I was sitting at a bar the other day with a friend and they were showing the Tour de France on the big screen. I looked around the bar and there was this older couple who were watching the tour with a complete expression of confusion on their face, so being a road cyclist I decided to go over and try to answer their questions. We covered everything from what is the yellow jersey for to why are all of these motorcycles to cars following the race to how do you qualify to ride in the tour to the complete shocker am I going to race it next year. I say complete shocker because although I am not in great shape I also am very obviously not to the level of a professional cyclist.
After this 45 minute conversation and turning down several offers of a drink the couple left and thanked me for explaining everything to them. By the time they left they were using terms like peloton and breakaway and a lot of the other cycling lingo. They expressed a much deeper understanding of cycling when they left.
This conversation made me realize that gays and cyclists are a lot alike. A significant portion of the population hates us and thinks we should have no rights or what we do should be illegal. We are both trying to expand our rights and better educate the public. So what can the cycling movement learn from the gay rights movement and what can the gay rights movement learn from the cycling movement?
One of the major things we cyclists are trying to do is make everyone feel safer cycling on a road. We are doing this by working to add bicycle infrastructure such as bike lanes and working to implement 3 foot laws where cars must give a cyclist at least 3 feet of clearance. The more bikes on the road the more cars are going to expect them and respect them. This effort is having an impact. So how can the gay community make closeted gays feel safer when coming out of the closet? The big fear with coming out of the closet is rejection where in bicycling it is getting hit by a car. Both will happen, but how can we reduce the risk?
On the other hand the gay community is waging a very high profile and very public effort to pass laws. While the cycling community is trying to pass laws to help protect cyclists it does not seem that it is being done in the high profile public manner the gay community is using. Would the cycling community benefit by taking the gay communities example and becoming more public and a PR machine or are the cyclists having better luck and the gay community would be better served by toning it down some?
What other lessons could these two very hated groups learn from each other in their campaigns to improve their way of life?