Gender Neutral Pronouns

[kriona.livejournal.com]

I know there are gender neutral pronouns created by the LGBT community, but I'm curious what everybody's opinion is on the trend that is turning plural pronouns into single neutral pronouns. For example: "I went to visit a friend today, they needed some help with their homework" is a sentence anybody would say, while I've noticed ze and hir are generally only to be found in the LGBT community. It's not officially correct, but it seems to have a lot of public acceptance. Thoughts?