Happy LGBTQ Pride Month! We’re only one week in, and news has spread that the good people of Boston, Massachusetts are putting together their own Straight Pride Parade. Yes, you read right. Straight people feel that they need an opportunity to side step on floats in their finest L.L. Bean, with Tom Petty and Foo Fighters blasting in the background.
But also, isn’t Bonaroo already this?
The event’s coordinator, Mark Sahady, took to Facebook May 30 to make the announcement that Straight Pride “will happen.”
“It looks like the Boston Straight Pride Parade will happen. We filed a discrimination complaint and it appears the City of Boston understands they would lose in litigation,” Sahady wrote. “The city is now working with us on the parade. We will have the streets closed and be allowed to have floats and vehicles.”
He continued: “The tentative date is 8/31 but will be finalized in the next few weeks. The proposed parade route is below. If you would like to come as an individual, march as a group, or bring a float or vehicle, then get in touch.”
“This is our chance to have a patriotic parade in Boston as we celebrate straight pride,” Sahady concluded.
Sahady is the vice president of an organization called Super Happy Fun America, who is “committed to creating spaces for people of all identities to embrace the vibrancy of the straight community.”
Their mission statement continues: “We believe that true diversity is only possible when people of all sexual orientations are free to celebrate their lifestyles.”
Organizers have already designed a flag and designated actor Brad Pitt as their “mascot.” We feel Chip Gaines would have been a better pick, but whatevs.
“For them everything is based upon identity and whether or not one is categorized as a victim or an oppressor,” Sahady wrote in another post. “If you get victim status then you are entitled to celebrate yourself and expect those with oppressor status to defer to your feelings.”
Sahady is joined by gay ambassador Chris Bartley who “uses his status in the LGBTQ community to challenge heterophobia wherever it exists.”
Obviously, news of this spread like wildfire and many people were outraged at the idea, since isn’t every day a “straight pride parade” already?
“I’m embarrassed that this nonsense of a Straight Pride Parade is happening in my hometown of Boston,” one Twitter user wrote. “Mark Sahady is ‘Fighting for equality’ meanwhile only 3.5% of the population identify as LGBTQ… how fragile must your ego be to think you’re oppressed when you’re the majority?”
“Once straight people are brutally beaten, denied fundamental human rights, denied health care, killed, and kicked out of their homes just for being straight, then there can be a straight pride parade,” @EllieBowman58 added. “Until then, sit the f*** down and stay quiet.”
We’re hoping this isn’t actually going to happen, but if it is, we all know it will be boring AF. Khaki fabric, plaid prints and cargo cut pants do not deserve to be given a parade. Neither does the music of Dave Matthews, Train or Bryan Adams. Fans of American Ninja Warrior, NCIS: Los Angeles and Fixer Upper do not need more content to be created for them. Toxic masculinity, heteronormative behavior and the strict confines of the gender binary do not need to be given a larger platform.
Give us sequins, rhinestones and glitter! Give us overweight drag queens! Give us go-go boys in g-strings and butch lesbians on motorcycles! And give us go-go boys on motorcycles and butch lesbians in g-strings as well!
Give us fabulous trans women of color voguing in the streets! Give us Diana, Donna, Whitney and Madonna! Give us gender fuckery and the only “toxic” thing anywhere to be seen or heard is the 2004 song recorded by American singer Britney Spears from her fourth studio album In the Zone.
Give us rainbows.
Straight people, you can have your pride parade. Just know that ours will be sooooo much gayer and so much more full of life, love and Liberty.
(Liberty is a hairy chested drag queen who performs the catalogue of Tammy Wynette on Tuesdays at Barracuda in Chelsea.)
