Welcome

Video by JMG reader Sean Chapin.

"It Gets Better. It’s a video campaign organized by a radical and vicious, vicious, vulgar, profane, anti-Christian, I can’t say enough things along that line about him. Dan Savage. He’s an activist, been around for years. This It Gets Better campaign is a video campaign that a lot of the leftist politicians including our president have jumped on board, so have some celebrities. It’s supposed to encourage kids, that’s great. Encourage kids, say, you know if you’re having trouble, you’re getting bullied, you feel despaired, don’t give up. That would be a worthy goal if they stop there. But no they tag on to it approval of homosexuality and the implication that anybody who objects is just like those bullies out there and they’re leading you or others into suicide. That’s just wrong, it’s evil, it’s dark, this Dan Savage has already come out attacking my friend Peter [LaBarbera]." - Hate group leader Linda Harvey of Mission America, in a Christian radio show denouncing Gay Pride Month.

From Seattle's all-girl "pump rock" band.

Last year Seattle's iconic Space Needle flew the rainbow flag in recognition of gay Pride. But officials at the landmark said earlier this month that they would not be repeating the honor this year. That may change.

In response to a ground swell of support requesting the Rainbow Flag being raised again on Seattle Pride Weekend, the Space Needle has issued an exciting new fundraising challenge. If the community can raise $50,000 for 4 local charities, the Space Needle will raise the Rainbow Flag on Sunday of Seattle Pride weekend in Seattle. The Space Needle will also kick off the challenge with an inaugural donation of $5000.00.

The four beneficiaries of the campaign: Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA) Scholarship Program, Lambda Legal, It Gets Better for the Trevor Project and Mary's Place. Contribute here.

(Via - Slog)

Just the stuff that made it to the coffee table of my hotel room.

After being criticized that it was "endorsing" Gay Pride Month, the Archdiocese of Boston has forced the cancellation of a planned "All Are Welcome" mass at a local church.

In its most recent bulletin, St. Cecilia Parish said that it had planned a “liturgy to commemorate Boston Pride 2011’’ for later this month. “The Rainbow Ministry of St. Cecilia Parish invites all friends and supporters of the LGBT community to a Mass in celebration of Boston’s Pride Month,’’ the bulletin said. “The theme of the liturgy, ‘All Are Welcome,’ honors Christ’s message of hope and salvation to all people. We will also celebrate the diverse community that finds its home at St. Cecilia.’’ But after protests from conservative church members, the archdiocese intervened. “The wording and placement of a bulletin notice announcing that the St. Cecilia Rainbow Ministry will be joining the parish at a Mass on June 19 may have given the unintended impression that the Mass is in support of Gay Pride Week; it is not,’’ said Terrence C. Donilon, a spokesman for the archdiocese. “The pastor will clarify this issue at the Masses this coming weekend.’’

"President Obama is taking its social activism to new heights--as in, above the Federal Reserve. Apparently, the administration's proclamation in support of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender pride triggered a series of parties and other events at taxpayer expense. America's central bank interpreted the President's declaration as an excuse to fly the rainbow flag above its building in Richmond, Virginia. On the same pole as Old Glory, the Feds are celebrating a behavior that Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Va.) says is 'still a class six felony in Virginia.'

"As Richmond's paper points out, the flag isn't the only thing that's been raised--so have objections. But despite the flood of complaints, bank managers refuse to bend. A spokesman for the bank said, 'The flag is an example of our bank's commitment to diversity.' The colors were reportedly flown at the request of an LGBT employee. I guess we'll see how supportive of diversity the bank really is when Christian Heritage Week rolls around next March in Virginia. Can we expect to see the Christian flag flying at the Fed?" - Family Research Council head bigot Tony Perkins.

Gentle readers, I'm rerunning my annual Pride rant for the seventh year. I wrote this post in 2005 a couple of days after attending Pride here in NYC. In the following years I've reposted it in advance of the day in the hope of encouraging you to attend. My apologies to those that have read it before. Have a wonderful Pride. Love each other.

Watching The Defectives

Last Sunday at 12:30pm, I was in position on Christopher Street with Terrence, his glamor boys, and touring UK bloggers Dave and Darren. The Pride parade was due to round the corner any minute, but I tore off in search of a bodega, crossing my fingers that my desperate need for a soda wouldn't cause me to miss Dykes On Bikes. Half a block away, I found a little place and ducked in, weaving through the customers clogging the aisles on rushed missions like mine. I was third in line, two bottles of Sprite under my arm, when the man in front of me spotted a friend entering the store.

