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The New York Historical Society is opening an exhibit on Cherry Grove, a secluded beach where people in the gay and lesbian community could openly be themselves long before it was otherwise accepted in society. The exhibit will include over 70 enlarged photographs taken in the 50s that "explores the gay and lesbian community that flourished during the 1950s in Cherry Grove", some of which you can see at the link. There'll also apparently be some additional material from the Cherry Grove Archives Collection.

This was a time when being openly LGBTQ+ was not only deeply looked down on, but in most places was criminal. Trying to meet or hookup with someone of the same sex for romance or sex could get you arrested by an undercover officer for sodomy, exposed in the local newspaper, fired from your job, and disowned by your family...in short, it could destroy your life. But even then, there were places where people could be themselves openly, and seeing how happy many of the people are in the photos on the website...I can't imagine how freeing it must have been for them to have a place like that in that time. I imagine the full exhibit will be even more awesome if anyone is in that area.

and now society rewards homosexuality!

@Anthony (XXURBANXX): Rewards? Please elaborate.

this, i believe, falls under a "Political" post, but i don't know how else to directly reply so... yeah.


oh... i meant "encourages". out of personal experience, some people tend to view you as unique if your homo [or anything other than hetero for that matter], or just ordinary if your not. especially in sites such as twitter and reddit [sites which often bring the best and worst out of people]. i view people like such as unique as well, 
and some of the not as nice people treat people who are LGBT better than those who aren't. 

have you ever seen the Nickelodeon LGBTQ+ ad? such is one example.

this can create a sense of reward in it and make people who are straight want to call themselves gay even if they aren't to be treated better than everybody else.
it's a successful move especially amongst teenagers. i've seen people be put own because they are gay, and because they are straight. i've been put down for being straight. there's no avoiding toxicity sometimes. that is my point. 

THIS IS ALL PERSONAL OPINION.

This may be my own personal experience, but coming from the scope of someone who has been shown nothing but straight couples on TV growing up, heard nothing but how the "perfect" family is a husband and wife and kids growing up, seeing nothing but heterosexual romances in the media (games, movies, books, shows) and constantly being encouraged all around to find specifically a girlfriend (not "someone you love/really like, but always spefically a girl that I really love/like), and not even knowing what a homosexual was until high school because of all of those thrown at me (and how kids who showed any "sign" of being gay was bullied/made a mockery), I'd say what we see now is really no different than when all of that was the norm all the way up to the early to mid 2000s...and in some ways still gets pushed as the only "norm" by people especially in certain religious circles.

In other words, it's not so much encouraging anything as better, but just trying to make it normal like it should have been in the first place.  Telling kids and adults that it's more okay to love who you want, be who you want, and not to be ashamed of what you feel or marry who your heart points you to, rather than what a specific societal group of people force on you.

Being a heterosexual is no less valid nor any less accepted than it has always been.  It's just that now homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, Asexuality, and really most of the orientations (minus Pedophilia and Beastiality, which are still and hopefully will always be condemned) along with being transgender are starting to finally become more and more on the equal playing field as far as validity goes.  If straight people are jumping on that and "acting" gay for attention, then shame on them because they're part of the problem as to why the LGBT+ has hurdles in the first place...because of people "pretending" and then suddenly they arent anymore as if they were magically cured of their "choice."

And if you (not you specifically, just anyone reading this that might fall into this) are pretending and aren't genuinely LGBTQ+ or genuinely curious (since orientation curiosity is also valid), then I kindly ask you to stop.  I don't pretend to be straight unless it's a small rural town of close minded types that would shoot you dead for being gay or even effiminate in any way, so unless the tables somehow turn and you find yourself in a legitimately oppressive gay community where you could be killed for being straight, then please stop pretending to be gay, it's not cool.

But yeah, after my own experiences growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, what we have now is no different than when Heterosexuality was the dominant and all assuming topic.  But now we're just encouraging the idea that other orientations are just as valid and accepted (again, for the most part)...at least in the US (though even the US still problematic areas), since some places such as Chechnya and I believe some Middle Eastern countries will absolutely kill you if you're anything other than a perfect heterosexual.