Look at it this way: do we need families? Do you sit around the Thanksgiving table with your parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins worrying that you're cutting yourself off from the rest of the world by being part of this family? I know I don't.
Do we need coats of arms or family mottoes? Do we need family reunions? It's the same thing as flags and parades.
Do we need neighborhoods? Do we need cities, states, countries? These are all communities. Families are usually based in blood and/or in common history; neighborhoods and cities and states and countries are based in proximity. But we belong to these communities whether we like it or not. We may not be active members of those communities, we may not agree with their leaders or spokesmen, we may wish to change our communities. But we never leave them behind, they're always there, and we're always part of them.
All of us come from a family, a neighborhood, a city, a state, a country; even if we've physically left the communities of our origins, we retain the patterns they've set on us, and they are added to rather than replaced by the communities we become part of as a matter of choice. No matter where we go or what we do, we still have those communities in our past, and our present, they have shaped who we are.
We don't cease to be a part of those communities because someone on the outside judges us by them, do we? I mean, am I going to stop being an American because the French supposedly don't like us? Am I going to stop being a Californian because the governor deigns to speak for me without seeking my opinion? Am I going to stop being a Manners because I disagree with how my sister lives her life?
Hardly.
I didn't choose to be homosexual, just like I didn't choose to be born in this family, this neighborhood, this city, this state, this country. I do choose to embrace my sexuality, my family, my neighborhood, my city, my state, my country because they are part of me and I don't wish to run from who I am. I like who and what I am.
I didn't choose to be part of the gay community any more than I chose to be part of my family; but I did choose to be an active and positive member of both of those communities instead of a bitter sideliner bitching and moaning about how the communities aren't catering to my wishes.
If you're gay, ipso facto you're a member of the community, like it or not... you have to choose whether to be an active member for the common good or to be a sideliner who contributes nothing... or a deserter who seeks another community altogether and pretends to have never been part of your own origins. That's all up to you.
But you're one of us, nevertheless.
I couldn't (and didn't) have said it better myself.