"David! Sweetie! Where are you watching from? Come hang out with us on Allen's balcony!"

David, a bookish looking middle-aged man, destroyed the festive mood in the little store in an instant. "Absolutely not. Those defectives and freaks?" he spat, indicating the colorful crowd outside the store, "They have nothing to do with MY life, thank you very much. This parade has as much dignity as a carnival freak show. It's no wonder the whole country hates us."

Luckily for David, the Asshole Killer mind ray I've been working on is not yet operational. I settled for pushing him a little, just a tiny bit, just to get by him in that narrow aisle, of course. I returned to my sweaty little group and tried to put what I'd heard out of my mind for the remainder of the day, because I knew that by the next morning, the thousands of Davids of the world, the ones who have media access anyway, would all issue their now familiar day-after-Pride rant. The one where they decry the drag queens on all those newspaper front pages. The one where they beat their chests and lament, "Why don't the papers ever show the NORMAL gay people? Where are the bankers and lawyers? Why must all the coverage be drag queens and leather freaks in assless chaps?"

And every year, the logical answer is that bankers and lawyers are boring to look at and that pictures of marching Gap employees don't sell newspapers. There's no sinister media agenda intent on making gay people look ridiculous, no fag-hating cabal behind the annual front page explosion of sequins and feathers. It's just good copy. Drag queens are interesting. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

Yet right on cue, the day after Pride, the Davids of the blogosphere dished out their heavy-handed dissections of parades around the country. Only this year, there was a palpably nastier tone to an already traditionally nasty annual debate. Blame the election, blame the recent avalanche of anti-gay legislation, but this year, the usual assimilationist arguments went beyond the hypothetical speculations that maybe our Pride parades were too outlandish, that maybe we weren't doing the movement any favors by showing the country a face that happened to be wearing 6-inch long false eyelashes. This year there was some actual discussion about HOW we were going to "fix" Pride parades. Of how we might go about "discouraging" certain "elements" from taking part in the parades.

This is the part of the story where I have my annual post-Pride apoplectic attack. This is the part of the story where the swelling volume of Nazi analogies overwhelm my ability to speak and all I can do is twitch and bark out little nonsensical bits. This is where I always forget the name given to the Jews who went to work for the Nazis, helping load the trains. "Because that's what you are asking us to do, you assholes!" Then I always ask, "Who are we going to sacrifice to 'save' ourselves? Which child will it be, Sophie?" And this is the part of the story where my friends accuse me of being a hyperbole-laden drama queen, wasting spiritual energy on a non-crisis, and of co-opting the Holocaust as well. More on that later.

These people that want to "fix" Pride don't understand the role that Pride parades have come to play. Initially, the gay parade was about visibility. It was about safety in numbers, and more importantly, "normalcy" in numbers. It was about the idea that if only straight America could see us, could just SEE US, that they'd love us. And accept us. That if we'd mass and march by the righteous millions, the sheer unstoppable force of our collective image would topple bigotry. Would right wrongs. Would stop hate.

Of course, that didn't happen then and it doesn't happen now.

What DOES happen, is that Pride parades, at least in the big cities, have become nothing more significant to straight America than an annual traffic nightmare. As a tool of the gay movement, the Pride parade is now merely a walking photo op for politicians and perhaps not much more. A couple of years ago, the ultimate arbiter of America's cultural zeitgeist, The Simpsons, made note of this:

(The gay pride parade is going past the Simpson house.)

Chanting marchers: "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"

Lisa Simpson: "You're here every year. We ARE used to it."

What does all of this mean to the Davids of the world, the gay assimilationists that want to, wish they could, somebody do something, there's gotta be a way we can, Dignify This Parade? The ones begging: "Can't we get our people to at least DRESS respectfully for one lousy day? Is that too much to ask of our people? "

Yes, yes it is.

Because you are kidding yourself if you think Pride parades, in any form, will EVER change the minds of homophobes. The straight people who show up to see Pride parades are already largely convinced. We're parading to the choir, Jesse. Those straight people love our freaks, bless them.

Oh, you could test run a "defective" free parade. You could form urban anti-drag squads and go around to all the gayborhoods on the morning of the parade and give all the drag queens 50% off coupons for Loehmann's, offer good during the parade only. And they'd GO, of course, cuz hey, those girls love a bargain. But the resultant bland, humorless, "normal" gay parade wouldn't change the course of the gay movement one bit. The part of straight America that is repulsed by drag queens is quite possibly even more terrified by the so-called "normal" gays, because "those clever calculating creatures look JUST LIKE US, and can infiltrate and get access to our precious children. And that's been their disgusting plan all along, of course."

