My spouse and I have been together for 8 years now. We are a married gay couple, yet a lot of people who are close to us do not even know we are gay. It is not because we are embarrassed about it or feel that it is wrong in any way; we just don't like to make people feel uncomfortable.
Most of the time when we are out in public, we are 'friends' or 'roommates'. We will openly talk about our relationship, our marriage, and being gay if it comes up; but we do not go out of our way to push it on people. Surprisingly, it does not come up very often. We often assume that many of the people we spend time with must know that we are a couple, but they don't bring it up, so neither do we. It never seems to cause any issues, and we get along with people just fine.
There are a lot of people out there who are not OK with people being gay. There are a lot of different reasons for it. A lot of it is because of what people are taught, especially from a young age. People are taught homophobia by religion, parents, peers, and many other sources. These beliefs have been ingrained into society for millennium, and people do not abandon long-held beliefs easily.
After spending a part of my life as an 'afraid of going to hell' Christian, I totally get where these people are coming from. There is a 'right' way and 'wrong' way to live your life, and people who are not following the rules are wrong. Accepting someone else's sin can almost be as bad as committing the sin yourself, and the punishment for this could literally be an eternity in hell. Think about that. Some people are subconsciously struggling with a choice between accepting your way of life, and spending an eternity in hell.
That is a large part of why I don't force my belief on others. I understand what being afraid of homosexuality can mean. Even today, there is a small part of me that wonders if I will wake up in hell one day after I die. If others aren't ready to make that leap of faith to accept my way of life - that is totally OK with me.
I feel very strongly though that my spouse and I should be allowed to be a couple, and live our lives the way we want. I just also have a lot of respect for the fact that not everyone feels the same way. It is important for us to find the right balance between the way we want to live our lives, and the way others want to live theirs.
We have gotten in a lot of "discussions" with other LGBT people, who feel very strongly that we need to be more "out". According to them - we are hiding, and not helping other gay people by "fighting for the cause". I strongly disagree with this. In my opinion, we are helping to bring more acceptance to homosexuality by living the way that we do.
Most people's minds are fairly made up. I am fairly sure that a 80 year old conservative woman who lived her whole life as a god fearing Christian is not going to finally see the light and accept gay people because someone shoved their beliefs on her.
On the other hand though, if someone spends 10-15 years getting to know my spouse and me, they will see us as nice respectable people, who were always well mannered and polite. If after all those years, they eventually learn that we are a couple that happened to be gay - well, then maybe they will see that being gay isn't as bad as they thought.
"They were really nice people, and I liked them." .. "If that is what being gay is all about, then maybe it is not that bad after all."
Personally, that is how I choose to live my life as a gay person.