It’s ammo for the other side. When you want to legislate something like marriage - which is a building block of any society - you aren’t going to allow marriages that are potentially harmful. Twelve year olds and fifty year olds getting married is one of them. So yeah, I’m pretty sure that if you pair gay pride + same-sex marriage, you get an unhappy union.
Same-sex marriage doesn’t hurt society. But a highly sexualized culture can. (Sorry, I’m speaking as a mother and as a teacher of too many students who have babies.)
You said it yourself - Mardi Gras is not a family friendly event. Neither are Gay Pride events. So doesn’t that give off the wrong impression here? Gay pride is run by gay people, and if that is the expression of their culture…hey, must not be family friendly.
I’ve always had an aversion to such events…but maybe it’s because I’m not into bondage and the condom & lube advertisements and jokes seemed of poor taste.
shrug I think of sex as a personal thing, so you won’t catch me at a Mardi Gras half-naked, either.
The stereotype of gays (especially men) is what I kept running into when i was part of a group that lobbied for same-sex marriage in Iowa. (at first, it was a matter of making sure there wouldn’t be a constitutional amendment, then it was supporting of a court case.) The legislators would say,* well, I’m sorry, my religion just won’t let me vote for that…and not even civil unions, because I mean, I don’t condone a culture based around sex and AIDS. Those aren’t my values.*
sigh