PrideFest - what's the point?

This weekend is the official start of the festival season here in Milwaukee. The first event at the Summerfest grounds is PrideFest. This is a festival that celebrates and promotes the gay and lesbian lifestyles. From the PrideFest website: "Each year, PrideFest energizes the shores of Milwaukee’s lakefront with Wisconsin’s largest celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) culture and community."

A quote from two women partners who attended: "Pride means being proud of who we are, and PrideFest is a place for people to be proud of what's most important to them. We take our family to PrideFest because we want to teach our kids to be proud of themselves and to be proud of our family."

I guess I'm confused. Is this event to teach us (us meaning straights/heterosexuals) awareness and diversity? Can we attend to learn about the transgendered, gay, lesbian, and bisexuals so as we can become more culturally aware? Which should help us learn tolerance and acceptance, right? Or is this something that just promotes families and how to raise children properly? In that case where's the single parent fest? Or the people who never want to have children fest? Aren't they families too?

So why not just call it family fest? I do agree that families come in many shapes and sizes. What is the LGBT community trying to prove? Everyone should be proud of who they are so what makes these people think they are so special? Why do they need an event? I understand the ethnic fests where we learn the cultural differences of other heritages and other countries. ut what am I supposed to learn from this fest?

Don't get me wrong, I don't care about people's sexual orientation. To each his or her own. I have gay friends. Some of them don't like the attention this kind of thing brings. They are proud of who they are and outside of the issue of gay marriage, they find this kind of thing in some ways a little insulting. Not to mention calling too much attention to their sexual orientation and not enough attention to all the other attributes people have. It's like saying, look at me, I am just like you. I can have a successful family just like you. Yes, you can have that. But, no you're not just like me. We're all different. That's what makes us all more interesting.

You don't need a fest to prove you are a good person, a successful person, or part of a happy family. None of us do. We should all celebrate our individuality, even if we're not gay or bisexual.