Gay Pride Parade Rejects a Gay Group for Supporting Trump
North Carolina – A group says ‘Charlotte Pride’ is pushing them out of the Gay Pride Parade because they support President Trump.
“I’m very proud of my country, proud of my president, and was once proud of my community,” said Brian Talbert, who said he’s proud to be gay and proud to be a Trump supporter. …
Talbert said he and a fellow gay Trump supporter sent in an application to Charlotte Pride so they could have a float in this year’s Charlotte Pride Parade.
“It was going to be fun. We wanted to be energetic. We wanted to show that we weren’t the racist, bigot, misogynistic…We wanted to show that we are Americans, love our country and our president. We wanted to be there to celebrate gay pride. Everything fell into place except being able to celebrate who I am,” he said.
Talbert said Charlotte Pride sent him an email denying his application for a float. …
A spokesperson for the organization said in written statement … “Charlotte Pride envisions a world in which LGBTQ people are affirmed, respected and included in the full social and civic life of their local communities, free from fear of any discrimination, rejection, and prejudice.”
This is story is so perfectly 2017 it should be etched onto golden plates and buried in a time capsule to be preserved for future generations once nuclear war wipes out all our data. The groups that have made the most progress toward equality in our lifetimes, acting like the very people they struggled against. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Charlotte Pride just ran into the classic Tolerance Paradox: Demanding acceptance of all ideas until you run into the ones you find unacceptable. You want the Ten Commandments in a public place? Fine. But get ready for the inevitable Church of Satan monument. You say you’re an absolutist on Free Speech? Check back with me when your 12-year-old is listening to someone rap about killing cops. You’re all about individuals doing what they want with their own bodies? Tell that to the smokers.
And now it’s Charlotte Pride’s turn to try to navigate their ship through those tricky moral waters. It wasn’t that long ago that a gay Irish group went to the Supreme Court to march in the South Boston St. Patrick’s parade. And got smoked, 9-0. I’m not saying who was morally right and who was wrong. Aside from the obligatory old bags the local news would always find screeching “It’s Adam & EVE! Not Adam & STEEEVE!!!” They were as wrong as wrong gets. And it all worked out as a gay veterans group marches every year, the Seventh Seal still remains intact and the End of Days has not come. And in retrospect the whole issue was pretty stupid and a waste of lawyers fees.
I guess I’m just a big fan of irony. If not blatant hypocrisy. Charlotte Pride is using the exact same logic to keep out the MAGA gays that was used against them. That the organizers have the right to turn down anyone they want for any reason they want. They’re all about seeing LGBTQ people being affirmed, respected and included, free from fear of discrimination, rejection and prejudice. Until those particular LGBTQ people voted different than the organizers. Then it’s discriminate, reject and prejudge away. “Sure, we might have said ‘full social and civic life of the local community.’ But we weren’t talking about everybody. Just the ones who think exactly like us.”
The bottom line is this kind of thing was inevitable. And we’ll see a lot more of it. The Acceptance Pendulum was way far to the side of Discrimination, swung faster than we were ready for, and went so far to the side of Tolerance that the people who benefited the most are trying to adjust it back just enough to suit their own agenda. It just sucks that there are still people who legitimately want to support the goals are still being discriminated against by their own.