It just seems like your viewpoint is that gay people can march in the parade as long as they dont flaunt their gayness. And that your idea of flaunting is merely identifying themselves as homosexual.
As someone who has Irish ancestry, I find it disgusting that Irish homosexuals are made to feel that they have no place among people of Irish descent. Homosexuality, as well as coming from an Irish heritage, is just one aspect of an individual’s personality.
Not if the parade is about gay rights. A homophobic float (which would be interesting to see…) would go against the entire purpose of the parade. IMO, it is also a float focused on hatred. Homophobic is anti-gay.
Your point is apparently that a Gay Irish group goes against the purpose of the Irish parade. But gay is not anti-Irish.
My viewpoint is that we will never get there if we do things like refuse to let gays march in the SPD parade. We didn’t wait for bigots to become comfortable eating with blacks before we integrated southern lunch counters. Hatred won’t vaporize on its own. Maybe it’s just MHO, but ignorance should be confronted and challenged directly. We can’t just crack a window and wait for it to dissipate.
Well, you have removed yourself from the debate, Athena, so I guess I won’t hear a rebuttal from you. But I’d rather have gays march in the SPD parade than live in a world whose only parades involve the 4H and antique cars.
Leslie said, “I am being totally serious. I am a straight white female, but I want to be a Radical Faerie. Can one be a Radical Faerie in spirit?”
Of course anyone can become a Radical Faery. The group is mostly made up of gay men, but in DC women can join too. It is primarily a religious group (all faiths are welcome as long as there is tolerance.) with political undertones. Politically we strive to achieve equality for everyone whilst dispelling hatred. Pretty simple, huh? Anyway, a basic premise of the group is, that if you allow yourself to become complacent then you will allow yourself to be taken advantage of once more. This is not just a gay thing, it is a human thing.
Athena said that we were not arguing the same thing. I think we are arguing the same thing but in different words.
To paraphrase an earlier statement: If the only requirement to march in the parade is to be Irish then there should be no contingents.
I wholly agree with that statement. It would be nice, but it would not work because human nature requires that we organize into a more discernable fashion. This also would not work if there were floats in a parade because the different factions of people would probably not fund one gargantuan float that tries to encompass everything; rather, they would fund several smaller floats that are more appropriate for themselves. With that said, I would really like to see a parade of just marchers walking under a unified symbol of “Irishness” in this case. It would show an element of caring about their cultural diversity and (to be sappy) an essence of brotherly love for all that is Irish. This is contrary to what SPD is portraying now which is loving all that is Irish unless it is gay.
Let’s look at the idea of a KKK contingent in a gay pride parade. Here we have to distinguish between parade as organized event and parade as public spectacle.
The KKK or whoever are certainly permitted to attend a pride parade, just like anyone, provided they behave themselves. However, the parade as an organized event is organized by a committee, whose show it is and which has the right to say who will and will not march. Just like you’re not allowed to leap on stage and do a solo at a free concert.
Short addition to SqrlCub’s post: In North Carolina Pride parade, Fred Phelps & Co. (proprietors of www.godhatesfags.com)) wanted to demonstrate. The parade proprietors offered to give them a place in the march, provided they signed a contract saying that they agreed with the purposes of the march. They of course declined.
If it wasn’t all ready clear from Matt’s and SqrlCub’s posts, the whole idea behind gay lib. is to make the point that gays have been discriminated against, abused, even killed.
Thank you for that bit of information Polycarp. I love to see when truth comes to light.
On another note, I need to add an addendum to an earlier statement. I should point out that the Jews were not the only people persecuted during WWII. There were also Gypsies, Gays, and black people. However, according to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the gay people were the only people left in internment after the Nazi regime was overthrown. No there were not as many Gays as there were Jews in the death camps of Nazi Germany, but that is easily explained by gay people being able to hide their sexuality. One of the most revealing stories I heard about this (also at the Holocaust Museum) involved a man who lived in one of the larger Jewish Ghettos in Poland (sorry, but the name slips me right now). He was also a gay man. He was far luckier than many of the other Jews because he had several gay people on the outside who helped him escape Nazi Germany and make it to the Americas. The sad fact about it is that his entire family was later killed. Several of the gay men who helped him escape were never mentioned again, presumably dead.