For those of you who don't know which I'd imagine is most of you, I'm gay. I am shockingly, mind-blowingly, unbelievably gay. I have naked man dick on my mind every single waking hour. However, because I don't go around lisping and lilting and generally acting like a limp-wristed idiot, people have no idea. I don't actively hide the fact that I'm gay, but I don't know how to breach the whole "Oh, you're part of the half of the population I think about when I masturbate" thing when it comes up.  I don't understand the girls who style their hair and their voices to look like 13-year-old boys and the guys who wear super-tight skinny jeans and talk like their tongue is paralyzed and all the people who go up on parade floats and wave rainbow banners and make out wearing just enough leather to cover their giblets. If you do, then please enlighten me because I have an anthropological interest in people who are in the same subgroup as me but are completely batshit insane.

Must there be some special explanation?

This may come as a surprise to you, but we straight people are also quite different from each other. Why would all gay people be alike?

I think it's a psychological event.  When people see and feel themselves as being pushed against by everything around them, oppressed if you will, we have a tendency to burst out and push full force against that which is pushing us.  "Gay pride" is just a lot of people in the gay community's way of doing just that.

Yes, the uber-gay dudes are weird. I know quite a few gay men (and a couple women), but only one of them is like this. He's a bit of a tool. I don't think gay pride is necessarily something that only applies to them, per se. I mean, you can be proud to be anything, if you want. But obviously you don't.

The Gay Pride movement evolved as a reaction to the need to repress their homosexuality in their day-to-day lives. Gay men are, often times, a bit more feminine than straight men, and this got exaggerated. 

There's a difference between gay pride and hard gay. A lot of people are "proud" because its still largely a social taboo, as is evident by the current civil rights violating marriage exception. Just like the Black Panthers had to be extra black to get their point across, you gotta go hardcore. Rainbow panthers.

" Yes, the uber-gay dudes are weird. I know quite a few gya men (and a couple women), but only one of them is like this. He's a bit of a tool. I don't think gay pride is necessarily something that only applies to them, per se. I mean, you can be proud to be anything, if you want. But obviously you don't. "

 I don't understand the girls who style their hair and their voices to look like 13-year-old boys and the guys who wear super-tight skinny jeans and talk like their tongue is paralyzed and all the people who go up on parade floats and wave rainbow banners and make out wearing just enough leather to cover their giblets.   

I have straight pride and I express it by not yelling at people about it.

To me, Gay Pride has always been nothing but ammunition for people made uncomfortable by gays. All that parading around (no pun intended) has probably done more damage than good in terms of the public's views of gays.

i think we're in the same boat, I’ve not gone to any LGBT meetings at college or anything and I’m not really the parade kind of gay.

 
As for telling people, I try not to be all up in peoples faces with it, just when someone talks about relationships or stuff which is bound to happen just slip it in.

Also I’ve only used the “when you say that’s so gay do you realise what you say?”  line ironically.  
  
i think the population of gays on GB has exploded.    

I don't really get it myself.  I guess they are just trying to identify with a subculture. 

"i think we're in the same boat, I’ve not gone to any LGBT meetings at college or anything and I’m not really the parade kind of gay."  

Being camp isn't as obnoxious as being a dick.

I think the difference between you and "proud" gays is that you're not an asshole. I have no problem with gay people, but I have a problem with overbearingly gay people. Anybody, gay or straight, that has to flaunt his or her sexuality to get attention just annoy me.

" I think the difference between you and "proud" gays is that you're not an asshole. I have no problem with gay people, but I have a problem with overbearingly gay people. Anybody, gay or straight, that has to flaunt his or her sexuality to get attention just annoy me. "

there are normal gay people and annoying gay people. 
 
thanks for being the former.

I've been a TLC (Think community volunteer counselor) at my state's LGBT celebreation for 5 years running, since I was 15 years old. I wear a rainbow armband, like the other TLC's do, to signify that you can come to me, I am at your disposal. If you're LGBT, or a supporter, or just someone who happens to be there, and happens to want to talk about the going-on's in their life, I'm there for you.
 
I spend those three days talking to transgendered teenagers, struggling through High School and consider suicide. I spend them with closeted adults, married and afraid of hurting their children. I spend them with flamboyant gay men who want all the attention in the world, and lesbians who vehemently oppose those men and everything they stand for. I spend it with LGBT supporters who catch flak from their straight friends. 
 
