LGBTQ culture
Elements common to cultures of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people include: Not all LGBTQ people identify with LGBTQ culture; this may be due to geographic distance, unawareness of the subculture's existence, fear of social stigma or a preference for remaining unidentified with sexuality- or gender-based subcultures or communities.
Such LGBT communities organize special events in addition to pride parades celebrating their culture such as the Gay Games and Southern Decadence.
The late 1980s and 1990s saw a resurgence of butch-femme, and influences from punk, grunge, riot grrrl, emo, and hipster subcultures.
In the heterocentric Marilyn Monroe film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a musical number features Jane Russell singing "Anyone Here for Love" in a gym while muscled men dance around her.
[14] After the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City was covered on the mainstream news channels, showing images of gay men rioting in the streets, gay male culture among the working classes, people of color, street people, radical political activists and hippies became more visible to mainstream America.
On June 28, 1970, the first Christopher Street Liberation Day was held, marking the beginning of annual Gay Pride marches.
In this first volume of a trilogy, White writes as a young homophilic narrator growing up with a corrupt and remote father.
American female celebrities such as Liza Minnelli, Jane Fonda, and Bette Midler spent a significant amount of their social time with urban gay men (who were now popularly viewed as sophisticated and stylish by the jet set), and more male celebrities (such as Andy Warhol) were open about their relationships.
Such openness was still limited to the largest and most progressive urban areas (such as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans), however, until AIDS forced several popular celebrities out of the closet due to their illness with what was known at first as the "gay cancer".
[18] Research by Colleen Hoff of 566 gay male couples from the San Francisco Bay Area funded by the National Institute of Mental Health found that 45 percent were in monogamous relationships, however it did not use a representative sample.
Gay actor Neil Patrick Harris has remarked, "I'm a big proponent of monogamous relationships regardless of sexuality, and I'm proud of how the nation is steering toward that.
An Australian study conducted by Roffee and Waling in 2016 discovered how some gay men felt like they were expected to be hyper-sexual.
Smaller, more densely connected websites concentrating on social networking without a focus on sexual contact have been established.
The stripes overlap in the central fifth of the flag to form a deep shade of lavender (or purple), representing attraction anywhere along the gender spectrum.
There are also transgender people that try to challenge Western traditional beliefs in gender roles and sexual differences within relationships.
[37] The movement exists in many countries and focuses on festivals and parades, enabling many LGBTQ+ youth to network, communicate, and celebrate their gender and sexual identities.
[44] A suicide-prevention helpline for LGBT youth is part of The Trevor Project, established by the filmmakers after the 1998 HBO telecast of the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor; Daniel Radcliffe donated a large sum to the group, and has appeared in its public service announcements condemning homophobia.
[37][46] In 1997 the nonprofit Youth Pride Alliance, a coalition of 25 youth-support and advocacy groups, was founded to hold an annual youth-pride event in Washington, D.C.;[47] Candace Gingrich was a speaker the following year.
[52] In 2005, Decatur (Georgia) Youth Pride participated in a counter-demonstration against Westboro Baptist Church (led by church head Fred Phelps' daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper), who were "greeting students and faculty as they arrived with words such as 'God hates fag enablers' and 'Thank God for 9/11'" at ten locations.
"[56] According to a 2007 report, "Of the estimated 1.6 million homeless American youth, between 20 and 40 percent identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender".
Many of the transgender youth that are placed in homeless shelters do not get the type of help they need and often experience discrimination and systemic barriers that include sex-segregated programs in institutional practices that refuse to understand their gender.
Many transgender youths have problems acquiring shelters because of certain policies like binary gender rules, dress codes, and room assignments (Thaler et al., 2009).
Problems with classification happen when the procedures or policies of a shelter require the youth to be segregated based on their assigned sex rather than what they classify themselves as.
Some, like Michael Musto, view the culture as conforming to caricatures or stereotypes that alienate "fringe" members of the community.
[citation needed] Another problem is that bisexual and transsexual/transgender individuals experience social pressure to identify as gay or lesbian, and may face ostracism and discrimination from the mainstream LGBTQ+ culture.
New York University School of Law professor Kenji Yoshino has written, "Gays de-legitimatize bisexuals...the lesbian and gay community abounds with negative images of bisexuals as fence-sitters, traitors, cop-outs, closet cases, people whose primary goal in life is to retain 'heterosexual privilege'".
[66] Criticism has been made that the LGBT community represents an artificial separation, rather than one based on tangible customs or ethnic identification.
Some believe that the LGBT-community concept is alienating; the term itself implies estrangement from straight people as a separate group.
[68] Yuvraj Joshi argues that efforts to legalize same-sex marriage have emphasized the sameness of gay people to heterosexuals, while privatizing their queer differences.
[69] British journalist Mark Simpson's 1996 book, Anti-Gay, describes forms of intolerance by the mainstream gay community towards subgroups.
