Pride celebrations: Your thoughts?

Today, in my area, several hours of regular programing (OK, I am NOT a big tv watcher by any means) on one local network has been pre-empted for coverage of the pride Parade in New York.

I could not be bribed for ANY amount of money to watch even a few minutes of coverage.

It's all far too flamboyant, far too "up in your face", far too "off-the-wall" for this 100% masculine, conservative gay gentleman.

IMHO, all "pride" events do is to further re-enforce a plethora of demeaning, embarrasing gay stereotypes that make me cringe.

Is it any wonder why so many straight bigots and religious zealots despise gays as much as they do?

Am I proud of my sexuality?

No, no more than I would be if I were straight.

WHAT am I proud of?

The kind of MAN I am.

For any straight guy watching Pride events, their intolerance for gay men and the gay lifestyle is only further re-enforced.

No, I'm NOT into Broadway show tunes, nor am I into Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, nor am I a flamboyant, swishing, lisping "flaming fag".

Like most gay men (and the media seldom focuses on men like these) I am 100% straight-acting and talking, and have NO desire to act like ANYTHING except to act like a MAN.

Just because a man is a homosexual, does NOT mean he has to relinquish his masculinity, and act "girly" or "swishy".

I, for one, am always MORE than glad when Pride Month is over for another year.

Now, I think I'll have a quick bite, and, later, watch "The Babe Ruth Story" with William Bendix.....

 

I dont have a problem with people celebrating their differences.
I dont mind cross dressing, drag queens and even nudity (I'm a nudist).
But, the BDSM and Leather culture is going a bit far. These are examples of your sexuality that should remain in a controlled environment. I'm not interested in having to explain to my kids why grown men want to wear dog masks or why a man wants to be beaten. You don't see this activity in "normal" parades. Would people embrace the scene of a woman being chained up and spanked on her bare ass?
If you look at the direction of politics, these displays are giving the Right a legitimate reason to shut these events down completely.
If this is how you celebrate, you only have yourself to blame when you are legally forced back into the closet.

 

'Bizarre" is far too gentle a word to describe these images.

HOW do you explain this sort of "off-the-wall" behavior to young people?

"Freak show", for certain.

Be WHO you are, and be PROUD of yourself, but DO so with DIGNITY, and with PRIDE............

 

I've never seen anything like those pictures you posted at any pride events I have been to. I must say, I agree with you on them having gone too far with that. I do not, however agree with your last paragraph. Shutting down an even because of the content is one thing. But I don't think there is any legitimate reason to force people "back into the closet".

I'm also concerned that a parent would allow their child to go up to those men as if it was ok.

 

You might not think that there is a "legitimate" reason to force people back in the closet, but wake the F up. The Christofacist tide is real. (Ie, Louisiana's 10 Commandments in the school, Oklahoma's rule to teach the Bible as history and the FL government eliminating an entire district because Disney is pro LGBTQ+).

They don't care if their cause is legitimate or not. The Red states don't want to accept any LGBTQ+ culture. A GOP county/city can simply reject the Pride event permit. It won't matter if the rejection isn't legitimate. Oh and Pride flags in school... GONE.

And, don't expect the courts to bail you out. Roe is already gone. Same sex marriage and interracial marriage is next.

These are just a few of the red flags I see.

And, we are on the same page about letting your child go up to anyone wearing any kink/leather costumes.

 

If the GOP has its way, we'll get rolled back to the 1950s era of morality that's decided by religious belief..

 

KD23:

And you and I BOTH Know how highly-destructive religious factors can be, regarding gays and bisexuals............scary as hell, for sure.

So much for "love thy neighbor", not to mention "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"....................

 

Yes, and we should be worried.

 

Could NOT agree more; things are going to be QUITE freaky, to say the least, in the near term.......given the current highly-volatile political climate, seething with intolerance and hypocriscy.......

 

Worried and politically active. Spread the word in the community to get out and vote.

 

Excellent advice; could not agree more.............

 

I wasn't saying they wouldn't try, but it would not be legitimate. What I was saying is that people should always have the right to be who they are without having to hide it.

And please don't snap at me, nothing I said deserved that.

 

Been doing that ever since the Orange Fool said he was running for the office again.

 

I don't know if I would have taken my daughter to that situation as pictured, and not at that age. I don't think I would have minded the questions but at that age, I don't know if she would have understood the "PG" version of the answers to her questions. If she was a teenager? Sure, if she wanted to go check it out, we can go do that but, again, I wouldn't want to do that if she was like 8 or 9 or even 10 - and I wouldn't be naive enough to believe that she knew nothing about sex, either.

 

kD23:

Nowadays, it is QUITE foolish to think that only OLDER kids know about sex, given today's society.

Parents, indeed, MUST be VIGILANT 24/7; it is NOT a good thing for a young child to be exposed to ANYTHING that would be hard to explain, even for the most dedicated and "hip" parent.

Even an old bachelor like myself knows that, in this insane day and age, being a good parent is indeed a TREMENDOUS responsibility, with duties that CANNOT be "sugar coated".............

