Posted on 08/03/2004 12:11:22 PM PDT by ladyesk
What is it about gay pride festivals that have mainstream media so enamored that they fail to report on critical issues when evaluating the festivities? Reporters around the country talk to the organizers of the events and take their word that the festivals are positive for the gay community and are helpful in sending a message to the nation that gay people are just like everyone else, we just happen to be gay.
Advertisement Fearful, or complicit, journalists have decided that a serious review of gay pride activities, the events that precede them and the effects they have on mainstream America are simply not important. The problem with ignoring gay pride and the messages it sends from the activist gay community is that gay pride festivals, including the one in San Diego this weekend, represents everything that gay people demand straight America purge from their vision of what it means to be gay.
Consider for a moment that you belong to a group that has been considered outcasts and abnormal. You've been trying for years to get people to look beyond what you do in the privacy of your bedroom and look at the contributions you make to the nation and how you're just like anyone else except you simply fall in love with someone different than most people do. One weekend every year you have the opportunity for television news, radio and newspapers to report on your group – your moment to shine and to prove to everyone just how normal you are.
So, what do you do in order to show people that you're just like everyone else? Logic tells you that you would put your best face forward and have normal everyday people who happen to be part of your group speaking to the public and giving interviews – carefully constructing your message so that you are looked at in a positive light and that any vestige of a negative stereotype that people already believe are absent from your activities. All you want to do is be left alone to live your life and you want to convince people, through your weekend in the limelight, that you can be trusted to be solid citizens.
That is how most groups would do it, but not in the case of gay pride festivals. Gay pride in San Diego and other major American cities is the one weekend where all the eyes of the media are trained on gay folks and they take every opportunity to summon every stereotype that they demand straight America dismiss and conduct themselves in a way inconsistent with every public decency law on the books.
San Diego gay pride festivities begin with a candle-light vigil to remember those who died of AIDS or were the victims of violence. These vigils are sometimes sponsored by the owners of the three bathhouses (sex clubs) in San Diego where gay men go to have anonymous sex in the comfort and privacy of places that the San Diego City Council simply ignores. The spread and purge of AIDS has been devastating to the gay community, yet gays convince themselves that having businesses devoted to anonymous sex is perfectly all right – so long as the owners donate money to people who ultimately become infected with the disease.
The gay parade that traverses University Avenue is, perhaps, the most obnoxious of what gays call pride. The parade starts with "Dykes on Bikes" (lesbians on motorcycles) who are topless with simple strands of tape covering what most women consider private parts. Floats pumping 120 beats per minute dance music topped off with gyrating men wearing little more than thongs follow cowardly politicians who believe that the gay vote is so important that they march in a parade where words like "fag," "queer" and "dyke" are used interchangeably with homosexual and gay – forget for a moment that gays demand that straights who use that language be charged for hate crimes.
After the countless men in dresses, shirtless women, politicians and adoptive parents who use their children as political statements march down Sixth Avenue to Balboa Park (the same park where Boy Scouts have been booted) the festivities begin with booths selling everything from sex toys to X-rated videos. When all of that is over, the parties start and the open use of drugs and alcohol cause ambulances to be paid overtime in order to care for the men and women who fall in the streets or collapse in the clubs.
All of this "celebrating" simply because people feel the need to tell the world that they are gay. Wouldn't it be more productive to simply showcase the people who happen to be gay who don't wear dresses or parade shirtless down city streets? Wouldn't it prove to America that gays are just like everyone else if the grand marshal was not a drag queen or a liberal gay activist and if children were not used as political props to bolster their parents' need for validation as being good parents despite the fact that they are exposing them to debauched behavior and decadent displays in public?
Surely the gay community can do better than that, but in a community that demands tolerance from others and decries political dissent from its own it is unlikely that anything will change any time soon.
Yuhas is a San Diego journalist whose columns appear in multiple online publications. He is an openly gay conservative veteran. He can be reached via e-mail at steve@steveyuhas.com
The problem is, being homosexual has everything to do with homosexual behavior and very little to do with much else.
Unless of course that's the way they really are. What if it is the image of "normality" that is the fiction here?
But supposedly, "homosexuality is not about sex".
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What's the exception, what's the rule?
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My sister said (to my relief), this just shows you how far you will go when you are trying to believe that people are normal. She said, it's not what they do in there bedroom that's the issue (I actually differ with that but...). She said that the problem is that these people are mentally ill.
It is a very long story but it's consistent. They are not well and no one will help them because admitting their problem gets in the way of their politics.
Oh...back to the child, she is no longer in the custody of her lesbian mother (that goodness!).
I hope America likes mainstreaming pathology. Do you know where you children are and what they are being taught? RULE #1: NEVER TRUST SOCIAL SERVICES.
Wow, this is perfect. It's exactly what I've thought for years but have been unable to put into words as well as this author.
LBT that was my thought exactly....
In my life, I've seen
guys argue over girls, but
never really fight.
On the other hand,
twice I've seen lesbian "toughs"
beat a guy senseless
for talking too much
to the lesbian's girlfriend.
It's a weird, tough life . . .
The house is owned by my disabled twin brother. He does not have the money to make the repairs. Suing them would be futile because apparently there are already many worthless judgements against them. They will just move on to victimize someone else. As soon as someone does speak up, guess what will happen? Yep. They will be accused of bigotry. It's a socially tangled web built on deception and cover-up.
Guess how that was received?
There have been times when I wanted to stab the dishwasher, but I'm amazed that someone actually did it!
Some gays deliberately engage in public behavior to shock and provoke. It only succeeds in generating ill will. I fail to understand the motivation.
I think these "gay pride" events need more publicity. I would dare any TV network to show more than a carefully edited clip of what goes on and let the American people decide. If people were outraged by Janet Jackson's nipple flash let them see 20 minutes of dykes on bikes etc. The gay marriage issue would be quickly decided and all the "gay is an aceptable alternative lifstyle" brainwashing would be quickly forgotten by seeing exactly what the homosexual lifestyle is about as publically celebrated by its practioners.
It's like the Puerto Rican day parades, the Columbus Day parades, the St. Patrick's day parades, and all the like. The oddballs like to come out, put on their costumes, and goof off.
Guys who get drunk at St. Patty's Day parades don't represent the average Irishman, just as the freakshows at gay pride parades don't represent the average gay man.
No, it's not at all.
You miss the whole point of this.
These other parades
have folks goofing off,
sure, acting funny. But if
you show up and watch
a gay pride parade,
most of the participants
aren't just "goofing"
or acting "funny."
They cross some difficult line
between "fun" and nuts.
It's hard to describe,
but if you see it, you know.
These parades are nuts.
It's the microwave that sets me off...
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