Not Everybody Loves a Parade

I love my satellite radios (yes, I have BOTH XM and Sirius, what a radio whore I am), but occasionally some really aggravating noise comes out of it. That happened today, when I was surfing and ran across Fox Talk Radio.

The host was someone named Spencer Hayes, who was substituting for John Gibson. He was sharing the trauma he experienced this past weekend when he saw part of the Gay Pride parade in San Francisco. He kept going on about how he had to cover his five-year old son’s eyes because of, among other things, someone dressed as a dancing vagina.

The point Hayes was trying to make was how he felt “displays” like that set gay rights back 20, 30, even 50 years. He claimed to be a supporter of gay rights, at least before this weekend, but he made two statements that clearly exposed his prejudice to the contrary.

First, he questioned why anyone would be proud of being gay and need a day to express it. After all, he reasoned, he didn’t wake up every morning bursting with pride about being heterosexual. Of course, he probably never had anyone call him a sinner destined for hell because he was hetero. Hayes has probably never had political campaigns designed to limit his civil rights or restrict his rights to marry the person he loves. If so, he would probably have understood how important it is to the gay community to express pride in who they are despite what many of them have been told all of their lives.

I called in to the show and was put on the air, where the host again showed how oblivious he was to anything relating to GLBT people. I made the point that the exhibitionists at the Gay Pride parade weren’t any more representative of the gay community than Mardi Gras was of heterosexuals. I felt he was holding all gay people accountable for the actions of a few, which I equated to my having to answer for the debauchery in New Orleans. I also reminded the host that there was no more such thing as the “homosexual lifestyle” as there was a “heterosexual lifestyle.”

Hayes said that all you see at Mardi Gras was some girls lifting up their shirts and exposing their breasts while at the parade he saw two men wearing tutus, which was clearly worse. What! The only difference is, I suppose, is that he likes women’s breasts but doesn’t much care for men in tutus.

The worst part of Mr. Hayes’ ranting is that he was not entirely wrong. There are plenty of people who use events like the Pride parades and the exhibitionists who practice outrageous behavior in them to discredit the entire homosexual community. When a minority movement is trying to improve its traction, activities that strongly alienate a sector of their target demographic are not helpful.

Clearly, some of the participants in these events aren’t worried about anybody’s rights except their own opportunity to act out in whatever way pleases them. Unfortunately, behavior like this is not limited to any specific sexual orientation.