I think we agree, SASless. At least in part.
As I said earlier, being of an older vintage than the other chaps, aspects of the gay pride thing which they may see as harmless fun, I see as bad manners.
Whereas, I might see somebody baring their backside in a beer-soaked rugby club as harmless fun, I regard someone parading bare-@rsed around a city centre where old ladies may be doing their shopping as extremely bad manners. Likewise, I found graphic references to the mechanics of some forms of boudoir gymnastics made here as being in very bad taste, whereas I found other comments like "They like it up 'em Capt Mainwaring" quite witty.
Actually, I've never been one to be over sensitive or to parade anything. Which is why I found it all the more perplexing that the Service felt the need to spend thousands every year employing sad old closet-queens to 'root-out' gay men and women.
The incident related in my last main post finished me and I was disgusted with myself for having taken part in the dismissal of someone else. I therefore decided to join the fight against the ban at the next available opportunity.
Saying 'yes' at a PV interview 3 months later caused the sky to fall in. The rest is history. Sadly not content with my head, a senior homosexual P&SS rat wanted my friends as well. The only way to stop the queerhunt was to come out to my CO. Even after that, one very senior homosexual was still not content and, according to my CO, wanted further investigations to find more.
Stopping it all was then very easy. I merely offered to co-operate but made it plain that naming of names would start at the very top and work downwards. Official interest in finding junior gay officers then rapidly evaporated.
My point? Good-natured banter is one thing. I think after the recent events in Rwanda, Bosnia and even in Louisiana and the earlier events related by Beags, we should all be able to see how thin the veneer of civilisation in the human animal actually is and how quickly and easily it can disintegrate.
It took only six weeks of radio broadcasts denigrating one group of people as cockroaches to kick off the genocide in Rwanda.
It is extremely easy to denigrate an invisible minority, and especially sad when, to maintain their own invisibility, members of that minority persecute each other.
That, SASless is why it is important that people can be 'out', honest and open. Otherwise, the road from hate-filled posts on a message board, to queerhunts and sackings, through beatings, on past imprisonment and right on down the road to
hanging teenage laddies can be a very short road indeed.