Good points, Paige. Thanks for saying this.

As a ten-year veteran of Pride organizing, thank you for this. I wish more parents like you would express themselves in their communities. If my experience is typical, most Pride organizers spend far too much of their time defending the event against people (within and without the community) who think it's a tacky spectacle, aggressive in-your-face flaunting of sexuality, and full of inappropriate expressions of gender identity and fetishism.

If I had a nickel for every time a gay man said something along the lines of "I don't want to be represented by drag queens or guys in leather thongs" to me...

Thank you so much for this. I have been writing about parents standing up for a sex positive pride for years. My kids are now almost grown up and I took them to Pride for years, as well as to Ptown. Let's not let conservative views in our community ruin what's unique and wonderful about us. Cindy Rizzo

Thank you so much for this. I have been writing about parents standing up for a sex positive pride for years. My kids are now almost grown up and I took them to Pride for years, as well as to Ptown. Let's not let conservative views in our community ruin what's unique and wonderful about us. Cindy Rizzo

I have to say though, there's a difference between an Indiana Jones Lego toyset and a gyrating man in a leather thong...

"If I had a nickel for every time a gay man said something along the lines of "I don't want to be represented by drag queens or guys in leather thongs" to me..."

Some 30 years ago, just after my own coming out, and likely still harboring a significant residual amount of internalized homophobia, I, an attorney, attended a GLBT meeting at which the issue of "gay flamboyance" became a topic, and I made a comment very much like the one Jere makes above. One of the other participants, a pretty "in your face" person at the time, looked at me and said: "Well, Mr. Pin-striped-suit, I dodn't see YOU out there in your fancy duds leading the parade." That hit home, and I thought about it not too long ago when (garbed in another bit of pin-striped tailoring) I testified before a state legislative committee against a "marriage amendment".

I remain ambivalent on this issue, as I agree with Bil's inference above that there are degrees involved here. But on the other hand, we need not go to extreme lengths to hide our sexuality.

But on the other other hand, I am not all that sure that my testimony would have been as effective had I appeared in a leather thong before the legislators and TV cameras. I know, I know, that wasn't a Pride Parade. But on the other other other hand, I envision a scenario where, after taking their own kid to a Gay Pride Parade just a tad "over the line" , a single otherwise friendly legislature might cast the deciding vote against a hate crime measure, or a bit of employment civil rights legislation. I guess the answer is that the right to express our sexuality must triumph everything else, and so what if we lose a few close ones.

"In all things.....spicy moderation."

For me, this issue is not just about freedom of expression, it's about the ways that the right has deployed a monolithic narrative of family (one that tries to locate family completely outside the forces of history, race, class, sexuality, etc.) in order to delegitimize all kinds of "messy" but democratic public spheres. I am thinking of Lauren Berlant's The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, a book that outlines how the valorization of a particular kind of family was deployed in tandem with the demonization of non-familial sexualities in order to redefine what it meant to be a citizen in the Reagan era and beyond.

I think as more queers are having families, we have to be thoughtful about the politics of family and how we ourselves deploy that cluster of ideas.

Don,

I'm not implying there isn't a happy balance to be found, but when television ads are getting pulled because a man-on-man kiss is too controversial and offensive to "families," I'd say that we probably shouldn't look to ambivalent politicians as our source of guidance.

When I was running the Utah Pride Celebration, I was told on a number of occasions that it was the one day out of the year when some people came out of their house appearing as their true gender, or feeling unashamed and not alone in their particular sexual urges. While we, as Pride organizers, stressed the importance of following local ordinances on legal levels nudity and behavior, I'd hate to take away the freedom of expression for those people who are desperately unhappy in the pinstriped suits just because some hypothetical politician might be offended by the idea of two muscular guys in short-shorts sharing a passionate kiss. That seems counter to the idea of Pride and the Stonewall Riots it is meant to commemorate. The riots, the "birth" of the modern queer rights movement, weren't lead by sensible gay and lesbian advocates in pinstriped suits*.

* No offense to the pinstripe-suit community. Truth be told, I'm mostly a "straight-acting," business casual, white, upper-middle-class, sensible gay activist in my day-to-day life.

It's the day of gay pride with all the potential momentum and raw beauty of our culture. In Dallas town it is a wide open no ticket needed days of freedom. We have a steady stream of kinda naked peeps strolling. Not a problem. If it seems to much, then exit. I would rate it a R+. Good stuff! Hey Paige, great post. One of our TACT members told us about it.