Hacker News Reader

Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

Articles like this remind me of how far we have come in a relatively short time. From a world where gay people had to invent a secret language to afford them some sense of security in a harsh world, to a world where gay people have significantly more rights is a wonderful development. Good job to everyone who fought to make this change a reality...

View on HN

"to a world where gay people have significantly more rights is a wonderful development"

You are being too optimistic. Gays have more rights in some (mostly western) countries, it's not even close to the whole world. Meanwhile in Chechnya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_concentration_camps_in_Che... and I'm not even talking about some Islamic countries where gay people are being killed on the spot.

This was an extreme, but all subcultures have their own hermetic languages. Local slangs and expressions that get popularized inside of a group, almost meaningless to any outsider.

Ye fam! That soz was proper peak, blud.

I find myself using != in skype chats with coworkers.

Some other subcultures would use <>

Indeed, and imagine how quickly we could regress under the wrong regime (see Iran, Iraq and Somalia for examples), a generation or two is all it could take.

Recently a man in UK was jailed because he repeatedly raped his daughter. She had told him she was lesbian, and he reportedly wanted to rape it out of her.

People in UK still face higher rates of violent crime; there's still discrimination at work; there's only very recently been legal parity; there are increased rates of death by suicide.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/corrective-rape-women-re...

> This week a father was jailed for 21 years for sexual offences including the long-term sexual abuse of his two daughters. The abuse of his younger daughter began when she confided in him that she might be a lesbian. It is reported that the father decided to rape his daughter to “prove” that sex with men was “better”.

> For those of us who work with asylum-seeking women, this story of the rape of a lesbian or bisexual woman is all too familiar. “Corrective rape”, as it is chillingly known, is a common experience for women in countries where homosexuality is illegal or culturally disapproved of.

> No wonder such women seek asylum in the UK, a country which in some ways flies the gay flag with pride, allowing same-sex marriage and protecting LGBT people with laws prohibiting discrimination. However, rather than being protected and given sanctuary when they arrive in the UK, so many of these women end up locked up indefinitely in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire

You can point few examples for any horrid behavior. Saying things are not clearly much better is silly.

The PM of Ireland is openly gay.

"A world", for some restricted local definitions of "world". Even in countries which ostensibly recognize the equality of same-sex couples and the rights of those couples, violence, variable access to justice and a variety of other issues still remain.

A _world_ is probably a stretch. Note elsewhere on thread it's mentioned that Turkey has a similar language, and it's still very active.

Or maybe it shows how little progress we've made. In other words, we're deluding ourselves with an illusion of progress.

What does it mean when Obama flipped his view (evolved) in 2012? And, every serious 2008 POTUS candidate was against gay marriage.

So today we have broad support for gay marriage. Great -- certainly good news for my mainstream gay friends and cowoerkers (and by extension, for me).

But is that real progress? Or have we simply said something like, "your lifestyle is fine, as long as it looks a lot like our established mainstream lifestyle."

We pat ourselves on the back for accepting gays. How many coworkers do you have with facial tattoos? How many cross dressing coworkers? How many coworkers who are proud and open about being swingers, or nudists?

Significantly more rights than who? Christians?

Clearly they meant significantly more rights than they used to have

Your point?

Than they themselves did in the past.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com