYZ." XYZ could be "performing their rituals in Hebrew -- if they are true Germans then they should always speak German!" or possibly "wearing those silly outfits" or maybe "circumsizing their male children; how barbaric!" Basically XYZ can be anything that makes Jews different from non-Jews. Now the important question: if you are a Jew and you hear these comments coming from the nice-Nazis, like "stop wearing that hat" or "shave your beard" or whatever, would you respond by taking additional measures to please the ruling conservatives? If you participated in a public march or prayer service, would you think, "this will surely show those Nazis that we are nice folks"? I imagine that the average sentiment among Jewish marchers would be "This is who we are and this is what we do. We are a significant sub-culture and we will not adjust ourselves to suit anyone else's vision of how we should be." Quick digression: I defend the Jew-gay community comparison by noting that both are strong, persistent subcultures; both groups have diverse internal interpretations of their identities; both groups were targetted by the Nazis; gays occasionally express the opinion that they deserve the sort of post-holocaust respect acquired by the Jews; and so on. I would argue that public demonstrations are commonly not designed with the intent of changing the attitude of the average person. A gay-pride parade is mostly for the benefit of gay people. A large public exercise improves the cohesion of the gay community. Perhaps it helps gays feel more comfortable with being gay. Perhaps it gives inspiration to closeted individuals. It certainly improves the visibility of the gay community, which may benefit them politically. And it may encourage stronger recognition and support among people who don't already have anything against gays. But I don't think most gays are out to change the minds of conservatives. The default conservative position is to disrespect homosexuality, period. The conservative might say to a gay person, "if you just changed XYZ then I would respect you." What kind of requests should the gay person consider reasonable? Possible requests include: "Just don't show public affection with your partner;" "Just don't dress in [whatever way];" "Just don't be sexually attracted to people of your same gender;" "You can be sexually attracted to members of you gender, just don't act on it." Where should the gay person draw the line? Which requests are reasonable and which are not? Seriously, if you're a gay person and someone says they don't respect you, do you respond by changing yourself to suit the preferences of Joe Normal? No, you probably don't.