Gay Community Essay Example for Free

Gay Community Essay The gay community or LGBT community is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT supportive people, organizations and subcultures united by common culture and civil rights movements. Furthermore, the remarkable growth of the gay community in recent history has revolutionized our culture and consciousness, creating radically new possibilities for people to â€Å"come out†, and live more openly as homosexuals. Before the early years, homosexuality was a taboo subject. Since then, times have changed and this community is somewhat being accepted. Moreover, this diverse community is constantly expanding, and consists of many types of people. The gay community has gained great attention in arts, entertainment, media, and politics. Most of the people that make up this community each have their own unique style in all different aspects. Consisting of races throughout all aspects of life, the gay community is worldwide. That being said, what makes up the gay community? Within the LGBT communities, there exist identifiable sub-communities, such as the leather community, bear community, chubby community, lesbian community, bisexual community, transgender community, and the drag community. Nevertheless, each one of the sub-communities have there own particular ways and views of there sexuality. In other words, they all stick together. The gay community generally celebrates pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. The term gay pride is used to express the LGBT community’s identity and collective strengths; gay pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. Also, within the gay community some people create there own particular family. These families consist of the mom, dad, children, and so on. They create a bond and they indeed stick together. Other interests within the gay communities include gay nightclubs, pageants, balls, and also lip singing shows. The gay community is frequently associated with certain symbols; especially rainbow or the rainbow flag. The Greek lambda symbols (â€Å"L† for liberation), triangles, ribbons, and gender symbols are also used as gay acceptance symbol. There a many types of flags to represent subdivisions in the gay community but the most commonly recognized one is the rainbow flag. Nevertheless, each color represents a value in the community. Pink represents sexuality, red represents life, orange represents healing, yellow represent the sun, green represents nature, blue represents art, indigo represents harmony, and last but not least, violent represents spirit. As far as language, the gay community have there own slang, just as other slangs like African Americans, Jewish slang, Hispanic slang, or any other slang. Usually one must be in the group to know its slang, but there are many words in gay slang that are known to all of us, such as drag queen, butch, or bull dyke. Other newer gay slan g words used today are fag-hag, which is a straight female who prefers the company of a gay male and dish which means gossip. Communication between gays, what they say opposed to how they say it, is quite unique. For instance, many gay males use alternate â€Å"lady-names†, and masculine female use alternate â€Å"male-names†, both used as a form of address within gay circles. The gay community is continuously growing and has been acknowledged in so many ways. Homosexuality is seemingly more accepted and tolerated in the United States today than decades ago. There are laws in many states that make it a crime to discriminate based on sexual orientation and many communities across the country have gays and lesbians openly serving in important roles. Yet there are many who still oppose homosexuality and many object to it on religious grounds. I do pride this community because I am apart of it. But like the old saying says â€Å"To each is his own†. Everyone has there own opinion.