Forty years after New York cops cracked gay skulls for no good reason, prejudice hasn't let up

The first time I went scuba diving I managed to get my thumb bitten by a "cute" puffer fish. I saw this dark green goo coming from the bite mark and marvelled at what the creature had left me.

Only when I came out of the water did I recognise the oozing "dark green" stuff to be my own blood, which hadn't appeared red in the filtered light of deep water.

In his remarks commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots last week, US President Barack Obama astutely captured the reason why the even turned out to be a pivotal point for the US gay-rights movement.

"It was at this defining moment that these folks who had been marginalised rose up to challenge not just how the world saw them, but also how they saw themselves."

That pretty much explains why the LGBT-rights movement in Thailand has made little headway over the years, although, like our Western brothers and sisters, we have to endure similar equality-shunning, indifferent governments, social oppression and bigots who twist interpretations of religious teachings to justify their bigotry.

I used to think the lack of overt discrimination in the form of hate crime and state persecution explains the general apathy.

Now I realise that the fight to change how the world sees us must start from how we see ourselves.

And I think one factor plays much more powerfully against LGBT rights in most of Asia than in the West: family expectations and pressure.

No matter how liberated gay and lesbian Thais may seem when they hang out, and no matter how much they hate the prejudices working against them, very few would think of countering their families' expectations.

Living a double life is a much easier way out.

It is this ever-present body of water that constantly suffocates us and distorts how we see ourselves.

Sometimes we even laugh at the injuries inflicted upon us. When you're made to believe you're a fish, you can't even imagine that the full spectrum of light and lungs full of air are things that exist outside your fish tank.