A few weeks ago, I had a post removed for the first time for insinuating that Ann Coulter may or may not be a transsexual. I wrote it in jest and in no way do I think she's anything but a female - a really horrible one, but a woman nonetheless. I am not a PC person at all when it comes to most humour and was raised on '70s National Lampoon mags, so I'm the first to admit that some of my jokes may be offensive to some.
Having the post removed was fair enough. It was a 4-2 split against me and I have no problem with that. The fact that it was deemed "hate speech" did bug me a little and I found it a bit funny as I have a gay sister who luckily enough got married before Prop H8 here in CA, but obviously, nobody here could have had any knowledge of that. In fact, she and her wife adopted an infant back in September 2010 and just last Saturday finally had the baby baptized, having gone through 17 Catholic churches who refused to do it because of their prejudice.
I've known many gay and lesbian people for decades and one thing I've noticed is that most of them have been fairly easy to identify as gay or lesbian by either voice, dress, or (don't kill me here) haircut. In 40 years of being around gay people, I have rarely found one that doesn't have one of these "identifiers" for lack of a better word (many of them have told me i have very good "gaydar" so maybe I'm more attuned to people's outward manner). Obviously, such outward characteristics could easily cause them to be discriminated against in any number of ways and I applaud any efforts to end such childish prejudices, but we live in a pretty childish and intolerant society anyway.
Anyway, my question is this: Why are bisexuals included in the LGBT community? I've only known one person who briefly identified as bi until he realized that he's actually gay. I'm wondering what sort of discrimination bisexual people could possibly encounter because of their sexuality as opposed to the very real problems that gay, lesbian and transgendered people experience daily. My main reasoning here is that how on earth could you determine someone is bi without them actually telling you? I've asked my sister and my gay friends this question and none of them had a clue how to answer this. My personal opinion is that there are probably very few "true" bisexuals out there, just people that may be a bit confused or embarrassed about their sexuality, but that's just my feelings on the subject and I mean no offense to anybody reading this by writing that.
Any thoughts on this? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, just very curious as to how bisexuals came to be included in this grouping. Thanks!
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