I don’t agree. The particular location I refer to had abundant places and venues where gays could meet in anoymity. Instead, they chose risky, sleazy places as though that added to the intrigue.
If you’ve ever seen gay parades in any of the major cities, they do not march responsibly for a cause. In fact, they perform acts of self-abuse that only highlight their self-loathing. I believe they do this because they hate themselves and their lifestyle.
OK, first choosing a risky place to meet over a secure place to meet on the surface is dumb. It is beyond me that people will do that except that perhaps they are getting some kind of thrill or adrenaline rush from flirting with danger.
Second, you are right. I have seen part of one of these parades in New York on two separate occassions. It’s completely over the top and to me, a disservice to the very goals they are trying to achieve.
I once had the opportunity to ask the famous Liberation Theologian Letty Russell, why young black men behaved so “boisterously” for lack of a better term. Her response was interesting. She said, “They are in a form of mourning. They are mourning for all the loss in their community both today and for generations.” Then I asked her, “Yeah but, why do they have to be so in your face with the hooting and hollering and all that?” She replied, “Perhaps they are testing their freedom. Perhaps they are stretching their arms out as wide as they can just to see if they really are free.”
Finally I asked her, “Well how long does this ‘mourning’ go on?” She replied, “All mourning takes as long as it takes.”
I was stupified by these answers. Ms. Russell spent many years as a lone white christian woman serving the South Bronx in the early 1970’s. To me she has walked the path of a saint. She changed my view that day. I don’t pretend to understand the life of a black man or the generations of African Americans in this country but it gave me the sense that perhaps, beneath this bravado and overly confident exterior is an incredible sorrow that has lasted for a very long time and passed from generation to generation.
Perhaps the same is true at these Gay Pride Parades. Perhaps all this “in your face” bravado and provocateurism is a deep sorrow, pain and humiliation, lonliness and deprivation that only a person walking that path would understand. Perhaps they are in mourning...
Beyond that suggestion, I have no argument with your commments.