[Liberal Crozier]

My own views on this subject is, of course, coloured by who I am and what I have seen and experienced in sixty years of observation of the LGBT scene.

When I was born, and throughout my youth and my early adulthood, the scientific community considered " homosexuality " as objectively disordered. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual described gayness as abnormal psychosexuality.

Also, at that time, the Criminal Justice system in both the US and Canada considered " homosexual behaviour " as criminal to a serious misdemeanour or felonious level requiring prison terms.

In that same period, it was nearly impossible to purchase, lease or rent a house or apartment without producing a legal marriage certificate or licence.
Heterosexuals were equally discriminated upon on this issue. Please remember that birth certificates in both nations would state clearly whether or not you were " legitimate or illegitimate". Some Churches refused to ordain "bastard" children.

It is also true that from my birth to early adulthood, gay bars were practically underground speakezies where vice cops would entrap onsite. The Mafia and other criminal elements often owned and operated these criminal activities. Gay bathhouses and other such venues were also a good source of criminal business activities. Can't you just hear script from the GODFATHER.......providing the services that the "pessonovante" refuse to allow legally. The nascent gay pornographic industry was supposedly an organised-crime initiated business.

Fast forward to today. We have enlightened laws and psychiatric evaluations. No longer are gay bars opportunities for vice cops to arrest on site for merely engaging in a dating process. Today, the majority of lesbian and gays live lives of quiet desperation working daily in professions or occupations...coupled monogamously or trying to...and even raising children and attending gay-affirming houses of worship. The majority of individuals are not living psychosexually-oriented lives in gay ghettoes.

I suspect that in several generations, the individuals so defined will represent about the same percentage of our community as does the Hugh Heffner, strip club guys whose lives are defined in pursuit of the next vagina.