Bigotry has led to far more deaths than homosexuality, Endo.

Yawn. Never used any of the fruit company's products, not interested in the company much less their CEO even less his sexual orientation, straight or twisted ... Despite the popularity of the company and their products.

In contrast I am far more interested in company like Aramco, their products, and their CEO Khalid Al Falih, because I use their products everyday. I bet everyone on this forum uses their products, EVERY DAY, although not too many know the company or who Khalid Al Falih is.

@vitaliy your sister argument seems to me to be reductio ad absurdum.

I'm ducking out now. Been good chewing It over with you VK, but some of the posts from others mean I don't want to keep looking at this thread...

I'm pretty certain I can pick the fakes, I have a gay sister, a gay ex son in law ( died 15 years ago from aids) and many genuine gay female friends and a few gay male friends, all are definitely genuine, live a full life and aren't defensive or overplay the fact that they are gay, don't necessarily go to gay meets or bars, they just mingle in general social settings and I've never seen any aggression or resentment from others when in their company. They can and do poke fun at themselves and accept others will too. They also can pick the fakes, but have said it doesn't particularly concern them. They don't approve of other gays making a song and dance about acceptance, special treatment or media hogging.

One of the problems when discussing Gay topics is its usually way to serious, you should be able to have a little fun just like you would discussing Male/Female relationships, " taking the Micky" as we do in OZ.

Imagine the 14 year old gay kid living deep south who has never even HEARD of a successful gay person. Now he has. Mission accomplished by Tim Cook.

Imagine 14 years boy that after story about engineer (and not about some guy who is just gay or some girl who is just stupid bad singer) saw this as good example, worked hard, become engineer by himself and solved some important problem with many other engineers. It is something to be proud of.

Btw, as I understand your guy lived all last 14 years with wolves so he does not heard about "successful gay person"? In such case how he could use this coming? :-)

Maybe it's just the inciting incident to give him the courage to leave kentucky or whatever and move to San Fransisco to finally be the person he feels he is inside. Of course my example was hypothetical, but it's not far fetched in the least.

Well, let's just look at US.

How many coming outs of famous gays you see? Quite many. Some do it for real, others for PR. Anyway.

How many reports about engineers or similar people, telling story of their life you see on major TV channels? Well, could happen not even one in years.

Now, let's look at statistics and consequences in economics and demographics.
What is happening?
Big shit. Lot of imported engineers from China, India, etc Degradation of education in US.
Big number of gays around who can be only proud to be gays and have no use for society.
Degradation of family, big drop in number of children risen in full family.

Personally, I have quite a number of friends that are homosexual (and successful members of society and economy), so your statement falls so short of the reality I see that it's borderline propaganda in my view. And I can't argue propaganda, that's like trying to talk over a fog horn.

Problem is my last post is all but propaganda.
It is just description of reality around you. Reality that bites, reality most do not like to see.

And furthermore: the decline of engineers (and ALL working professionals) coming out of the USA has nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with the education budget getting deferred to military spending. Trying to blame that on a more accepting culture of homosexuality is both laughable and frightening, simultaneously.

Well, you edited post after my answer.

I think you need to read things carefully.
My point being that people who create, who make real work have real value.
People who push only their nation, their color, their sexual orientation as their advantage are meaningless guys.
In fact, people who started fight for rights from below had same point. Your must be treated equally, but only if you made something, worked same hard work. Reality sometimes became quite different.

Well true story here: I have a dear friend whom I grew up with who is totally straight - he was an architect and in the mid 90's after getting out of school he had a hard time finding a job. So he decides to try out this firm with an entirely gay staff. Ok, so he get's hired and feels that he needs to 'act gay' to stay there...so he starts dressing 'gay' for example wearing tight cut off shirts and construction boots and also starts acting a bit effeminate, and whatever. After a couple of weeks he gets fired, as the boss says he acts too openly gay and it will effect the clients perception of them. So aside from being a true and funny story - what do you call this? Reverse gay discrimination? :-)