What are you proud of? Your sexuality? Great, Fine, I am too. But why do you need a parade to flaunt it?
Furthermore, why do gay men have to flaunt their shirtless bodies on the pride parade like they are in a Sex Shop or working for Chippendale’s. If you want people to accept you for who you are, you need to accept other’s people’s acceptance of what is decent. I do not want society thinking that gay men are all about leather, lisping, being shirtless and exposing their bodies in tight thongs. Yet they do it, and think that is normal and acceptable. Sorry. Not to me. I want society to accept the gay and lesbian population as regular people who want to accepted into society not due to their sexual preference, but rather to the love that they have for one another. But the whole Pride Festival disproves that. And if you think about it. It is sad.
They go on and on that they want equality and to be taken seriously, but when you have events such as pride looking like a retarded circus orgy, it’s kinda hard to exercise empathy for their cause.
Yeah. Gay pride parade is a turn off for me due to the flamboyance. I don’t see how being naked or wearing S&M gear relates to being gay. I guess it must have started as guys in dresses or other women’s clothing, with rainbows. And then eventually, it progressed to the other stuff.
The final state of “acceptance” would be if we don’t even distinguish between gay and straight people - like you don’t care if your friend is called Bob or Mike. At some point, pride parade elements that could be seen as offensive to some people might become counter productive.
Well, it’s a historical pushback against all the pressure to be in the closet. So instead of being ashamed to be gay, as gay people have been pressured to be for most of history, they take a day to say “I’m not ashamed, and I’m not going to conform to what you want me to be.”. Personally, I’m not into that, but I get where they are coming from.
Is it really so much different from Carnival? For lent, ppeople are going to be denying themselves things, so they do crazy stuff for a day or a week beforehand.
I should add that there are plenty of gay people that simply prefer sex with ye same sex and leave it at that, running lives that are otherwise pretty much the same as everyone else’s. It’s just when there are attacks on the entire gay community, it helps to know who your allies are.
I guess the mainstream doesn’t grasp the concept of “votebank” politics. Gays are a votebank, much like an ethnic group, and promoting pride parades are absolutely integral to strengthening this votebank. Some may see it as pride, I see it as a cynical political calculation.
But how is this any different from race-based demonstrations? 'Why does the entire black community look to Reverend JJ and Louis Farrakhan and the like to be their spokesperson? Why not Thomas Sowell or Colin Powell or somebody? (I don’t know who the “Jesse Jackson” version of the Hispanic or Asian communities are.)
^I tend to stay away from all parades and demonstrations, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Contrast the gay pride parade with a cuban day parade and the million man march. There are obviously similarities between them all, but I see the gay pride parade as much more like a cuban parade than the million man march. The million man march was concerned with public policy and filled with speeches (both in terms of hoping blacks have better outcomes and complaints about existing policies). The pride and cuban parades are more focused on making everyone else aware of their culture, but do not focus so much on political issues beyond recognition, tolerance and understanding.
I understand the historical significance of pushing back against repression. But ultimately, they need to align with normal behavior. Otherwise, they will always be “different”. If there was an annual parade where all red heads parade in S&M gear, I’m pretty sure grandma would not like red heads.
What about Halloween? Sexy Nurse, Sexy Police Girl, Sexy Maid, Sexy Cat, Sexy Vampire, Sexy Star Trek Girl? Does that mean that halloween-goers aren’t aligning with normal behavior? Halloween-goers are always “different” and out there plugging their deviant activity?
I don’t know about the crowds in Brazil attending Carnival, but I’d wager that the vast majority of folks attending Mardi Gras in NOLA have no clue what the celebration was originally all about.
So your point is that what they do is irrelevant, it’s just that they are a known group that is doing it.
Maybe, one day everyone will forget that homosexuals were beaten up regularly just for the fun of it (or imprisoned for their “crimes”), and everyone can just dance around in frilly costumes if they want to. Then it will all be fine!
Louis CK captures my attitude towards this issue almost perfectly (though I’m not into Ewan McGreggor):
BGAChad, I do believe you are talking out of your a$$.
If you don’t understand the difference between a gay pride parade and an annual costume party, then it will be difficult to have a genuine discussion.
Also, is the flamboyancy of a gay pride parade any different from women who throw pink bras into trees at the local park, presumably in the name of “curing breast cancer”? I, for one, do not want to see underwear hanging from the trees where I take my daughter to play on the jungle gym.
Is your complaint about what they wear and how they act? Or is your complaint about who they are and that you can see them at all?
If the former, then yes, the costume comparison is relevant, because it’s straight people doing similar stuff. If the latter, then you’re just a bigot.
Why not? It’s not like it’s partially eaten edible undies or studded leather thongs with strap-ons. Women wear bras, what’s so controversial about that?
Made me think of a funny story. I’m not condoning this story–just telling it.
In college, I had a friend whose dad used to regularly “roll fags”. (His term.) In other words, he would go to a gay bar, get one of them to come out to the parking lot for a little “fun time”, then beat him up (along with his two friends).
The last one they ever did: just as the gay guy got down on his knees, one of the gang hit him over the head with a beer bottle. The gay stood up and said, “If there’s one thing I like more than sckng d!ck, it’s whooping a$$.” And then proceeded to beat the ever-living dog shi+ out of all three of them, right in the parking lot.
And to clarify a point that may be lost on some people: the fact that people dress up for one day in a costume party on Halloween does not mean that that’s how they all (or even most) act normally. Similarly, just because the Pride parade has a bunch of people in leather and in drag, or whatnot, does not mean that that’s how they all (or even most) act normally. You think that being gay means that every night you dress up in latex and leather? No, a lot of gay people’s lives are just as boring as yours and mine can be, and doing wacky stuff is something that they (and we) just do once in a while.
Who was the AFer who was on a bachelor party that ended up at a gay bar where the groom/best man started mouthing off homophobic slurs. Someone bump that thread. Greenie would appreciate it.
In summary, to each their own. Much like black folks back in the civil rights movement, we wanted to be judged by the content of our character. This meant assimilating with the general population.