What difference does it make? Well, a rather big one actually, even if it ought not to.

To quote the writer Jean Genet: “I’m a homosexual… how and why are idle questions. It’s a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green.”

In today’s Western World, rights for gay men and women are at a peak in comparison to history. That often begs the question, often among gays themselves, of “what difference does it nowadays make?”

The fact is, that even today, a distinction throughout society is made. It is not necessarily vicious: in my experience for example, I’ve been fortunate to bypass any serious homophobia. I have a lot to thank to the brave people who started and persisted with the Gay Liberation Movement for that. Nevertheless, even as a kid, I always had an inkling I was different to the hetero status quo, and that is the key point that made a difference – it gave me the gift/curse of an outsider’s perspective that is inherent in belonging to a minority.

In an Alain de Botton video I remember seeing (I’m trying to find the source again and will cite it when I do so), he explained that Japanese thinkers and philosophers often subjected themselves to living on the outskirts of town, literally and metaphorically, for the purpose of obtaining the clarity of an outsider’s perspective.

As someone who has lived in two foreign countries, and travelled to several others, this outsider’s perspective has evoked itself in a cross-cultural form for me. This is a gift in that it allows me to peer into a culture and notice things those within it perhaps don’t (and it results from the good fortune of being able to travel), but it is tinged with the inevitable exclusion from that sense of belonging to the culture that being a foreigner, even an assimilated foreigner, brings with it.

As a homosexual man, any cultural disconnect in my own country is minimal, but that outsider’s perspective intrinsic to me since childhood is ever-strong. And if one questions ‘why LGBT? What have gay and trans people got to do with each other’ – a valid question, as one group is defined by sexual orientation, the other by gender – they can be answered with the commonality to be found: their shared experiences and perspectives as outsiders belonging to minorities, albeit different sorts.

This can lead to questions regarding homosexuals who are prejudiced or bigoted towards other groups, but I will address that in a separate post.

So, even though homosexuality ought to be of no consequence and interest to others, and progress in the West is as good as it’s ever been, there is an historical element incessantly present today that does position us differently, for better or for worse.

As a side-note, I often think that the cause of homophobia had to have been a necessity for a society to procreate in order to ensure survival, and a push against gays due to their counter-productive role in such an endeavour. There would obviously be no evidence left around for such a decision, but it is the one that seems most logical to me, probably taking place many centuries ago and then being embedded into law and religion as time went on. The reality of an overpopulated world as it is today is a recent development, and one that ought to make us gays quite sought after! Even just after WWII, in Australia, a ‘populate or perish’ slogan ran in the media. But that’s just my two cents worth. What do you reckon? Buck up and comment below to let me find out!