Little Hawk,
The reason that the gay folks like to have gay pride events, and why no one seems to think it is important for others to have pride events, is that gay people are perhaps the last class of people being legally descriminated against in the US (and in Canada, too, I think, although you folks seem to be getting the picture a bit quicker than we are).

I am vocal in my opinion that it is bigotry to deny legal rights to gay people if the same rights are given to others. I am not gay, I am not part of any gay organization, I am not particularly strident, and the only agenda I have is that there is a class of people being descriminated against for no good reason. And, as I said when I started this discusssion, most of the reasons that are given don't stand up to even cursory examination. I notice that none of the anti-gay rights folks who have taken part in this conversation have responded to any of those points.

I think it was Ghandi who said something like, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Well, gays were ignored for a long time. Then they were the stuff of bad jokes. Now the bigots are fighting them. Guess what happens next?

Here's an idea: maybe it's not the radical gay lobby that is doing the fighting. Maybe it's the crowd that keeps yelling about stopping the activist judges from legislating from the bench. Maybe the gay folks just want to be treated like everyone else, and all the fighting is being done by the bigots. No, I don't really beleive that, but the point is that if their civil rights weren't being trod on they wouldn't have to be fighting for them.

Another reason it makes a difference to me even though I'm not gay is that the current laws of our country force me, if I want to stay married to my wife, to be part of a priveledged class that enjoys legal benefits which are denied to those around me. I resent that. There is a list somewhere of more than 1000 advantages that are given to married couples by the United States government that non-married couples can't have. And that's just the federal government. The list gets a lot longer if you start adding in state, county, and city governments. The question you might ask is why SHOULDN'T they fight against that sort of descrimination?

John Peekstok