Today's Google doodle celebrates the beginning of "Pride Month" with a spinning disco ball:
I got to wondering, just when did this Pride Month business start, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. To my surprise, I find that Bill Clinton first recognized Pride Month in 1999. I must have missed the memo.
I've never changed my belief that gays and lesbians make up about 3 percent of the population; that's 3 out of 100. You can look at the whole field of statistics on this subject and debate it all you want to, but I'm not going there. So by very simple arithmetic, that tells me there are about 10 million gays and lesbians in the United States, the population of which is 342,543,550 as I type this sentence.
(See the U. S. Census Bureau's Population Clock for up-to-the-second figures on the U. S. and world population. See Statistics Canada for Canadian figures. And here's a cheat sheet for you: roughly speaking, the U.S. population is about 8 times bigger than Canada's, and about 3 times bigger than Mexico's or Russia's. However, both India and China have about 4 times more people than the United States.)
Well, anyway, is a whole month of Pride really necessary? It matters not to me, because I'm an old man who doesn't get out of the house much anymore. I've never been to a Pride parade. M.P. and I did go to a Pride celebration at the county fairgrounds on a June night in 2019 - we got there in the cool of the evening about 9 p.m., when it was all winding down.
We nibbled things from the food trucks, listened to a few speakers and singers, and bought some trinkets to take home: a friendly, pleasant, down-home crowd of all ages, very like what you'd find at a real county fair - plus a lot of rainbow flags. There were even some straight couples there, pushing babies in strollers - why, I have no idea. The next year, it was cancelled on account of the pandemic, and we've never heard any more about it in this vicinity.
But I guess there has to be a Pride Month, because you just know that 10 million screaming queens could never agree on a single week, let alone a single day!
P. S. -- M.P. is offended by the disco ball. He says it only represents the little twinkly barflies, and leaves out the butch gays and the lesbians. I guess he's right. We are thinking of suing Google now, and we will certainly file a discrimination complaint with the Grand Gay Cabal. Stay tuned for further updates.
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5 comments:
BTW, I've been to three pride parades
Huh. I totally disremember that. Let's talk later.
I've corrected the post.
We (Leon and I) have been to several Pride parades: Hartford, New York City, Albuquerque, Santa Fe. I think a month is just fine. It gives us 30 days to keep reminding the rest of the world that we exist, and despite their wish that we disappear, we are not going anywhere. I posted a picture on our Nextdoor social media/news site I said a great big thank you to our great neighbors. The picture said: "Think of me as the pole; I'm not part of the flag, but I am straight and I will support you." It got 27 "likes" and 3 very positive comments. As for the disco ball - I have no problem with that; Disco was my music in the 80s and 90s and beyond; there were macho guys at the disco too. I don't know where you went that macho guys were so scarce. And hubby Leon and I just got back from small rural town in PA where he grew up and we were flabergasted when we saw a huge banner on the courthouse fence announcing Endless Mountains Pride Festival in Towanda and Monroeton, PA. He thought there were just two gays in his hometown and he left. So now there are definitely more than one. And forgive me for not checking in often; just tired and I no longer post to Rebel blog. Happy Pride!
Of course we are everywhere, even in backwoods Pennsylvania! I'm sure that made Leon smile.
M.P.. was the one who made the comment about the disco ball - I just added a couple of sentences of tongue-in-cheek levity. He didn't come out till after the turn of the century. I came out in 1980, and yes there were plenty of "macho" - I would say ordinary - men there. The bar was just a few blocks from campus in a univeristy town - and there was a dance floor full of guys who were indistiguishable from all the guys I saw on campus or sat next to in classes.
That was the great and wonderful revelation to me! Gays were not monsters or creeps or chiffon-waving stereotypes - they were guys like me in blue jeans and baseball caps. Didn't stand out in a crowd. That what's I liked and wanted then and now. (It didn't hurt that most of them seemed quite handsome under the light of the disco ball - and they smelled soooo good too!)
And that's the way it was in all the gay bars I went to across the South in the 1980s and 1990s. Most guys were on the masculine side of the spectrum. (At the Round-Up in Dallas, there were lots of cowboy hats and boots - yeehaw! ) But there were always a few giggly, flamboyant types who congregated in one corner, and sometimes there was a drag night once a week. Nobody minded that - I never saw anyone harrassed or mistreated.
I don't consider myself particularly "macho" but I am a man. I like my male body. I don't want to be a woman, nor do I want to bond/meld with femininity. It's masculinity that's attractive to me and to M.P. too - and there's plenty of guys who feel the same way. Just living quietly and getting on with life, not raising a fuss. We just want to be left alone. And how other people live is not my business if they're not bothering me.
And we're not against Gay Pride - you should see our dining table - M.P. has it decked out with a rainbow runner and matching napkins, and about a dozen votive holders in all colors. Very festive! I ought to get a picture of that. Happy Pride to you and Leon!
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