Posted on 06/15/2002 8:31:26 AM PDT by msuMD
FERNDALE - A parade where at least 200 people are expected to display pride in their heterosexuality is set to roll along Nine Mile on Sunday. The City Council on Monday approved a request from talk radio station WKRK-FM 97.1 to conduct the parade, which runs from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. from Paxton to City Hall.
The council unanimously approved the radio station's request although one city official expressed some misgivings.
"I'm somewhat skeptical," said Councilman Dave Lennon, "that Ferndale may be used as a stage for a cheap publicity stunt."
Joel Morgan, promotions director for the station, explained that the idea for a "Straight Pride" parade came after callers to the "Kramer and Twitch" show expressed a desire for such an event in the weeks leading up to the Motor City Pride Festival for gays and lesbians in Ferndale on June 2.
Lennon said he hoped the straight pride parade is not being held as a way to mock the annual gay festival, which is hosted by Triangle Foundation of Detroit and is the largest such event in the state.
Morgan said the station wants to make the straight parade an annual event.
"We thought Ferndale would be a place to start," he said. "We are looking to expand Ferndale's reputation as a diverse community. We are (by) no means harassing or assaulting members of the gay community."
A co-producer of the "Kramer and Twitch" show, Steve Green, told city officials he is gay and wholeheartedly supports the straight parade.
A spokesman for Triangle Foundation, a gay advocacy group, last week decried the straight pride parade.
"It mocks the gay community," said Sean Kosofsky, adding that such a parade is akin to celebrating white pride.
But openly gay Councilman Craig Covey said he doesn't see the straight parade as opposing or mocking.
"This parade is actually complementary" to the gay pride festival, Covey said. "Were talking about pride and being proud of who we are."
Resident Sean Drate told the council that the parade sounds like a stunt with questionable intentions, but quipped that many of his good friends are straight.
"My sisters are straight and I love them anyway," Drate said, tongue-in-cheek, adding that a parade for heterosexual pride may help such people "feel less ashamed of themselves" afterward.
Staff writer Michael P. McConnell can be reached via e-mail at mike.mcconnell@dailytribune.com or by phone at 591-2571.
June 24 1999 - Gay Pride = Bullshit
Well this ought to get at least a bit of a reaction from most fags. I (in my never to be humble opinion) think that Gay Pride is the most over stated, over-blown, outrageous display of stupidity, senseless exhibitionism, general insensitivity and outright political suicide that I've ever seen. I have spent many years in attendance at Gay Pride events in KW, Edmonton and Toronto. And every year it seems to become more and more pathetic. As a result, I now refuse to attend.
If we, as a community, wish to gain acceptance, tolerance and equality with our straight brethren, then it's long past time for us to stop mincing, prancing and "dragging" ourselves out before the cameras and start acting like normal people who are deserving of the treatment that we so vociferously demand for ourselves each year. If we want equal marital rights, benefits, the right to adopt, etc. then we ought to make a case for how deserving we are of those rights and privileges and not take every opportunity (Pride being the biggest) to wave our dicks and bare asses in front of the cameras for Joe and Mary Average Straight to shake their heads over on the evening news.
The last Pride Parade I attended in Toronto featured 5 or 6 older men (40's - 50's) walking nude down Yonge St. The year before that featured a guy in a leather thong, handcuffed to the bars of a cage being "spanked" by a leatherman wielding a wooden paddle. This is disgusting and has no place in a "parade" no matter what the event. In the first case, the nudists were blatantly breaking the law and should have been arrested on the spot. Not to mention the fact that it was totally inappropriate, disgusting and offensive, it was also illegal and they should have been treated accordingly. As for the cage float (courtesy of the Black Eagle Bar), if you're into leather, bestiality, water sports, scats, toys, bondage, fruit, ice cubes, boots, or whatever - that's your personal fetish - period. There are just as many straight people into those things as there are gay people and none of them deserve a foat in a parade down a public street. It seems that we swear up and down that the gay community isn't all about sex - but that's what we choose to display every year during Pride. People turn on their TVs at night and see leather men in chaps, people getting beaten, men in drag, women with their tits hanging out, men with their asses hanging out, nudists and etc. and then the Gay Community turns around and wonders why people aren't exactly thrilled with the idea of giving us their orphans to raise? Who the hell can blame them??! I have seen parades that have allowed NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association) members to march along side us in the parade. Why on earth do we allow an organization of admitted pedophiles to march with us? Where's our common sense. Hasn't anyone heard of Mount Cachel? Straight people already think every gay man is out there recruiting little boys and just waiting for the opportunity to "convert" or molest their sons. And do we do anything to change their opinions when every camera in the country is turned our way? No - we reinforce their beliefs that we're a bunch of sex-crazed, perverted, sexual deviants - and we smile and congratulate ourselves on our wonderful community pride as we do so.
We can't even agree amongst ourselves what we want. Last year, the lesbians held a separate parade so that they wouldn't have to march with the men! Give me a break! If any man on the planet is less of a chauvinist than a gay man - I don't know who is!! But god forbid that we should rally together for real political change one day out of 365. No, let's further divide our ranks and weaken our public image for the media by showing very clearly how well we refuse to even accept each other while demanding it from the politicians and the public at large.
And that's just the parade! How about the fact that every single store, restaurant, hotel and bar in the village or close to it raises their prices during Pride Week? One of the major hotels in Toronto costs only $80 a night normally but during Pride Week the room rate shoots up to $170 a night! Or how about the restaurants on Church St.? They're only packed to the rafters and gain more business in one weekend than they do at almost any other time of year and yet we, the members of the gay community that make it possible for them to even exist, get gouged and ripped off by our own community members during Pride. Last year when I was charged $4.50 for 500 ml bottle of Evian water outside the Second Cup - I swore, "never again".
The whole thing is a messy, slovenly, drunken, money grabbing, outrageous display of greed, perversion and corruption. Why anyone attends and allows themselves to be allied with the idiots and bastards among our community who perpetrate this farce each year escapes me.
Gay Pride fills me with shame, embarrassment and disgust. We should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing it to continue the way it does, unchecked and without any display of morality, decency, couth or garden variety common sense. Gay Pride has be come a wonton display of stupidity, perversion and greed where anything goes. We're so afraid of being critical of disgusting, shitty, amoral and thoughtless behaviour by members of our own community that we have allowed the barest vestiges of any kind of moral standards to completely disappear.
Well from now on anything goes - but me.
Happy Pride Everyone! (Sarcasm)
Try not to sunburn your breasts or your dicks and try not to pick up an STD!
HUH? May God bless each and every one of the participants.
Oh, that would be awful if white people thought they had something to be proud of. </sarcasm> Let me interject at this moment that I am black.
I wonder what the Triangle Foundation felt in 1999 about the anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's Easter celebration in Sin Freaksicko. My guess is they were either silent or supportive.
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