Ok, I know I said I will stay out of this discussion, but I hope people will read this carefully and with the tolerance it deserves.
All good mate and cheers for the respectful question :)
Why it bothers me (noting I've only posted once so it really doesn't bother me greatly, I just wanted to make a small contribution to the discussion) is I see a lot of black and white thinking, and a lot of false claims. Probably the biggest, and why I posted, are that the refusal to actively promote LGBTQIA is a result of not agreeing with gay marriage or gay rights etc. LGBTQIA is so much more than that.
As for my comment about 'not believing in it' I just mean I can't agree with it. I think that a man who thinks he needs surgery to become a woman needs less surgery and more counselling. Now, sadly there's people in this world who will call me a bigot, or that I'm impinging on the rights of people by thinking this. This is not true of course. I'm not campaigning against gender reassignment surgery, if you want to do it, go do it. And I won't discriminate against you for it, or treat you any differently. But don't ask me to agree with it, because I don't. The problem with the tolerance movement is they want to tell me I must agree with it. They have confused tolerance and acceptance with active support.
One of my male friends used to be a woman. We knew each other about 2 years and one day he said I've got something difficult to tell you. I used to be a woman and I changed gender 4 years ago. He asked how I felt about that. I said I didn't think any differently about him. He was my mate before I knew and he'd still be my mate after. I said I don't understand, but I accept. He said he couldn't have asked for more.
I'm not going to wear a jersey or fly a flag shouting "hey men, if you think you should have been born a woman, go get surgery" because I simply don't believe that. But I accept that some people will make that choice but I won't treat them any differently, because they are still people and I respect them and their right to choose.
We don't all have to agree on everything, but we do need to be understanding and accepting. Unfortunately the tolerance movement seems to think we all have to agree on these things, and those that don't are therefore racist or sexist or bigots.
Bonus points for anyone who made it to the end of this LOL
This was an interesting read. Thanks for the sharing. Did you ever ask your friend why they did the gender swap or have any deeper conversation about it? Flying the flag is really only to symbolise that those people are a diverse, but not well understood subculture of people who have traditionally been forced to hide within society. They have always existed and the flag is to represent the positive message that they are now willing and wanted to add their colours to the greater society. It isn't an advertising campaign, just as the aboriginal flag isn't an advertising campaign to become an aboriginal.
Apropos the gender swap surgery, there are several points that need to be addressed with regards to psychology, because this is poorly understood, obviously. First, any surgery requires a surgeon to deem it a viable option for the patient and agree to perform it. Secondly, the first step for the patient is coming out about their particular sexual orientation. This is made infinitely harder when society makes such displays of abject rejection. Third, typically gender dysphoria patients are recommended for psychotherapy before even hormonal treatment would begin, and in Australia it requires first multiple validated instances for this condition to be assigned to the patient. With more awareness of these issues, better guidelines and practices can evolve.
So, before any person can make surgical changes to their body, there is a lot of hurdles to jump over. The issue is the first step is insanely hard in today's society, and many people who "suffer" or rather experience this often are too afraid and so either commit suicide or attempt to self-medicate hormones or travel to unsafe places for unsafe surgeries.
The flag isn't an advertising campaign, it's an awareness campaign that there are people who are already part of the community and by promoting pride in that community it is showing that those people can feel free to begin to understand themselves, even before we can understand them. These campaigns are to show that we, as a community, respect each individual's right to the same human rights that everyone else has, and that is to basically do whatever they want up until the point that their rights impact on the rights of others.
Now the issue in this case is that the religious belief is to NOT give these people these rights, which directly impacts on their individual rights as human beings.
IF somehow, the LGBTQ+ person or community impacted directly on someone else's rights (i.e., raped them or beat them) the community would also be against that. However, under Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance", we should, "in order to maintain a tolerany society, retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance". Which is entirely the issue being made here.
The intolerance being shown through essentially "freedom of speech" is the intolerance that we should, as a society, be intolerant of.
For example, if this whole issue in today's modern society revolved around the Indigenous Jersey, the intolerance could be seen as racism and we are today, as a society, mostly intolerant of racism, and rail at racist language. The same racist language that comes from the belief that another human doesn't deserve the same rights as other humans. If any player today refused to play indigenous round, they would be immediately identified, and it wasn't even long ago that Religious grounds and religious rhetoric was used to dehumanise people of different races (it still happens). We changed that. We can change this too. The difference is that black fellas or mob in Australia couldn't hide their skin colour, people of the LGBTQ+ community are still hiding today. Both communities have suffered severe hardships throughout history, and it is incredibly brave for someone who can hide to finally stand up and be proud of who they are, when once upon a time that could have meant their death.
And this is why I am actually adamantly against marketing campaigns that coopt these brave messages for purely financial gain. It's a disgusting thing to do.