PHOTOS: The LGBT community of New York’s most royal-sounding borough celebrated pride with a festive parade on Sunday and befitting the Queens’ queens: the floats came out, the shirts came off, and the band played on.
Photos: Gay Marriage USA
PRIDE 2013
yaoming
Some hot queenz.
Elloreigh
Meh, whatever. All the Pride season means for me is that I get to spend another year debunking bigots in political forums, who think pictures from these events make for good arguments supporting the idea that we should all be tossed back into the closet. So enjoy playing dress up and drawing attention to yourselves if that’s your thing. I’ll keep doing my thing by ignoring most of what passes for “gay culture”.
juiceboy
@Elloreigh: You could try, instead, to defend the right of all people to express themselves however they choose, and explain how the way we choose to live our lives should have no impact on our rights. Freedom for all – a radical concept, I know.
LadyL
@Elloreigh: Don’t let the bigots steal your joy, Elloreigh. Happy Pride!@juiceboy: Beautifully said, juiceboy.
Elloreigh
@juiceboy: Here’s a newsflash for you: Right wing authoritarians don’t give a rip about freedom of expression, and libertarians will tell you that people who speak out against homosexuality and its free expression have an equal right to do so, because the First Amendment is a restriction on the power of government, not on fellow citizens.
Defending the right of all people to express themselves is exactly what I DO defend. Doesn’t mean I have to esteem others’ poor taste, extreme behavior from people who think being provocative solely for the purpose of pushing other people’s buttons is some kind of worthy goal in and of itself, and how feed the right wing propaganda machine with all the fuel they need to portray us to the rest of society as freaks. Because that’s all we will ever be to them.
I don’t hold any illusions that I’m going to persuade people not to act like idiots in public or be as rude, crude, and lewd as they please as part of ‘Pride’. Heck of thing to take pride in, though.
You can call it celebrating freedom if you like, but to me it just looks fulfilling the expectations of the people who want to keep us marginalized, and reinforcing the stereotypes, and their hate right along with it.