So where does that leave us? Are we post-Pride? Is the parade just a colossally long waste of a miserably hot summer day? Is the Pride parade just an event that does a better job of moving chicken-on-a-stick than it does of moving hearts? I'd say that, yes, as an effective tool of the gay movement, Pride's usefulness has largely waned in many U.S. cities. So do we even need to keep having these parades, since they no longer seem to have much of an impact on the state of the movement? No, we don't.

But...YES, WE DO.

Because even if Pride doesn't change many minds in the outside world, it's our PARTY, darlings. It's our Christmas, our New Year's, our Carnival. It's the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other "Happy Pride!" Saying "Happy Pride!" is really just a shorter, easier way of saying "Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!"

I'm not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It's OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our "debauched" celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

All you suburban, lawn mowing, corpo-droid homos out there, hiding behind your picket fences, the ones wringing your hands and worrying that Pride ruins YOUR personal rep, listen up. Do you think that straight Americans worry that Mardi Gras damages international perception of American culture? America, land of the free, home of "Show Us Your Tits!"? They don't and neither should we. Our Pride celebrations are just our own unique version of Mardi Gras, only instead of throwing beads, we throw shade. No one has to ask US to show our tits. We've already got 'em out there, baby. And some of them are real.

A co-worker of mine heard me discussing my Pride plans last weekend and said, "I really don't understand what it is you are proud about. I mean, you all say that you are born that way, so it's not like you accomplished anything." She wasn't being mean, just genuinely curious, and I think that a lot of gay people probably feel the same way. On this subject, I can only speak for myself.

I'm proud because I'm a middle-aged gay man who has more dead friends than living ones and yet I'm not completely insane. I've lived through a personal Holocaust (here we go again) in which my friends and lovers have been mowed down as thoroughly and randomly as the S.S guards moved down the line of Jews. You, dead. You, to the factory. And you, you, you, and you, dead. I am inexplicably alive and I am proud that I keep the memories of my friends alive. I am proud of my people, the ACT-UPers, the Quilt makers, the Larry Kramers, the Harvey Fiersteins. I'm proud that I'm not constantly curled up into a ball on my bed, clutching photo albums and sobbing. And that happens sometimes, believe it.

And outside of my personal experiences, I am proud of my tribe as a group. Sometimes I think that gay people are more creative, more empathic, more intuitive, more generous, and more selfless than anybody else on the planet. Sometimes I think that if an alien culture were surveying our planet from light years away, they might classify gay people as an entirely separate species of humans. It's easy to spot us because of our better haircuts.

But sometimes I think we are the worst people in the entire world when it comes to standing up for each other. The gay people who'd like to soothe their personal image problems by selectively culling some of our children from Pride events? They disgust me. They appall me. They embarrass me. To them I say: The very road that YOU now have the privilege of swaggering upon was paved by those very queens and leather freaks that you complain about as you practice your "masculine" and give us butch face. If you want to live in the house that THEY BUILT, you better act like you fucking know it. United we stand, you snide bitches. America's kulturkampf ain't gonna be solved by making flamboyant people go away.

I'll end this by making one final Jewish reference. Possibly you've heard the Jewish in-joke that sums up the meaning of all Jewish holidays? "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." My Pride version?

They wish we were invisible.

We're not.

Let's dance.

The Associated Press reports:

Stone-throwing extremists have disrupted a gay pride march in Croatia, a day after the Balkan country was given the green light to join the European Union. State television has reported that dozens have been detained and several were injured Saturday in the conservative coastal town of Split. Croatia has pledged to protect human rights as part of efforts at EU membership. EU officials said Friday that Croatia could join in 2013. State TV said around 200 people participated in the pride march, while thousands of opponents lined the streets in protest. The report says riot police prevented direct clashes. Extremists threw rocks, bottles and firecrackers at the participants.

Yesterday Father Tony and I arrived in the mid-afternoon and were whisked to our Cypress House accommodations with instructions to quickly prepare for the Key West Pride kickoff party at Island House. After a few hours of poolside menz and frozen drinkies, we were hustled off to dinner at The Flaming Buoy (heh) where the co-owner related how a recent positive mention from the New York Times nearly sank the joint with business it wasn't yet ready to handle. Fantastic char-grilled scallops, by the way. After dinner, the irrepressible Father Tony continued onward to some of the bars on Duval Street, but I was zonked on the bed by 10:30pm. I am the party animal.

