Sorry to disappoint you, parents - but when your kids come out as gay, bi or transgender, it is not about you.

The simple truth of the matter is that people who complain about a peaceful parade which lasts at best one hour in a particular place - ONCE in a whole year - do so out of hatred and intolerance. it isn't just the parade, it is seeing gay and trans people in public - and gay and trans people BEING gay and trans in public. And that is the root of the problem - they HATE gay and trans people.

If all people were to be judged by 'right and wrong', nobody would be wholly right or wholly wrong - for have not all people 'sinned and fallen from the glory of God'? It seems more than a little unfair that some folks with at least as much 'sin' themselves as any gay or trans person, like to jump up and down and point fingers at other people.

Being called gay is not an insult – but the idea that some people think of it as an insult, is.

Being gay is not a mental illness – but homophobia directed at gay people can cause psychological harm to the gay person. It is therefore not the gay person who needs psychiatric intervention for being gay – it is homophobes who need help in dealing with their bigotry and prejudices.

They set about making people so unhappy and isolated and when they crawl into a hole and pull it in after them, they have the nerve to call homosexuality a 'suicidal lifestyle'. And yet they do this - and deny that any gay or trans person could ever be a 'true' Christian. As if THEY are.

I fail to see how somebody can hate me for 'what I do' and what I am without actually hating me as a person. That makes about as much sense as throwing the baby out with the bathwater - or gay man out the church door with his homosexuality.

Isn't it interesting how nationalistic attitudes foster the notion that being gay is 'un-(fill in your nationality/ religion/ culture here)'?

Rejecting your gay or transgender child won't make them straight. It will only mean you will lose them.