I was thinking earlier on that human beings have been on this planet for so long now, too many years to count, but only recently in the last century have people started acknowledging gay people. Surely there have been gay people since the beginning of humankind yet we are only just coming to terms with it as a species, i find it so weird. Why do you think it took hundreds of thousand of years for this ?

ancient greeks and romans embraced gay people and much of modern society is modeled on theirs, it doesn't make sense

Came in here to say this too. The ancient sugar daddies and sugar babies, their impact.

There have been a lot of times in history where gays were accepted. In the 20's, it was becoming more and more acceptable until the stock market crash happened and everything went (and stayed) conservative again.

And like someone else said, it was accepted in ancient times as well. I remember in school a teacher mentioning that men only used to have sex with women to reproduce a long time ago. They had sex with other men for pleasure.

edit: There was also a point where it was becoming more acceptable until the AIDS crisis happened.

it really seems to depend on the society, ultra patriarchal conservative societies are the least accepting in general but not every society is like that or stays like that.

for as long as religion exist it wont be fully accepted sadly!

Religion has been a key factor in how long it has taken for us to be accepted.

It's really pathetic because religion is about as credible as Wikipedia.

Maybe it has something to do with the shift towards globalization and the internet? Suddenly we all have access to each other easily and a stronger sense of community has been developed, furthering the momentum of the equality movement.

Still, a LOT(!!!) more work to be done so never cease being vocal and passionate about your rights.

but why did you word this thread as if we are completely accepted?

we have such a long way to go, decades to go.

society has changed an incredible amount in the last 100 years. less than 50 years ago, black people were openly denied the most basic rights in america. the holocaust was not even 70 years ago.

This is a good point and applies to all prejudice.

The (developed) world is becoming smaller as cultures mix, differences are seen and similarities are understood. It's a lot harder today for ultra conservative people and societies to present their values and traditions as absolute. The younger, internet savvy generations are growing up knowing that contrary to where they live, women are treated equally all over the world, people don't think gays should be sentenced to death, skin colour is a mere aesthetic variation and there are MANY religions/philosophies out there. Pop culture is also aiding this development as we have black artists and female artists, both of which are often promoting tolerance. The blinkers are falling off and once the cats out of the bag, the conservative parents can't put it back in.

Like you say, there's far to go still, but we're moving forward.

It hasn't been long at ALL

It's been pretty quick though, hasn't it? The idea of a person being exclusively with the same sex and getting married to them and potentially starting a family with them seems to be a relatively modern idea. And weren't most of those relationships in ancient times between men and underaged boys? I wouldn't go around using them as some sort of example.

In many indigenous cultures it was acceptable and sometimes even revered, but colonization brought about a lot of imported attitudes that poo pooed the idea.

I was watching an interview with rupaul and he says that gay people have been accepted many times I think through the year and then being completely cast out again and it seems that is true looking to some posts here and he also said that it would be like that again.
when it seems like everything is going bright, the darkness comes back again

I don't really know much. just thought it would be a good comment for the thread

This. Also back in the 20s. Something always happened to stop momentum though. AIDs really did a lot to harm the gay community's name. It was a major shot in the foot.

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