Big Chrissy and I made it to the gay parade today. It’s been several years since I’ve attended the festivities, and usually the experience is fairly consistent year after year, but it seemed really different this time. I think that the idea of a gay movement doesn’t mean that much to anyone anymore. In the mid 80’s and 90’s, when everyone I knew was dying and the community was so united in protecting and helping each other, the parade had meaning. We were united and we were going to survive, and we were going to have a lot of fun, too. All of the sudden it seems, there’s no more urgency, we’re just proud. I see the gay community now disintegrating into little pockets of sexual preferences and single colors on flags. Proud to be a bear or a twinkie or a dyke or a femme or a leather daddy, etc… There’s even a community and support network for guys who don’t wear underwear. Free-ballers. Nancy Sinatra and Ian McKellan rode by in their convertibles and everybody roared, and they were pretty fabulous to see, but there was Harry Hay, the founder of the gay movement, and no one even recognized him. History is just history now. We aren’t making it anymore, there’s nothing to fight for. When a pro-Palestinian contingent passed, the crowd around me starting booing them. One guy angrily yelled “Why aren’t you carrying an American flag?” My gay brothers and sisters could no longer identify with or support the other. And they were proud of it.
Sure there’s still prejudice and discrimination against gays, but we’re an economic force with GAP ads.