 

It makes sense to foment a good sexual environment so that your children grow up to be sex-positive and well-informed that sex and sexuality are normal human behaviors... I question if BDSM is "normal behavior" even though it's shown a huge rise among (a) bisexual men and (b) women who are into domestic discipline and full-time D/s. Should the kids know about this as part of their education? Hoo-boy, fuck, yes, no, maybe - tough question to answer because you don't and can't know if they're going to be exposed to it somewhere down the road.

Which is why parents should always be prepared for their children to ask them questions about things that "they're not supposed to know about." I might not expose my really young children to things BDSM - and trying to explain men in dog masks and acting like dogs - but I might want to find out why some men are into this... just in case I get asked about it. Take them to a PRIDE event? Sure, why not, since I'd want them to know that sexuality is part of being human; I'd want them to know that we really don't live in the sexual dark ages that I grew up in and that there's no shame in being bi or gay or whatever sexuality you believe yourself to be. Expose them to the "dark side" of sex? As open about sex and sexuality as I am and was with my children, I'm not sure that I would expose them to that at a young age but, again, those little fuckers are known to ask the damnedest things and I'd want to be able to answer them and not feed them a raft of bullshit that might get them into trouble down the road.

 

KD23:

Even I know that being a parent in today's often up-side down, totally-insane world cannot be a "walk in the park" by any stretch of the imagination.

Today's parents are faced with challenges that our parents and grandparents could not have imagined in their wildest imaginations.

With younger children, it can often be quite a challenge to keep them from seeing and hearing things totally inappropriate for their age.

Parents, of course, cannot keep their children away from any and all "questionable" aspects of today's world, but it would have to be a tremendous challenge to allow their children "breathing room", and the ability to think on their own, while also, keeping them from things which could be too much for them emotionally to grasp.

Yes, today's parents indeed have a HUGE responsibility to shoulder today in 2024.....

 

All of my children were born in the 1970s and parenting wasn't a walk in the park then, either. I learned, from my own upbringing, that a parent cannot keep the their children away from life and that trying to shelter them will do them more harm than good so the best I could do as a dad was to tell them what I knew they were going to get into from what's good about it to what can make your life a miserable one and there are decisions one has to make and it's best to be able to make an informed decision... like the day my youngest son came to me and asked me about eating pussy and how to do it. I sat him down and told him everything I knew about doing it and, unlike my father, I told him why he shouldn't do it but, yeah, if you don't eat your girlfriend's pussy, some other guy is going to be doing it (but it was his sister who was eating her pussy (at the first to eat her), too, but they didn't know that I knew that).

He leaves to be with her and comes home hours later, busting in the door like the cops were chasing him. He came right over to me and got right in my face and... I could smell pussy on him and he was so hyped that I wanted to laugh at him... but I didn't. All he said was, "Pop, you were right!" and all I said was, "I know I was since, um, I was doing it before I was your age..." Or my oldest son who comes home one day and just starts telling me about hi and a few other guys having sex... and like he was telling me about the weather outside. He said, "You were right - guys are amazing cocksuckers and it's... nice to be fucked."

I told him that I knew I was right because I was never going to give him bullshit information and that I knew about it from experience so I just wasn't talking out of my ass about how good - and bad - having sex with dudes can be. My only daughter was eating pussy and having her friends eating hers and she didn't think that we - me and her mom - knew it but we did... because we expected it and she didn't disappoint in this or making the decision to have sex with a boy - but she did both this armed with all the information me and her mother could give her which was a lot since we're both bisexual.

You celebrate your bisexuality by celebrating who you are as a person; you can even and really take a measure of pride in your bisexuality because there are a lot of men and women out there who have tried to go both ways... and they couldn't handle or really understand it or, worse, let social stigma and pressures keep them from being the person they knew they had to be... and now, they aren't.

The responsibility as parents hasn't really gotten any bigger; your job as a parent is to raise your children to be the best people then can be and one way of doing this is to never, ever bullshit them about sex and sexuality because they'll know if you're lying to them... or they'll find out that you lied to them and in ways that you might not have wanted them to find out. Today's parents have this responsibility; I had it when I was raising my children; my parents had it when raising me and my three siblings. My children have children and I know that they took their responsibility as parents seriously and did not bullshit their kids about sex and sexuality; I didn't bat an eye when my oldest granddaughter asked me about... eating pussy that was one interesting conversation, but I told her that she could have asked her mom about it and she said, "Yeah, but she told me that you were doing it way before you ever met grandmom so I should ask you about it!"

All I asked her was, "You are planning on eating some pussy, granddaughter?" and she said, "Most definitely, grandfather - so tell me about it." And I had a long talk with my daughter about dodging the question but she explained that she wanted her to find out about it from a guy's perspective first and, no, her father wasn't that good at it. I left it alone after that...

 

KD23:

You've got my curiosity, now.........

Any males in your family (besides yourself!) into cock/male tail, besides pussy?

Just wondering.........

 

Other than my oldest? No, not that I know of.