58
JUNE 17.2011
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It’s about Gay Pride parades. I find them
rather... distasteful. I know a lot o f gay peo
ple, and I like most of them, and I think
they’re normal people and whatnot. But
when I see what’s on display in the Gay
Pride parade, my visceral reaction is, “W hat
freaks. If I had children, I wouldn’t want
those people near them .”
I am a rational person so I grasp that the
sorts o f people who choose to put everything
out there (I don’t mean the fact they are gay,
I mean really inappropriate costumes and
vulgar pantomimes) in the middle o f down
town in broad daylight don’t represent all
homosexuals, but still. If the goal o f the gay
community is to be accepted as mainstream,
those parades are a really bad strategy.
It seems to me that there are at least two
things going on here: first, the overtly sexual
nature o f the celebration, and second, the
perceived agenda of the community. L et’s
take them one at a time.
Some people think we should use legisla
tion, some think lawsuits. Others think pro
tests and picketing and direct action. Still
others think we should do nothing other than
live our lives.
So when it comes to the strategy behind
Pride celebrations, I’m not sure there is
one. They’re now commercial enterprises, run
by for-profit companies. But there is a history
to them. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Sexuality
W hen you have the reaction that you
wouldn’t want your kids near folks in the pa
rade, what is it you’re reacting to? I hear you
saying that it’s not necessarily the gayness. So,
how would you react if it were a parade of
straight people wearing inappropriate cos
tumes and performing vulgar pantomimes in
the middle o f Fourth Avenue, in broad day
light or not? Would you have the same reac
tion? I have a sense you would.
Agenda
1 think that’s important to note. It’s not the
gayness that’s troubling to you, it’s the behav
I know we seem pretty powerful, but there’s ior that you wouldn’t want your kids around,
really no master plan here. The community is the overt sexual behavior (maybe its “deviant”
incredibly diverse, with vastly differing views nature?) that is uncomfortable. Once we’re
on what the desired end result is, and how we there, we can talk about that, and not about
should get there. Some people and organiza the fact that it’s gay.
tions think we should “mainstream,” make
I’ve been to some Pride celebrations where
sure that everyone knows we’re just like every I was shocked at the explicit sexuality, the
one else— that our sexuality doesn’t define us, chaps and banana hammocks. Usually it’s the
and that we’re more than whom we love.
S/M or leather communities that have made
Others believe that sexuality is such a defi me most uneasy. The LGBT community is
nitional piece o f who we are as people that it already considered abnormal, so why flaunt
makes us fundamentally different, and that our most “fringe” elements? I’ll get to that in
the differences in our lives should be celebrat a moment, too.
ed and made visible in every possible way.
I’ve spent a fair amount o f time in other
Pretty much everybody else believes it’s a countries over the last couple of years, and it’s
combination of these things.
been funny to have my friends there tell me
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