Happy Pride. If you’re looking for me at the dance tonight, I’ll be the one with my shirt off.

I’ve worked too damn hard to get to a good place in my life where I’m cofortable with myself and able to be loving to the people around to have some one with an agenda to prove to destroy it for everyone else. I’ll take my damn hsort off if I want to and I might even drop trou in public. Just ask JMG.

looks like Eldon is part of the problem.

If people want to start channeling June and Ward and move to the burbs, fine. Just don’t try and make me do it.

Seriously, my only annoyances at the Pride parade have ever been:

1) Seventeen different floats promoting vodka;

2) Huge gaps between said floats;

3) All the community groups pushed to the back of the bus–er, parade;

4) Not enough music;

5) Raelians (though, really, who cares);

6) People who spray water on the drag queens instead of on the (usually sweltering) crowd;

7) Mealy-mouthed hypocritical politicians who do nothing for the GLBT community 364 days a year but wake up to our existence and come out to wave at us for this one three-hour period.

Tits I can handle. Kids I can handle. Drag queens I can more than handle. And glitter covered go-go boys and furry shouldered bears and half-naked poz guys, all just fine by me.

Okay, first off, y’all, thanks so much for the enthusiastic support. Even eldon, who, I hope, will come around some time and realize that what sets us apart as a group is our desire. Our desire for who we want to fuck and who we want to love. And that expressing and celebrating our desire is what Pride Week is all about.

And, in the same way you don’t go to a hockey game and then complain about the violence, you really shouldn’t go to Pride Day and expect queer desire to be filtered for the consumption of tight-assed conservatives outside or within our “community”. Or the media. Or, fercryinoutloud, children.

What binds us, what unites us is our desire. And this week we celebrate that desire. Pride Week is our party, with our rules of decorum, not a party we put on for others.

No. It was the drag queens, the leather guys, and the crossdressers.

So go learn your history, and then remove your foot from your mouth before you get Foot in Mouth disease again.

Sheesh. The ignorance of some people is just in-fucking-sane.

Great rant, bstewart! Keep on kepin’ on!

For serious.

I don’t want to see people having sex in public. I don’t even particularly like seeing people passionately kiss in public, which is one of the reasons we invented eyelids: until the rest of the world realizes that all my standards are the right standards, I have to solve my problems my own way. And while I find PDA generally unpleasant to see, it’s nowhere near as high on my list as people who chew with their mouths open. In all cases of humanity offending me, I reserve the right to complain about it with the equal understanding that people are perfectly welcome to continue being as rude as they want to be.

I can’t imagine finding a state of undress in a place where being in that state is standard to be offensive and I don’t think physical beauty is a factor in whether or not its offensive, not least because beauty is so subjective.

drag queens on backs of trucks screaming out their presence.

leather guys walking like someone’s pointing a gun at their heads (smile fellas, it’s contagious).

dykes on bikes — we get it, you wanna be like the guys.

streamers, balloons, cameras everywhere.

and yes, the children, too.

ya see all of this on the streets and you wonder how we got gay marriage at all.

sometimes pride ends up making me ashamed to be gay.

e

LA Pride always happens around my birthday and there’s no way I’d miss my own festivities. But I have had that excitement – that being caught up and finding out what being gay and proud means to me – and that’s awesome. And petty haters need to be willing to themselves aside for a bit and be caught up in something bigger.

Also, I hate the idea that being “equal” means we have to behave just like straight mainstream society – the be gay, just not that gay idea.