Quote:
Originally Posted by starseed
It is a celebration of not having to hide your inner colours. For some people it is about celebrating sexual diversity by dressing up in leather or dessing in drag, for some others it is about marching as just your average joe.
The media prefers to air the most outlandish parts of the parade, but one thing they always miss are the marchers like PFLAG (parents and friends of lesbians and gays) when they marched by my friend starting talking to one of the parents and they ended up in tears and hugged each other over the fence between the crowd and the marchers. The parade is many different things, and one it's best aspects is that it is a way of telling people that they dont have to listen to the external or internal voices telling them that they are social deviants whom God hates. Telling them that it is ok to be free and be who they are.
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See and that's what I meant. I was sure that there were average Joe gay groups that marched in these things, but that's not how the parades are portrayed, and that's now what average joe staright guy like me sees or remembers.
I've never been to one of these parades, so I have to go by the limited coverage I see or hear about, which is where my question comes from.
If it is really an event where people are marching to show solidarity and to make the point that they are just like everyone else then great. If it's an excuse to go running around half naked while juggling rubber fists then it's not something I think the government should be supporting, as if it were any event other than a gay pride parade with people dressing and acting like some of the people in the parade (and really they are the ones that get the most, if not only coverage), those people would get arrested.
I guess the crux of my point is that for a large portion of the straight population, Gay Pride Parades come across more as a Sexual Deviant Parade (gay or straight, I think most folks would agree whips and chains is on the deviant side). I'm certain that that is not the intent of the parade organizers, nor is it the message the gay community as a whole wants to send out, but due to some rather in your face elements of the parade, that is how it comes off to a lot of people.
Is the point of the parade to show that you're the same as straight people, or to show that you're different? Because if you're point is the former, then you should maybe address the fact that the parade is coming of as the latter.