San Francisco gay men’s choir takes aim at homophobe stereotypes.

So anyone who performs in a public parade is trying to convince children to adopt their personal lifestyle?

 

Hey, if that's your thing, knock yerself out.

 

There is a Children's Parade as well (which has some interesting outfits as well), but plenty of kids at the main parade.


Then again, the whole Gasparilla experience is put on by a deviant fringe group, totally out of the mainstream. Who are these people trying to sexualize the children of good mainstream American families?

Richard S. Clarke Sr., 95, known as Dick to his friends, joined in 1950. His life has been a history of legacies, from the Peninsular Paper Co. founded in 1911 that he took over after his father died, to the multigenerational involvement in the exclusive organization that founded and still coordinates the annual parade. They are the marauders that invade Tampa on a fully rigged pirate ship they built as a legion devoted to mythical pirate Jose Gaspar. There have been many multigenerational and well-known families in the krewe’s membership, such as the McKays, the Lykes and the Lowrys, whose names appear on street signs and local landmarks. Although Gasparilla is a citywide party, Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla traces its roots to when Tampa was a small town, and this elite group still organizes the event.

The floats, like the ones for the old Maas Bros. department store, were even bigger than today’s modern floats, and glamorous women were a big part of the float decorations. He recalled the time one of his fellow pirate friends pulled out a Get Out of Jail Free card from the Monopoly game from his wallet when a policeman told him he better move on after the parade. It worked, of course, because that’s how old Tampa rolled, he said.


The Clarke family has witnessed the evolution of Gasparilla, from its booster beginnings, to its raunchy phase of bare-breasted women flashing for beads and intoxicated revelers urinating in yards with impunity. And then there was its stand-down with the NFL and civil rights leaders over the krewe’s failure to accept Black members. After canceling in 1991, a racially integrated Krewe of Gasparilla was joined in the 1992 parade by two new krewes — Ye Loyal Krewe of Grace O’Malley, the first all-female group, and the Krewe of Libertalia, with a predominantly Black roster that also included white and Hispanic people and women.

Being a member of Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla is no easy feat. Costumes of velvet coats, tricorner hats, boots and vests can cost hundreds of dollars. The pirates pay for what they throw, spending hundreds each on beads and trinkets. There are dues to pay to the organization as well, and many balls and parties to attend. Richard Clarke estimated krewe members easily spend $6,000 to $7,000 a year. And to be a captain or king is even more because they are the hosts of their parties and balls, increasing their cost “by a factor north of 15 to 20.” The krewe is fairly secretive about how many members it has or how many openings it allows every year. Past reports have estimated 600 to 800 members, but the organization would not confirm a number. A prospective member has to have a sponsor and a board vote to be welcomed.




Gasparilla parade will have four generations of one family this year

 

Strategically the group should have figured out it would be twisted into something.

sure it’s their right however

Going topless on the WH lawn, and then unrelatedly singing this seeems tone deaf at the very least and GOP fodder for campaigns at worst

 

Probably the latter, but that's not the issus. .

If anyone said to me, in parody or otherwise "we're coming for your children", even if it was an issue I agreed with, I'd tell the to F off and get away from my kid. Period. Full stop.

I know nothing about your life-do you have children or grandchildren? If so, can't imagine you'd react well to anyone saying "we're coming for them" because they thought they could "teach them" better than you, and if you were ok with it, I'd suggest your priorities are backwards. It's simply not funny when other people's kids are involved. It's just not. Regardless of the issue.

Not unlike the NRA saying "we're coming for your kids" even if they meant it to teach them gun safety. That's the parent's responsibility, not theirs, and a complete overstep. No different here.

 

A far better response to the libel of pretending to save the children is the response to Anita Bryant which included "We are Your Children":


About the same time that evening, about 3,000 gay men and lesbians spontaneously gathered in what had become the largest gay neighborhood in the United States—Castro Street in San Francisco—furious at the loss in Dade County. The crowd marched around the Castro District, chanting "We Are Your Children!" pulling people out of gay bars to cheers.[49] Local gay activist and future supervisor Harvey Milk led marchers through a 5-mile (8.0 km) course through the city, careful not to stop for too long lest rioting began.

