Gay Pride Parades

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I was nosing around on the Oregonean Newspaper website and I came across photos of their Gay Pride parade. I’ll only post links, since you need to have permission to use the photos.

What I want to know is, what are they proud of. From the looks of photos and videos that I’ve seen of these parades, there are a lot of gay people making fools of themselves and making it seem as if gay people are a bunch of hedonistic perverts.

Photo of cross dressers at parade, and their admirers

Another ridiculously dressed man

Now, I ask you, what are they proud of? Why don’t they try and improve the image of gays in their parade, instead of confirming every negative stereotype in the book?
 
Sailboat said:
I was nosing around on the Oregonean Newspaper website and I came across photos of their Gay Pride parade. I’ll only post links, since you need to have permission to use the photos.

What I want to know is, what are they proud of. From the looks of photos and videos that I’ve seen of these parades, there are a lot of gay people making fools of themselves and making it seem as if gay people are a bunch of hedonistic perverts.

Photo of cross dressers at parade, and their admirers

Another ridiculously dressed man

Now, I ask you, what are they proud of? Why don’t they try and improve the image of gays in their parade, instead of confirming every negative stereotype in the book?
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The structure and festivities of gay pride parades have very old roots. They skip over most modern parades and reach back to traditional celebrations to find their way of doing things. Surely some of you have seen The Festival of Fools portrayed in DIsney’s version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Those types of festivals, where the natural order was subverted through such activities as making the village idiot a king for a day, stem from the religions where man considered himself more akin to his Gods. Nowadays such wild celebration and randomness no longer have pagan connotations, but survive as wild celebrations.

To end history and present some personal theory, I would venture to say most participants don’t even know what the heck I am talking about, but are rather tapping into a collective memory of traditional celebrations, some of which were even utilized by early Hebrews and Christians.

It must be noted these types of celebrations are not limited to gay pride parades. In the west our public celebrations are tpyically very formal affairs compared to the rest of the world, where many annual festivals involve ritual dances and rites, or just plain silliness and wild inventiveness, and all link back to the original way the first religious worshippers celebrated.

You can agree with or disagree with it, but that’s the most socialogically sound answer. And no, before anyone says it, that doesn’t make gays pagans.
 
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