Pride 2019
2019-Jun-10, Monday 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerIt's a weird year for Gay Pride celebrations.
Trump too-frequently claims to be a gay-friendly president. His first year was awful in this regard, and the second year is no better. When U.S. embassies (in Israel, Germany, Brazil, and Latvia, at least) asked for permission to fly the rainbow flag in recognition of Pride celebrations this year, Trump's administration said no. Some brave embassies around the globe are finding ways to do it anyway, in defiance of Trump's position.
They shouldn't be totally ignored, though. Conservatives keep pretending that they don't have a Nazi problem, yet Nazis showed up at a gay pride celebration in Detroit. Take this stuff seriously. This Republican administration keeps coddling our extremists, and now Nazis are in our streets.
Closer to home, I went to the Golden Valley pride celebration yesterday. It's still small enough to suit my tastes. Only a few thousand people show up instead of the absurdity that is the Twin Cities pride event. In years past, that big one has been called the largest non-gated (free to walk into without passing through a fence) pride event in the USA. Huge, drawing 400,000 people over the weekend, which is the equivalent of a weekend of attendance at the Minnesota State Fair. They really should move it to the State Fairgrounds instead of downtown Minneapolis. But, anyway...
I much prefer the smaller event in Golden Valley at a more reasonable 5,000 people. Even on this day that was colder than usual, so people were wearing sweaters, there was the usual mass of visitors. Some of the food trucks had run out of items, and I was there mid-event. While I was enjoying a beer early on, I heard the singing of Erin Schwab. She had a really great voice. "The Bette Midler of the Twin Cities" as one local tv host calls her. I sat at a table in this photo with a coworker from one of my programming jobs 2 decades ago. She was my database administrator and technical trainer at the time.
Bringing it all together to remember the weird USA that we find ourselves in, last night there was a murder in the alley between a gay bar and a police station in downtown Minneapolis. I think at this point that it was just the usual random gun violence here in the #WarzoneInMinneapolis with too many people (some of them dangerous) crowded into downtown near the metro transit stations. Obviously the increased police presence isn't helping, since the shooting happened immediately outside the wall of the police station.
I leave you with a poster that crossed my feeds this week.
A little more of this, please, and a little less of people arming themselves in anticipation of harming someone (themselves or others).
If Ilhan Omar (a Muslim immigrant from a war-torn country, and my U.S. House representative) can do it, then surely some longtime "locals" in the USA can manage it too?
Trump too-frequently claims to be a gay-friendly president. His first year was awful in this regard, and the second year is no better. When U.S. embassies (in Israel, Germany, Brazil, and Latvia, at least) asked for permission to fly the rainbow flag in recognition of Pride celebrations this year, Trump's administration said no. Some brave embassies around the globe are finding ways to do it anyway, in defiance of Trump's position.
“This is a category one insurrection,” said one diplomat, who like others interviewed about the sentiment over the rejections, which were not made in writing, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired. A practice routinely approved for most of the decade at many embassies now requires top-level approval from the State Department. But this year, as first reported by NBC News, all requests were nixed.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-embassies-still-hoisting-rainbow-flags-despite-advisory-from-washington/2019/06/08/eeea0bd4-89f4-11e9-a870-b9c411dc4312_story.html
"Wow! Cool initiative, fellas!! Just a thought, instead of ‘Straight Pride’ parade, how about this: The ‘desperately trying to bury our own gay thoughts by being homophobic because no one taught us how to access our emotions as children’ parade? Whatta ya think? Too on the nose??"
- https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/1136264161539833856
- https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans/status/1136264161539833856
They shouldn't be totally ignored, though. Conservatives keep pretending that they don't have a Nazi problem, yet Nazis showed up at a gay pride celebration in Detroit. Take this stuff seriously. This Republican administration keeps coddling our extremists, and now Nazis are in our streets."Twitter is commissioning academic research into the question of whether it should get rid of the Nazis."
"We actually did a whole war about this one. It was in all the papers."
- https://twitter.com/kenlowery/status/1133823796337623043
"We actually did a whole war about this one. It was in all the papers."
- https://twitter.com/kenlowery/status/1133823796337623043
Closer to home, I went to the Golden Valley pride celebration yesterday. It's still small enough to suit my tastes. Only a few thousand people show up instead of the absurdity that is the Twin Cities pride event. In years past, that big one has been called the largest non-gated (free to walk into without passing through a fence) pride event in the USA. Huge, drawing 400,000 people over the weekend, which is the equivalent of a weekend of attendance at the Minnesota State Fair. They really should move it to the State Fairgrounds instead of downtown Minneapolis. But, anyway...
I much prefer the smaller event in Golden Valley at a more reasonable 5,000 people. Even on this day that was colder than usual, so people were wearing sweaters, there was the usual mass of visitors. Some of the food trucks had run out of items, and I was there mid-event. While I was enjoying a beer early on, I heard the singing of Erin Schwab. She had a really great voice. "The Bette Midler of the Twin Cities" as one local tv host calls her. I sat at a table in this photo with a coworker from one of my programming jobs 2 decades ago. She was my database administrator and technical trainer at the time.Bringing it all together to remember the weird USA that we find ourselves in, last night there was a murder in the alley between a gay bar and a police station in downtown Minneapolis. I think at this point that it was just the usual random gun violence here in the #WarzoneInMinneapolis with too many people (some of them dangerous) crowded into downtown near the metro transit stations. Obviously the increased police presence isn't helping, since the shooting happened immediately outside the wall of the police station.
I leave you with a poster that crossed my feeds this week.
A little more of this, please, and a little less of people arming themselves in anticipation of harming someone (themselves or others).
"Happy Pride Month! I will always stand in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community in the continued fight for equality."
- https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1134914261321338882
- https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1134914261321338882
If Ilhan Omar (a Muslim immigrant from a war-torn country, and my U.S. House representative) can do it, then surely some longtime "locals" in the USA can manage it too?