That chant successfully negated the attempt to otherize and dehumanize our fellow citizens, much like like our governor trying to do now, thinking outsiders when they are us.

Brief digression with the mention of Harvey Milk. He was murdered by Dan White. Here is Tucker Carlson's college yearbook entry



Save Our Children - Wikipedia

Returning to Anita Bryant, she has an especially insidious nationwide and especially here in Florida. Details for those too young:

When Bryant began her campaign in 1977, she had four children, and often said she was speaking as a mother and a Christian. And while the villainization of LGBTQ people was not new, Bryant took the idea of protecting children and made it mainstream. Her campaign and the subsequent “Save Our Children” political coalition used the argument that “homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America.”

Bryant’s focus on the idea that LGBTQ people were threatening to children created a talking point that social conservatives were able to rally around and promote to their friends and neighbors. Bryant paired this with her Christian faith, telling Playboy magazine in 1978 that her position “was not taken out of homophobia, but out of love” for gay people. When a gay activist threw a pie in her face during a news conference, she immediately prayed for the man to be “delivered from his deviant lifestyle.”

“Deviance” was part of Bryant’s core argument that homosexuality was evil and that LGBTQ people didn’t deserve rights. To award them nondiscrimination protection was to offer them a kind of special privilege. If we label homosexuality a civil rights issue, what is to stop “the murderer from shouting ‘murderer rights’”? Bryant wrote in her 1977 book, “The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality.”

Though the times have changed significantly since Bryant’s heyday in the late ‘70s, it appears her views have not. In 2021, Bryant’s granddaughter Sarah Green told Slate that she came out to her grandmother on her 21st birthday. Bryant reportedly responded by saying homosexuality isn’t real.

“It’s very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion,” Green said. Green, who clarified to them.us that she is bisexual, told Slate about her upcoming wedding to her fiancée, a woman, and said she wasn’t sure if her grandmother would be attending.


How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida's LGBTQ culture war

 

Its getting noticed

 

I’ve twice shared the story of a friend of mine who lost his son because LGBTQ came for him. I’ll be happy to share it again. It’s a thing.

 

Seems so simple but the country doesn't have the balls to say enough is enough.

 

Why do drag queens crave an audience of kids ?

 

Anybody saying "we're coming for your children" isn't helping their cause IMO even if it's said sarcastically. But Pride groups aren't the only ones hoping to spread their message. Texas is apparently going to mandate that the 10 Commandments be posted in all public schools so kids have to see them. We're having lots of debates about the extent to which the government should be pushing various information or ideas in schools. At least with an NRA event, drag show, or church service, parents can decide whether or not they want to take their kids.

 

I don’t get the determination to make the Ten Commandments front and center. They’re so tepid.

 

Im not afraid of anyone unduly influencing my kid,

As with our exchange last week your putting partisan politics of a message you agree with (acceptance), as I do, above what are objectively acceptable standards as to messaging.

In other words the acceptability to you of this is based on your underlying belief in the message (acceptance of LGBTQ status) and not the syntax of the message (“we’re coming for your children”)

Different strokes, but mine is independent of whatever influence any messenger may have for my child (who was 6 years old when we told her that her aunt was gay, but that’s a different story for another day).

 

RE: Sexualizing children

 

Hard to miss when it's shared all over social media.

 

you forgot stoves!

 

The problem is many people say "tolerant," but they mean something else. The word "tolerant" is a trojan horse. It is a bastardized word much like many words in the novel 1984. It is not really a kind of tolerance anyone 20 years ago would recognize. The word as it was understood 20 years ago has been stuck from the dictionary in the minds of the people singing those words. They have concocted a new definition of that word in light of the paradox of intolerance.

When they say they plan to teach them tolerance, they are really teaching them to be intolerant towards anyone who dissents from the ideology of the mob. That is what tolerance is now. Tolerance is to agree with the mob ideology and hate everyone else who disagrees with it.

 

And yet, I've never had posts about drag queens occupying my feed. Must be missing out.