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Sandip Roy
Sandip Roy is an editor with New America Media and host of its radio show New America Now on KALW 91.7 FM.
My friend who went to Gay pride in San Francisco said it seemed to be all about marriage. Marriage equality. The exclusive club of legally married same sex couples. Gay couples pushing babies. The maturation of the gay movement has come with a mellowing. This was the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall but the drag queens had given way to lesbian moms. They were the new shock troops of the LGBT movement and instead of stilettos and platform heels they work sensible flats and sneakers. The first time I marched in Gay Pride in San Francisco I remember how thrilling it felt. The first time our local South Asian LGBT group marched in the India Day Parade in Fremont it was asked to please not wear anything too risqué – leather and chains and bared nipples. We dressed decorously in traditional Indian clothes our mothers would have been proud of.These days the India Day parade would probably not worry. The gays are definitely toning down, the movement settling into becoming Family Guy in its middle age. Stonewall was 40 years ago and fabulous now means the kids took their afternoon nap. It’s not a bad thing. Over in India, the government is finally considering doing away with its antiquated sodomy law reports The Hindu and there were Pride Parades all over the country. I am sure a parade that didn’t try to shock and titillate would go a long way to reassure a jittery public that gays weren’t out to corrupt society. But an activist mourned that even in Delhi’s stifling heat, the gay marchers kept their shirts on. So the parade which was once about flaunting a fabulous otherness now is getting assimilationist, trying to reassure the rest of society we are just like you. Even the go-go boys gyrating on one of the music trucks in San Francisco seemed to be wearing longer shorts sighed my friend. I can’t vouch for that. I decided since the gays were all about marriage these days, I’d just skip the Parade and go to a real hetero wedding in the East Bay instead. It was strange – you could hardly tell the difference, the hotel ballroom, the crooning lounge singer singing “I just called to say”, the friends giving toasts, the pasta-salmon-chicken options. Gosh I thought, this is what we have bought into. And then the dancing began. A bit of Abba, Billie Jean in honor of Michael Jackson. And then to my horror, the Village People. A roomful of sari clad Indian women and their husbands in suits and little toddlers broke into Y-M-C-A. I decided it was my cue to leave. comments |
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I, too, went to this year’s 2009 Gay PP. I rode the route with a volunteer org in which I’m involved, so I got a pretty good survey of who was watching, and as we waited about an hour and a half to take our turn in the parade, also was immersed in the little floods of folks streaming back and forth to the route as the parade got under way. My impression was positive, insofar as the crowd was really, really mixed – ages, cultures, straights with gays to an extent hardly believed possible in the early years of GPP’s. Yeah, I was in some of those, too, on the east coast USA, mainly New York plus Boston. The LGBTQ communities are overlapping tents. I think we have room for everybody, or nearly everybody. And not all LGBTQ folks are simply fabulous and fantastical, although before we got our turn, we indeed saw plenty of those streaming by and also on floats waiting their turns. The flatbed featuring SF Citidel parked for a while right across from us, so we got to exchange hellos with the leather folks while two leather women rehearsed their playful whipping display. I’m not sure how rewarding it will ever be, to look for signs of LGBTQ fantasy at most mainstream straight weddings in any extended family.
I don’t go to clubs much any more, can’t dance because of arthritis these days. But this day at least I could enjoy myriad nipple rings glinting in the sunlight.
I think the change I did seem to note was that a lot of people seemed distinctly less intoxicated on booze or recreational substances this time around, than perhaps in the past. GPP Day was simply not necessarily an excuse to get complete wasted. Good news, that clear-headed look on young faces. Bottled waters everywhere.
The push focuses on equal marriage right now, mainly because (A) we’ve made great progress in a relatively short time of about forty years or so; plus (B) deny equal marriage is where the nay-sayers decide to make stand for the moment in their ongoing campaign to legally designate queer folks as innately inferior citizens who by fiat are judge to contribute nothing positive, anytime, anywhere.
On the federal USA levels, ENDA is still waiting to be passed, and ditto for addressing DADT, DOMA, and other barriers.
Plenty of fantasy and imagination left in the LGBTQ communities. Attorneys are rising in the Ninth Circuit and elswhere to ask the justices to engage in an important fantastical exercise involving unimagined frames of equality, all but unbelievable just a few short years ago. And Lt Choi is standing trial in New York for telling truth to power as a West Point graduate with language and engineering skills. That may involve less confetti or glitter or cosmetics than taking on Market Street in very high heels; but it is perhaps still a bright sign of great fabulousness, anyways.
By drdanfee · Posted on Jun 30, 11:26 AMThat’s just why I’m avoiding Pride Marches now. It’s so boring that I might go to sleep on the pavement and wake up to find out that I’ve been inducted into the US army and sent off to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban…..eeeeeks
By Ashok Row Kavi · Posted on Jul 3, 04:06 AM