DISCLOSURE: As I mentioned when I first posted about this trip, our entire Key West shebang is being funded by the Key West Business Guild - airfare, hotel, meals, nightclubbing, hookers...everything. (OK, maybe not hookers.) As always for these things, press junketeers are not "required" to review or even mention any of the places we visit. If we do, hey, that's nice of us. If we don't, oh well. I usually only mention the joints that I liked. Just so you know.

"I'm ex-gay. And so when I hear people celebrating, 'Oh, we're doing the LGBT month,' and those types of celebrations, I want to ask the question: 'Well, when does the state, when does the county of Los Angeles respect those who are ex-gay? When do we celebrate ex-gay month?' We've gone down this road -- it's not good -- and we've changed our lives. When does the state recognize that?" - Pastor Jim Romen, seen above (center) celebrating the passage of Prop 8.

"Old Navy is promoting a lifestyle that is in complete rebellion against God. Rather than just focusing on giving good products to their customers, they want to use their products now to advocate for a very controversial topic, much less a very immoral and very deadly topic. Unfortunately we have to do the hard work of communicating our outrage, our frustration -- and then following that up with some kind of practical expression such as taking your business elsewhere." - Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, who are upset over the gay pride t-shirts Old Navy is selling in a handful of their stores.

Father Tony and I are about to board our little prop plane for the hop from Miami to Key West, where we'll be celebrating Gay Pride Week. Nonstop.

Less than 24 hours after hiring lawyer/shark Gloria Allred, an openly gay California corrections officer has been granted permission to participate in a gay pride parade.

In May, officer Johnson, who is a member of the Gay Peace Officers Association, made a written request to march in uniform with other gay law enforcement. But, according to Allred, his request was denied by Warden Guillermo G. Garcia. Johnson was told that his participation in the parade would be against California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's operation manual which prohibits employees wearing uniforms who might be engaged in "inappropriate" activities or activities that would "bring discredit" to the department. Allred said it was "shocking and disturbing" that a branch of the state of California would consider marching in the West Hollywood parade a "discredit" to the CDCR. In response, the CDCR issued a statement reversing Warden Garcia's decision and allowed officer Johnson to wear his uniform.

An openly gay police officer from an unidentified California city was reportedly told by his superiors that he would discredit their department if he were to march in a gay pride parade. TMZ reports:

Gloria Allred is repping the California officer, who made a written request to march in uniform with other gay law enforcement officers and citizens. Allred says the Department responded IN WRITING that the march would be a "discredit" to the cop shop. Yes, in writing -- stuuuuupid. Allred will hold a news conference Tuesday at 11 AM PDT in her L.A. office and the cop will appear. We're told the cop will announce he's filing an employment discrimination complaint against the department based on sexual orientation ... though Allred won't reveal which department she's targeting until she takes the mic.

But first, some volcanoes.

The below promotional clip from Pride Toronto and Tourism Toronto has some complaining that it reinforces gay stereotypes.

In the video, instructor Brody wears skintight shorts to show off his glistening oil-rubbed skin, promoting a gym lifestyle centred on the fact that all gay men and women want is “the best chest.” Amid “sparkle crunches,” a “disco break,” a requisite “bear” appearance and a lesbian who is grossed out by a penis (some may be surprised to note that this woman has a deep voice), we can’t help but wonder how out of touch (or straight?) the person who cooked up Pride Toronto’s painful-to-watch and setting-back-the-movement promotional video was. If gay activism is on the rise, how will the community be taken seriously if the organization that fronts the city’s largest gay celebration backs these old-hat, shouldn’t-be jokes? If they were looking to shoot fish in a barrel, why didn’t the Pride committee just hire Big Gay Al?

Some folks need to lighten up, but it just wouldn't be Pride season without some controversy out of Toronto. Remember all the hoopla about Queers United Against Israeli Apartheid last year?

Airing this Wednesday at 8pm nationwide.

What does that even mean?

"The Richmond Fed’s endorsement of costly, anti-social, immoral behavior is rejected by 6,000 years of Western Religious and moral teaching. You want the American people to trust your [judgment] in economic matters when your spokesperson celebrates an attack on public morals?" - Virginia state Delegate Bob Marshall, claiming that by flying the rainbow flag in observance of Pride Month, the Federal Reserve is celebrating an act that is a Class Six felony.

RELATED: The off-his-Jeebus-rocker Marshall has previously called on Virginia to issue its own currency, and has claimed that God punishes women who have abortions by giving them deformed children. And after the DADT repeal bill passed in December, Marshall tried to have gays banned from the Virginia National Guard.