As many people know June is Pride month. The month when the vast majority of gay pride events occur. I am always of mixed opinions about pride. It has become a celebration instead of a protest in the major cities. Although we need to celebrate the gains that have been made over the last several decades we also need to protest for the gains that we still have yet to achieve.
In the more rural cities, Pride is still very much a protest disguised as a celebration. In rural America being gay is not accepted, so having a pride event is protesting against convention where the gay people are supposed to hide so everyone can pretend they do not exist. If you have the ability, go to a rural pride event and see how different it is.
However, I do like pride being framed as a celebration as if it was framed as a protest it would not get nearly as much involvement. But we need to make it a celebration with a message. Not just a chance to get out and get drunk. Not just a chance to get out and listen to music. Yes, have fun at pride, but allow yourself that 30 minutes to be angry and to protest for our equality. Engage the protesters in a CIVIL way. Discuss their viewpoints with them and try to change their opinions. Make that sign and hold it during the parade demanding equality. And cheer loud and long when they “marry” gay couples on the stage.
Here are your pride dates and events for Colorado.
I personally will be going to pride in Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Boulder, and am going to try to make it to Durango and/or Grand Junction but they are really far away.
Also, as always if attending a Colorado Pride event bring rain gear. Especially in the months of July and August. It will not rain for the entire time, but a good soaking is not unheard of.
Here is John Lithgow performing Gingrich’s campaign’s statement on the press he was receiving on the Colbert Report.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| John Lithgow Performs Gingrich Press Release | ||||
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For those that are interested the full text of the statement provided to the Huffington Post by Gingrich press secretary Rick Tyler that could not possibly be read without laughing is after the jump.
Read entire article.
There are always tons of stories that athletes are very homophobic and having a gay member of the team in the locker room would cause massive problems. I do not know what it is like today, but here is an experience I had 8 years ago or so.
I ran Cross Country in high school and during the season we would run two-a-days a couple times a week. These two-a-days were more for team building than their actual training benefits. Of course, running two-a-days with one run before school and one run after school meant that we had to shower in the locker room before school started. This was not something that we normally did, because in Cross Country you normally do not have a locker room.
The first day of two-a-days one year, one of the younger runners showered in their bathing suit and was made fun of for this. To the point that he was asked if he brought his bathing suit every time. I think this joking had more to do with a select few people secretly wanting to see him naked so they could compare themselves than anything. But if you asked them today they would never admit it.
The two-a-days were only required for the 7 varsity runners, but were open to anyone on the team. I was not on varsity at the time, but they did have some training benefit and as I said earlier they were a great team bonding opportunity. So I started getting asked “Chris, why do you come to these? Are you gay and just want to see all of us naked? Because if you are, stop coming.” I was obviously in the closet at the time.
Honestly, I went to the two-a-days because I was part of the team and we were all very good friends, but seeing a bunch of hot guys naked was a nice perk. When we spent 30 hours a week together training, hanging out, eating, and racing we became extremely good friends. It was hard not to.
Anyway, back to my story. A few years after I graduated high school we got together again, and somehow the gay topic came up. The guy who was the most homophobic during those two-a-days, also the guy who made fun of you for wearing a bathing suit, talked about his experience with a gay guy in the frat house. The gay guy would always jump on the homophobe’s back and he talked about how at first it made him extremely uncomfortable and he told the gay guy to buzz off. But after a while he realized that the gay guy was not going to do anything to him and they became really good friends.
So I guess the moral of the story is, coming out in a sports locker room probably will cause problems at first. But eventually those issues will resolve themselves once the homophobic people realize that nothing is going to happen to them most of them will get over it and it will become a non-issue.
You may have noticed Media Matters for America’s recent ad blitz and their Drop Fox campaign. In fact every time I have visited this site in the past week there has always been at least one ad from Media Matters for this campaign.
I am of mixed opinions on this campaign. In some ways, I completely disagree with Fox News and would love to see them have difficulty securing advertisers. This would force Fox News to change their far right leanings. It would force Fox News to gain some semblance of actual journalistic integrity.
However, on the other hand if we are going to fight for a boycott of Fox that means going all of the way. That means boycotting not just Fox News but plain old Fox too. That means no more Glee, American Idol, Raising Hope, So You Think You Can Dance or any of their other shows. No more Fox Sports. No more FX. Are we willing to go all of the way and boycott Fox as a whole?
I do not believe in doing something half-assed and only boycotting Fox News. I don’t watch Fox News anyway. In fact if I ever walk into a place that has Fox News on the TV I ask them to change it or I walk out. I do not agree with asking companies to boycott Fox News if we are not willing to boycott Fox as a whole ourself.
At least the good thing about Fox News is that most people, with the exception of sheeple, know that Fox News is incredibly biased. And even if Fox News was forced to change the sheeple would just find another channel that is just as wacky.
As anyone who has been watching sports news knows Joakim Noah yelled a gay slur at a fan yesterday. He has since apologized and been fined $50,000 by the NBA.
I am sure that some will argue that Noah’s fine should have been larger since Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for yelling a gay slur at the ref. Honestly, I am not sure a larger fine would change anything or deter this in the future. Another interesting thing is when compared to percent of salary Noah’s fine was 4 times larger than Kobe Bryant’s fine.
As bad as all of these gay slurs have been lately with Kobe Bryant and Joakim Noah in basketball, and Roger McDowell in baseball, I honestly think catching them on camera and the publicity has been a good thing. It has raised the conversation of gay athletes in sports, the reaction has sent a message that using gay slurs is not acceptable, and it has generally raised awareness of the issues.
This recent publicity has caused several people affiliated with the sports world to come out, including Rick Welts of the Phoenix Suns and Jared Max of ESPN radio. Obviously there are still a lot of sports people choosing to remain in the closet, and I respect that decision. However, the more of them that make the decision to come out the less homophobic professional athletes will be and the more faces of gay people that politicians will see when voting for discrimination.
Many of you may not know that on Saturday the Minnesota State House passed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. It must still be passed by the voters before it becomes part of their constitution.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but Minnesota was one of the states taken over by the Team Party and despite all of the lobbying against this bill, there was very little chance it was not going to pass. Minnesota already has a law banning gay marriage, so this amendment is just so the religious right has something that they can “laugh” and say see nobody really wants gay people to be able to marry. All of those polls saying otherwise are just lies and propaganda.
I find this whole vote very sickening. However the state Representative Kriesel who is a Republican made a very passionate speech against this amendment. Video below.
We need more personal stories like this in these debates. If we make these things personal these discriminatory laws and amendments will have a much better chance at failing because once things become personal their is a face to go with the vote. There is a face that the politician will see when they make their decision. So share your story with your friends, your family, your coworkers. That is the only way we eventually achieve equality.