My original post.
"LGBT have been in the open and thriving much more in parts of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and particularly India than here in the UK. It is only over the last few years there has been a focus on LGBT over here in the UK. I admit there would be your typical religious groups who would be against these people which is no different to any other country."
I am still not sure on what ground a few posters got offended by that post. My personal experiences of LGBT have in most cases been better abroad than in the UK. We have gay bars where I live in the UK and is a constant source of trouble from bigots. I hear all sorts of remarks on the terraces at games. So the experiences I have encountered is what I wrote. I would have thought it was quite obvious this would not be the case in the religious belts (which I wrote) where there is no question of LGBT getting any sort of freedom or be open of their sexual orientation.
Yes, I concede it might not be representative of the wider communities in those countries.
I don't think people are offended by it. It's more outrage than offence. People who live there are telling you, 100%, no LGBT rights in the subcontinent are not better than in the UK. They cite laws, economic and criminal statistics, investigative journalism, and much deeper personal experience. I don't know how you can read that and think that your view is anything other than unrepresentative and misleading.
I don't know how you can read what
@Zlatattack wrote, which is a very nuanced, complicated portrait, and think "yes this is a good situation for a person to be in". He like you can point to some positive examples - celebrities, recent positive discrimination - but he also recognises the many other dark realities, that they're deprived of education and economic opportunities, that it often leads to them down a path of exploitation, and they're viewed by society as cursed.
When you only represent that small sliver of positivity, and ignore all the rest, that's called whitewashing. There's two reasons people do that. They see the full picture, the good and bad, but they only want to represent the good to further a particular agenda. Or they literally only see the good, they have a wall of active ignorance that prevents the bad from getting in. I don't know which one applies here but it leads to the same outcomes, in any case.
Claiming that LGBT communities are thriving implies that their situation is good, it doesn't need any significant changes to improve their quality of life. That is, unequivocally, wrong. It does not apply to the majority of people you're speaking on behalf of. And you don't have the right to speak on behalf of them when your experiences are limited to parties and begging. The fact you think that's a remotely good insight into what their lives are like, whether they're thriving or not, says a lot.
Yes there is lots of bigotry in the UK. There's a lot of work to be done. The fact you don't hear the bigotry in India isn't because it doesn't exist, it's just because you weren't listening in the right places. Just ask the people who live there, and who aren't trying to further an agenda.
somehow only seeing this now