esrosedotblog

PRIDE GOETH IN THE FALL

Booker and I went past a friend's house yesterday and he was outside admiring the work he had done on a big plywood dog silhouette for a float in the Gay Pride Parade. I asked it it was a gay dog. My friend is not gay. At least not professed. Or, as they use to say in the NYTimes, "self-avowed".

He told me that the dog would have a rainbow ribbon on as he sat on a float for the animal shelter.

"Oh!", I said.

We chatted for a few minutes about it. It was good work. My dad made jigsaw things and my friend had not done it in 20 years. And so on.

I went away a bit agog. Here it will be Gay Pride Week in Palm Springs in two weeks. It is held at this time rather than the Stonewall time because it is hot in late June and there are no tourists. Already a commercial raison d'etre. And then, the parade. Here we now have floats and paraders who have nothing to do with gay or any of it. It is a commercial. They are selling themselves to us.

When I came in, it was all gay and it was just us, the people marching for equal rights. It was scary. There weren't many straight people on the sidewalks and what there were were not very friendly.

Then we got to Phase II. The "pride" phase. It became commercially gay. You had to belong to a group. It was selling gay and gay business to the city. Believe me, when you have the State Street Bank gay contingent, you have reached a certain point of acceptance.

Now we have the non-gays selling to us.

I have always found the notion of "pride" dubious, to say the least, especially as many parts of these parades are not anything to be proud of. I won't itemize. Draw your own conclusions.

But there has been this shift. Last year and maybe before, the Grand Marshal of the parade wasn't even gay. The last time I went to it the Marshal was a closeted, until then I guess, gay. Michael Feinstein.

Well, times change but not much. We are still doing ourselves in by coopting for the heteros.

And there will be a carnival for most of the days with booths to sell us things.

I know. I know. The price of progress. Mediocrity.

Labels: gay history, gay life, gay rights