Dear moderate gays, get your crazies under control
I have said this before, and I will say it again because bears repeating.
Human beings are a gregarious species. We live our lives interacting with each other in communities.
We generally want those interactions to be peaceful. Part of what makes a community or nation or civilization sustainable peaceful are social norms expected codes of personal conduct.
Through history, religion has served as the basis for establishing rules and norms, with ritual being used to reinforce them and pass them down to the next generation.
Even without religion norms and codes of conduct exist and need to exist.
When everybody adheres to the norms, societies function quite well.
Some progress is needed in society. I will agree that sometimes the rules and norms are stifling and they need to be relaxed a little bit.
A. Little. Bit.
However, when people stray too far out of the norms, or the norms are done away with altogether, bad things happen. That social cohesion that comes from everybody knowing what the rules are and following them falls apart.
Most people don’t like to live in the uneasy conditions of a dis-cohesive society. Eventually, the normals will force the rules back into play.
This is the cycle of history. Societies become more liberalized until they pop and the pendulum swings back in a reformation. If the religious wars of Europe show us anything, these reformations can be very bloody.
Enter Huffpost Canada.
Are Pride Parades Kid-Friendly? Parents Say Children Can Handle The Kink
Excuse me?
Who in the fuck wrote the words “Children Can Handle The Kink” and thought it was a good idea.
I can feel the glue of civil society starting to dissolve when I read them.
Each year, in the blazing sun of the Pride parade in Nelson, B.C., Pega Ren and her two young grandkids seek shade under their spinning rainbow parasols.
Ren, a semi-retired sex therapist, told HuffPost Canada the parasols were a magical find, and have come to symbolize the importance of this event for her family. Ren spoke joyfully of going to the dollar store, picking up all the rainbow ribbons and flags, decorating the roller skates and the stroller, and getting the costumes ready.
“I can’t imagine a safer place for families to bring children,” she said of Pride.
A resounding chorus of voices — from within the queer community and not — would agree with this general sentiment about Pride parades and kids. But in late May, one tweet turned it into a bigger conversation.
Call me a bigot, but this is not something I want my children to see on a city street. We don’t need to have a bigger conversation about why it’s inappropriate to flash your asshole in bondage gear in public.
https://twitter.com/IndyaMoore/status/1137790366609006593
The post asked parade participants not to “sexualize” Pride and to leave their fetish and kink at home, for the sake of minors.
Anyone who has been to a parade has likely seen the procession of leather animal costumes, kinky costumes in every hue, and more skin than is normally exposed in public.
Although the post and account have since been deleted, the tweet got many people talking: How child-appropriate are Pride festivities? And why does this discussion hit a nerve for the LGBTQ+ community?
“At some level this has always been part of a much larger debate of what Pride is,” David Rayside, a retired politics and sexual diversity professor at the University of Toronto, told HuffPost Canada.
“Pride has always had a kind of outrageous edge to it. And should we alter that? It is not the Santa Claus parade, and it never was. It shouldn’t be. It can’t be.”
You know what I want to see in a Pride Parade?
A bunch of men in suits or shirts and slacks, calmly and quietly walking, waving at the crowd.
Why? Because that’s how normal people behave.
Showing your asshole in a leather thong to children is not normal.
That said, Rayside added, not only is it important for parents to bring their kids, but “I’ve seen thousands of kids at Pride, and I’ve never seen anyone fuss about what they see there.”
In fact, many parents would fuss at the thought of not bringing kids to these events.
Bad parents.
“There is absolutely no reason not to take our kids to Pride — it’s a fun day, there are a lot of bubbles, rainbow streamers and enjoyable performances,” writer, educator, and publisher S. Bear Bergman told HuffPost Canada.
Plus, as queer parents, it’s one of their cultural festivals, added Bergman, who who attends Toronto Pride every year with his kids.
“It’s their right as queer spawn. And as a parent, I might want to take my kids to Pride, because they might be lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer or two-spirit.”
This right here is a problem. You are telling me that being gay and gay culture is inseparable from libertine fetishism. For straight people to accept gay people that means that straight people have to accept grotesque displays of overt sexuality in front of children. That is not going to happen.
The innocence of children has been a Juedo-Christan cultural norm for thousands of years. This is not one to me chipped away at lightly.
Politics have a prominent place in Pride, Rayside said, but “it is also about outrage,” a time when some in the community express this “in ways that confront normal sensibilities.”
This is treading on very thin ice.
The freedom to do so is embedded within LGBTQ+ culture and history. These expressions are the most colourful during the parade.
Bergman defended these elements and their right to exist at a kid-friendly event.
“First of all, nobody likes nakedness more than children,” Bergman said.
I’ll take “things pedophiles say for 900, Alex.”
“On the list of things that I don’t want my children ever to be exposed to are: Compulsory heterosexuality, demonstrations of sexism, demonstrations of racism, demonstrations of ablism, violence. These are all way higher on the list than some homosexual’s tuchus.”
This is suuuuuuper woke. It’s also a false dichotomy.
Putting on her sex therapist hat, Ren emphasized that Pride, from kink to nakedness, is an excellent opportunity for parents to do unbiased sex education.
“Look at that queer’s asshole on a parade float” is not “unbiased sex education.”
Bergman also pointed out that many children don’t even interpret most of what they’re seeing in a Pride parade as sexual, but rather as dress-up or fun.
I’ll take “things pedophiles say for 1000, Alex.”
This Bergman guy needs to understand that he sounds like a child molester trying to groom a victim.
“Children benefit from seeing people loving one another, from seeing diversity and inclusion. Children suffer from seeing violence and fear, hatred and divisiveness,” Ren said.
But love and kink are not the same thing. My wife and I can show each other affection in front of our children without either of them seeing my asshole.
I don’t know what kind of sex therapy sex education Ren here has, but exposing children to sex at an early age harms them.
Victims of child molestation suffer deep emotional damage are frequently scarred for life. They often have issues as adults with emotional connectedness and physical intimacy because the way many molesters (especially familial molesters) tell children that the sexual abuse is a sign of love.
“Two men flashing their assholes at gawking crowds is just how they show love” is not something anybody with experience in dealing with the victims of childhood sexual abuse would say.
I honestly don’t care what two consenting adults do in private.
Overt and kinky sexualization in public in front of children falls outside the cultural norms of civil society.
Saying “you’re a homophobic bigot if you don’t let me engage in my sexual fetish in public in front of children, that’s my gay culture” stretches the fabric of society to its breaking point.
I can guarantee that there are more parents who want to preserve the innocence of their children than there are gay people.
Knowing the cycle of history, it is best to let society progress slowly.
You’re here, you’re queer, we got used to it.
You’re here, you’re queer, and you want to act like perverts around our kids? No.
Normal gays, you need to get the radical gays in line because – and I’ve said this before on a wide range of topics – the pushback will suck.
