Excellent comment.
Disabled people who use wheelchairs don't want to be "the guy in the wheelchair".
The woman with cancer doesn't want to be "the woman with cancer".
People with challenges sometimes say "I am not my disease" -- which I think it a good and positive attitude to take. They are people. That's enough.
But, as you say, modern culture pretty much demands that the homosexual be designated as "the homosexual" in all interactions. He or she can't really be a person. They are busy full-time being "the homosexual". Nobody really want that role.
There is also an excellent comment by a “gay” man at the article who was unwittingly honest and let the cat out of the bag. He said that integration with normal society through “marriage” was actually a stressor because homosexual culture is so inherently different than common culture, and they NEVER feel at home in it.
Harry was openly gay as a teenager when I got to know him but he was a funny guy and did not inflict his homosexuality on his mostlyly straight friends. After he graduated from junior college he went to LA and went the whole route in work and culture, becoming a very successful Men’s Furnishings clerk then manager. Eventually, after several of his friends and many others in the community died of the typical homosexual diseases and syndromes over an inordinately short time- now ennobled as AIDS/HIV he went home to St Pete and opened an antique shop in a strip mall and “retired” from The Life. He says he is too old to change and has no regrets but his advice to young fags (his word) is to go to therapy groups to straighten out before they are hopelessly stuck in an extremely depressing world.
Excellent original point and excellent addendum. Thank you both.