When I was talking about your Lemon Pledge™ life, I was not thinking it was wholesome. I wes just seeing cleaning products used as lubricant in your suburban sex bunker.
So we don’t even get to have a carnival? Acting outrageous even once a year is much too much?
If that were true, we would have lost the war long ago.
Okay, but I reserve the right to giggle behind the backs of some of the more entertaining gays. And I’ll tell them, like my wife tells me when she’s laughing at me, “I’m not laughing AT you. I’m laughing WITH you.” And I’ll expect you to pretend to believe me. That’s how society works: we lie to each other, pretend to believe each other, buy each other a drink because we really ARE still friends, and silently plan our vengence. I bet, for instance, that Airman Doors would really appreciate a drag queen stripper for his birthday. angelic smile
Well, duh. You’re two men getting married. How gay is that?!!
Go right ahead. It’s a carnival, for heaven’s sakes. The seven-and-a-half-foot-tall drag queen with the four-foot wig, peacock crown, and foot-tall spangled platforms did not go to all that trouble so you could smile blandly and politely at her.
To clarify, at a parade, we get outrageously poufed up partly in order to entertain one another. You are welcome to be entertained by it.
I’ll do that. Congratulations, scott and jeremy! I hope your wedding goes great and your life together is even better. And when come back, bring cake.
I didn’t think I was hallucinating about matt and Potter, but you never know…
Oh, my! I wonder if all the discomfort with the more flamboyant aspects of gay pride parades and such is no more than a simple misunderstanding.
To the straight folks: Very few of the more outrageous expressions you see in the gay pride parades are intended seriously. Hell, gay pride parades aren’t really intended seriously (except in the most basic “Thank God for Stonewall and Liberation!” sense). Like matt said, they’re carnivals. They’re the highest camp. Like I said previously about gay humor, it’s often so sardonic that unless you’re clued in, you won’t get it. Drag is camp. Parade leather is camp. Cats-o-nine-tails are camp. Dykes on Bikes is camp. Lesbian Avengers are camp. It’s a giant self-critical laugh-in.
To the gay folks: Hold off on the hitbacks for a sec. I think these people actually believe it’s all in deadly earnest!
Folks, the only solemn gay event is an AIDS or gay-bashing victim memorial ceremony. Everything else has at least a thin edge of black humor. Try to understand that, please…
Heh. We’re working on it 
Directed at KCSuze, but perfectly appropriate to what jayjay had to say too…
Oh, and may I note that the Mardi Gras crowds in New Orleans are a pretty good analogy of a straight folks’ gay pride parade. I don’t see a whole lot of difference…
Hmm, in the spirit of computer camp and space camp, maybe we should have Camp Camp for the striaght folk.
Viewings of The Women, All About Eve, Absolutely Fabulous,* and Mommy Dearest, with memorization of appropriate lines
Guest lectures by RuPaul and Bruce Vilanch
Snap classes, working up to the 3-snap maneuver accomapnied by witty putdown
Music appreciation (Bronski Beat, Sleater-Kinney, The Communards, Erasure, and Depeche Mode)
Antiquing
Singing the camp anthem, “I Will Survive.”
Production of one of the works of Stephen Sondheim or Kander and Ebb
I would be there so fast you would think that you stepped in to a timewarp!
Although I am straight (not that there’s anything wrong with that) I had the extreme fortune to have a queer roommate all through college. Perhaps with a little work I could serve as a translator.
To those of you who are uncomfortable about our sexuality, or any expression of it - YOU are the reason why we sometimes have to be a little (or a lot) outrageous. I’ve been around long enough to know that society will never evolve unless some brave souls are back there PUSHING. And don’t for a minute think the battle is over.
Ya know, I don’t recall ever seeing an exclusively heterosexual flirting thread. Cite?
I must say that I’m shocked by the comparison of the Stunning Sodomites webpage and the Gay Pride Parade to the most radical elements of the civil rights movement as opposed to Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers.
We’re talking about the difference between using violent radical action to support your cause and using peaceful, non-violent protest. How anyone could think that a webpage and a parade fall into the first category and not the second is beyond me.
There are no gay people blowing up buildings, committing armed robbery to support their cause, clashing with police, taking hostages, etc. Instead we have people posting adorable pictures and cute descriptions of themselves on a webpage (the only impression anyone could get from that page is that gay people are just plain nice), and marching in joyous, flamboyant, peaceful parades. These are exactly the types of actions that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have applauded – the equivalent of lunch counter sit-ins and the March on Washington.
I don’t see how it’s possible for people to be offended by the sheer good nature of the web page and the parades unless they are offended simply by the idea of people being gay.
One of the local T.V. commentators covering the parade said that the only reason it wasn’t bigger was that some people chose to stay home and celebrate the overturning of the sodomy laws in the appropriate manner.
gobear:
No. it’s judgemental hypocrisy that I’m unfriendly to.
Playing the bigotry card because we’ve have a personal disagreement is low. It has nothing to do with gay people in general, and the implication otherwise is a shitty lie.
Tell that to the Thebans.
Puh-leeeese.
You are a sad excuse for a human being.
The level of denial you are at is astounding, and that you can spew the bullshit you do and believe it amazes me.
gobear isn’t lying, but you are lying to yourself, you poor deluded bastard.
I thought that, Miller, but I’m already in enough trouble in this thread without making that comment. (And apparently nobody is going to forgive me, either! :()
But you gotta remember that the guy who defeated the Sacred Band was Alexander, himself no slouch in the SSA department. (Though we wont’ explore the implications of "Thjey were famed for their ability to beat off all attackers of Thebes… ;))