A week after the Chinese New Year's parade, I was sitting in front of the TV late Sunday night and happened to come across another parade in Sydney, this time the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
This is an annual event in Sydney which attracts tens if not hundreds of thousands of people from Australia and abroad, to either participate in the parade or to simply be a spectator.
Now in terms of comparison, the Margi Gras is all about pride, and interestingly I noticed the same sense of pride amongst the marchers in the Mardi Gras as in the week prior with the Chinese.
Apart from that, I also noticed that the Mardi Gras seemed to have an over-representation of Asian and Chinese marchers, presumably because they were gay.
Now I have often heard amongst Chinese women their belief that many Chinese men are "too feminine", but I have rarely experienced this myself. What I did notice at the Margi Gras however was that almost all the gay asians marching were feminine, as opposed to all other marchers. At least this is how it seemed to me.
I was also surprised at the number of asian lesbians, and how they were also almost all feminine in appearance as well. In contrast amongst other races, there was a visible proportian of butch lesbians as well.
At the end of the day however this was just an interesting little distraction for me that I came across while channel surfing on a Sunday night at home.
However as I was watching, my wife walked into the room.
She first seemed excited thinking it was a reply of the Chinese parade. When I explained what this march was about, her mood changed, and she then began a tirade of commentary, using many profanities that I cannot type on this blog, as an expression of her complete distaste and hatred for this lifestyle.
Knowing my wife as I do I did not enter into a debate with her, but it is a given that she and I have many diametrically opposed social views, and discussion or debate will not change this.
My wife did however make a comment which caught me by surprise, and lead me to ponder how we would both react in the event that our child turned out to be gay one day.
What I found so surprising was my wife's insistenance that if I son was ever gay, that she would never associate with him again, and that she would likely commit suicide.
I responded by saying that given that its her only child, whom she loves more than life itself, that she will probably learn to live with it, as most parents do, for the sake of her child.
Well, I should know better than to engage in these kind of discussions with my wife, and as expected my wife began directing her spitefullness towards me, suggesting that I could be sending sub-concious signals to our son that it is okay to be gay.
She ended the conversation by saying that if our son turned out to be gay, she would be blaming me because she thinks my views are a bad influence on him.
Hmm?!