My point is, anyone who has the power to look all of that adversity in the face, not only surviving but being proud of who they are, is a beautiful creature, and I love them for it. They have Gay Pride, and I'm proud of them.

" I've been a TLC (Think community volunteer counselor) at my state's LGBT celebreation for 5 years running, since I was 15 years old. I wear a rainbow armband, like the other TLC's do, to signify that you can come to me, I am at your disposal. If you're LGBT, or a supporter, or just someone who happens to be there, and happens to want to talk about the going-on's in their life, I'm there for you.  I spend those three days talking to transgendered teenagers, struggling through High School and consider suicide. I spend them with closeted adults, married and afraid of hurting their children. I spend them with flamboyant gay men who want all the attention in the world, and lesbians who vehemently oppose those men and everything they stand for. I spend it with LGBT supporters who catch flak from their straight friends.   My point is, anyone who has the power to look all of that adversity in the face, not only surviving but being proud of who they are, is a beautiful creature, and I love them for it. They have Gay Pride, and I'm proud of them. "

If you are a gay, you like rainbows and want to go on a parade.  So I toss them beeds cause I want to have fun too.
 
I honestly dunno, never understood it either.  
 
I would like an Arab Pride but we'd just get shot to death from all the white Americans who think we're too "hostile".

There has been a lot of discrimination against homosexuals in the past and still today. I'm not gay, so I can't help you understand this, but from what I understand, it's similar to black pride and why they do what they do.

Get ready for a mind explosion, guys.  Here's the explanation of gay pride:
 
It's pride... 
 
...in being gay.

" For those of you who don't know which I'd imagine is most of you, I'm gay. I am shockingly, mind-blowingly, unbelievably gay. I have naked man dick on my mind every single waking hour. However, because I don't go around lisping and lilting and generally acting like a limp-wristed idiot, people have no idea. I don't actively hide the fact that I'm gay, but I don't know how to breach the whole "Oh, you're part of the half of the population I think about when I masturbate" thing when it comes up.  I don't understand the girls who style their hair and their voices to look like 13-year-old boys and the guys who wear super-tight skinny jeans and talk like their tongue is paralyzed and all the people who go up on parade floats and wave rainbow banners and make out wearing just enough leather to cover their giblets. If you do, then please enlighten me because I have an anthropological interest in people who are in the same subgroup as me but are completely batshit insane. "

Well I don't belong to your particular subgroup but I can answer this pretty easily, 
Disregarding a persons age, race, nationality or any other factors some people are just "completely batshit insane."  
You see us straight people have attention whores too, And that's really all that's going on with these people.  They like attention and flaunting their cocklove is their way of getting it.
 
This sums it up pretty nicely 
@DevWil said:

" there are normal gay people and annoying gay people.  thanks for being the former. "

" Get ready for a mind explosion, guys.  Here's the explanation of gay pride: It's pride...  ...in being gay. "

" For those of you who don't know which I'd imagine is most of you, I'm gay. I am shockingly, mind-blowingly, unbelievably gay. I have naked man dick on my mind every single waking hour. However, because I don't go around lisping and lilting and generally acting like a limp-wristed idiot, people have no idea. I don't actively hide the fact that I'm gay, but I don't know how to breach the whole "Oh, you're part of the half of the population I think about when I masturbate" thing when it comes up.  I don't understand the girls who style their hair and their voices to look like 13-year-old boys and the guys who wear super-tight skinny jeans and talk like their tongue is paralyzed and all the people who go up on parade floats and wave rainbow banners and make out wearing just enough leather to cover their giblets. If you do, then please enlighten me because I have an anthropological interest in people who are in the same subgroup as me but are completely batshit insane. "

I never understood the gay pride parade things. I understand that they are proud of being gay and I have no problem with that. However I do think gay people who flaunt their highly sexual nature in front of everyone are just as douchy as straight people who do the same thing. It sucks that some people feel so opressed that they resort to considering suicide, but this hyper-sexualized gay pride parade is not helping anyone. In fact it creates a stereotype that all gay people lead hypersexual carefree lifestyles and do nothing but party and have sex. If I was gay and wanting to come out these are the kinds of stereotypes that I would imagine I would not want placed on me.

Gay Pride is where a bunch of dudes dress up as fairies and then act like complete and total deviant douchebags, in an effort to make it more difficult to convince people who don't like homosexuals that homosexuals are normal and worthy of respect. 

