I stumbled across an article from back in march talking about the most recent gay pride parade in Toronto. It was mostly people bickering about whether the nudity at the parade was acceptable or even legal. The whole situation had me shaking my head. It wasn't even so much the presence of nudity, it was the insistence that nudity was an expression of gay pride. That somehow who you like dictates how much clothes you wear. Then a quote at the end of the article really got to me.

Toronto Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays executive director Irene Miller has been attending Pride festivities since 1978. She recalls Pride 2010, when PFLAG marched behind grand marshals Todd Klink and Mandy Goodhandy, owners of pansexual nightclub Goodhandy’s.

“They had an entourage with them, and we had the privilege of marching behind a good number of bums, and it was wonderful,” she says. “The purpose of Pride is not to normalize gay culture. We don’t want our gay children to conform to straight culture. We want them to be accepted exactly as they are. If that’s leather chaps and bare bums, then that’s what we’ll love.

What the actual fuck? This is insane on so many levels. You want them to be accepted as they are? I didn't know that wearing assless chaps was a state of being. But hey, they can't help it, they were born that way, came right out of their mother wearing leather.

Leather is fine. bare asses are nice. I'm not complaining about getting to see that, but don't for a minute make this about some innate expression of the self and a celebration of what it is to be homosexual. No, its a celebration of what it is to walk around half naked covered in leather. Its like saying a collage fraternity is a celebration of heterosexual culture.

But thats the real kicker, isn't it. There is no heterosexual culture because forming a culture around a sexuality is just dumb. There was a gay culture because at one point in time there had to be. Homosexuality was underground and so people had to form their own communities and culture. The need for that has passed. Even if you want to keep pride in your now irrelevant culture like the Cherokee mourning over the slaughter of their entire people, don't call it gay pride.

The homosexual youth of tomorrow will be assimilated into "straight" culture, and thats the best thing you could ask for. No longer are they going to have to exclude themselves and remain segregated. Hell, maybe they wont want to kill themselves so much then.

Lets face it, gay pride is counter productive.