Alt Religion vs. Alt Lifestyle

All right, this post may make me sound like an un-pc prude. Oh well.

While I was at Pagan Pride Day, I noticed the growing number of booths representing alternative lifestyles. I wonder at the wisdom of creating the perception that the two are intertwined, alternative religion and alternative lifestyle, because they are not and I think linking the two only hampers our (pagan's) acceptance by society.

As open as Hollywood would have us believe America is regarding alt lifestyles, I think the last presidential election paints another picture. The push for gay marriage won the Republicans the election because a lot of moderate or mildly conservative Americans balk at redefining what they see as a societal lynchpin, marriage. They believe that marriage = husband and wife, just like they wouldn't want to redefine father or mother. These are even people who are okay with civil unions because a civil union doesn't try to change something fundamental in society.

Because of this, the Republicans were able to successfully mobilize voters who were more afraid of having to redefine marriage then they were of a war in Iraq.

Back to my original point, every time I see someone proclaim to be a pagan bisexual polygamist cross-dressing dominatrix I mentally flinch... because people will associate all of those things together. I don't go around proclaiming myself to a straight vanilla dress-as-my-own-gender pagan. I think that people need to keep their sexuality out of alt religion as they only damage the religions in the process.

Of course now I'll be labelled as a narrow-minded negative uptight homophobe.

Oh well.