" It's kind of like wondering why all the black high school students call each other "nigga" every other second. After a while, you take the thing that the other side has used to beat you down with, and you turn it into a culture. "

" @mazik765:  @Pinworm45:   I think you both have the wrong impression of homosexuality. I get the impression that you guys look at homosexuality, and you see sex. No convention I've ever been to had men bending each other over the cafeteria tables. Were men there, holding hands and kissing? Sure. Were women there, flirting and giggling with each other? Sure. That's not sex, that's what the average person does.  Homosexuality is about intimate relations with the same gender, not anonymous gay sex. "

" I never understood the gay pride parade things. I understand that they are proud of being gay and I have no problem with that. However I do think gay people who flaunt their highly sexual nature in front of everyone are just as douchy as straight people who do the same thing. It sucks that some people feel so opressed that they resort to considering suicide, but this hyper-sexualized gay pride parade is not helping anyone. In fact it creates a stereotype that all gay people lead hypersexual carefree lifestyles and do nothing but party and have sex. If I was gay and wanting to come out these are the kinds of stereotypes that I would imagine I would not want placed on me. "

Why is it that you can be proud to be black, but you can't be proud to be white?

I don't get your whole tight pants thing i wear tight pants because they are more comfortable to me, and i am not gay.

" @Pinworm45:  Gay Pride has nothing to do with "dressing up like a bunch of fairies" or "acting like a bunch of deviant douchebags". Somehow people hear the expression Gay Pride and picture parades with drag queens and rainbow boas and floats with men in short-shorts. That's just not the case. "

" @Bloviator:  Let's be fair, the 80's was a different time.  "

They just want to have an identity. Fueling that identity is the notion of wanting to be different.

" For those of you who don't know which I'd imagine is most of you, I'm gay. I am shockingly, mind-blowingly, unbelievably gay. I have naked man dick on my mind every single waking hour. However, because I don't go around lisping and lilting and generally acting like a limp-wristed idiot, people have no idea. I don't actively hide the fact that I'm gay, but I don't know how to breach the whole "Oh, you're part of the half of the population I think about when I masturbate" thing when it comes up.  I don't understand the girls who style their hair and their voices to look like 13-year-old boys and the guys who wear super-tight skinny jeans and talk like their tongue is paralyzed and all the people who go up on parade floats and wave rainbow banners and make out wearing just enough leather to cover their giblets. If you do, then please enlighten me because I have an anthropological interest in people who are in the same subgroup as me but are completely batshit insane. "

I'm a bisexual furry and I don't go around flaunting it. People who do it are just asking for trouble.

I have to assume that you haven't been to a gay pride parade before.  You have the same narrow view as most here seem to.  There is a hell of a lot more than blokes in thongs and dykes on bikes to them.
 
I've been to a few (though I'm entirely gynosexual) and they're quite diverse.  For every disco drag queen, there are many average looking people just walking around, talking, and having a good time.  There's not much sexuality involved at all.  People are citing rainbows, costumes, dancing, etc. as if they had anything to do with sex.  It's also worth noting that, in recent times, gay pride events are less aimed at making a statement to the heterosexual community.  They're increasingly designed for homosexuals; so they can get together with peers and have fun.  They're not much different than any other festival or parade.
 
Someone brought up 4th of July parades, and they're a great analogy.  You see pictures of all sorts of assholes in gaudy flag pants, covered in pins and buttons, looking as tacky as possible.  The face-painted uber-patriot shit-heels are certainly present, but most people are just out for a nice diversion.  Gay pride events are much the same.  A few obnoxious attention-getters and a lot of normal people having fun.
 
As for being effeminate, it's a mixed bag.  Seemingly cross-gendered behavior comes naturally with homosexuality.  We're all conditioned with gender roles, and most of us conform to various degrees.  Boys are taught to act like "men," and girls are taught to act like "women."  As there is a spectrum of natural behavior, there are many people who speak, walk, or make gestures in a way that doesn't fit their assigned gender role, and they adjust to normalize.  Being gay inherently forces one to reconsider gender roles, and this confrontation makes them more likely to eschew the status quo in favor of their natural tendencies.  There are certainly heterosexuals that do this as well, but they're few and far between.  At some point, they considered gender roles critically and made their choices.  Homosexuals are forced to do this, so there's a significantly higher occurrence.  Factor in that homosexuality is a sub-culture, and it's easy to see how such behavior spreads.  In any subculture, people develop similar behavioral patterns.  Metal heads, rap fans, computer geeks, etc. often share mannerisms.  Odds are that many of your gestures and habits are a product of your cultural surroundings.