Well, it’s June 1st so that means the official start of Pride Month.
I had noticed last year, even before the Trump Restoration, that things were a bit toned down.
In previous years, Pride Month was treated as a greater civic holiday in many urban (and even suburban) areas than, say, Memorial or Independence Day, with public proclamations, yard signs, parades and various flags and other paraphernalia.
Last year, not so much. In fact, even in the more lefty environs it seemed that things had peaked a bit.
Why? We can speculate, and I get the impression that this year will be even a bit more subdued. It will still be publicly celebrated, but a critical data point — the perceived commercial value of the celebration — shows a decline; the amount of merchandise in stores seems even lower.
As our cultural wars progress through their various campaigns, it’s useful to go back and take another look at past events.
To be sure there is a significant LGB+ population and adjacent communities that will continue to celebrate Pride Month. But it is the compulsion to join in the celebrations that is perceived by other parts of the population that is the critical part.
That is because of the use of power.
Radical ideologies rise at an accelerating rate not just because of a growing number of adherents. The true believers may be numerous but they are never enough in and of themselves to effect real change. It is because they are able to compel other parts of the population to join in that there is a magnified effect due to a positive feedback loop. The others go along to get along with those who are perceived to hold power, on the principle that you cannot fight City Hall.
The past 10 years have proven this many times. Just like you don’t want to be the first North Korean to stop clapping when Kim Jong Un gives a speech, it doesn’t help your career prospects to be seen as less than an enthusiastic supporter of various DEI causes at work.
Through my various interactions with parents, I think the reason so many of them dragged their kids to Drag Queen Story Hour was that it bought them safety from the Evil Eye: they could claim that taking their kids to these places showed they were loyal members of the “party.” Whether we wanted to admit it or not, many of us were living under a proto social-credit system.
Past Pride Months, with their public displays of flags, public proclamations, and parades with outrageous behavior, were more than just celebrations, when seen within an overall context of Drag Queen Story Hours and laws preventing parents’ knowing if their schools were transitioning their kids. At some point they became occupations of the public space, designed to tell people who was in charge. Just as the emperor Justinian changed the public architecture in the cities of the Empire to let everyone know that they now lived in a Christian society, LGB+ over the past 10 years has used public and commercial space to communicate the message of a transgressive ascendancy.
However, the thing about the power of compulsion is that it’s a matter of perception: it only works if you are viewed as powerful. Once that perception begins to wane, the feedback loop becomes negative and your position undergoes a rapid collapse until it reaches a new equilibrium. The apparent decline in DEI, and in other compulsory near-Stalinist wokery, shows that the transgressive Left is, for now, in decline, as are the authoritarian parts of LGB+.
How much? I think we will find out this month.
To those in the LGB+ community, I wish them a happy Pride Month; June is a good month to have a parade and all of the other festivities. Just remember that it’s okay if not everyone wants to join in. In fact, it is a sign of maturity on your part if you recognize this.
There will always be enemies. Time to stop being your own.
– Larry Kramer in his debut novel
Gay culture has grown toxic with unchecked privilege. It’s time for us to reset.
“Gay” for eons conjured up the image of a little girl with colorful ribbons in her hair and a smile on her face running through a field of knee-deep flowers. That is the true meaning of “gay”. That word was stolen from us — I want it back.
There is a perfectly good word in the English language for the people who stole “gay”. They are homosexuals … and that is their choice; nothing wrong with that. Let them have their parades, but let them also return that stolen word to the rest of us. When they do that, we will know the world has returned to a proper equilibrium.
I think the general public has had a quiet preference cascade: now resoundingly tired to exhaustion over all things gay/queer/nonbinary/LBTQWXYZ. The love that ages ago didn’t dare speak it’s name now won’t stop shrieking about it, and the rest of us are tired. Tired of being hectored, nagged and bullied by the shrieking element, tired of all-gay, all-the-time in movies and media, in the d*mn street frightening the horses, and especially in elementary grade- and middle-school classrooms. I speculate that the corporate powers are finally picking up on what this public exhaustion is costing them, and are dialing it back … finally.
Sgt. Mom, I think the fatigue is due to the endless shrieking and hectoring from many vectors of modern life.
Regarding the up and coming term “black fatigue,” there is a tiredness related to being told that things are worse than ever, when they’re clearly not, and if things are bad it’s not non-blacks’ fault.
Gay fatigue has morphed into Trans fatigue, weariness of the constant efforts to compel normal people to go along with the delusions of a small minority who seeks attention with all the volume and feral intensity of a mean girl on the wrong end of a breakup.
Government fatigue, social media fatigue, traffic fatigue, climate hype fatigue. Woke movie fatigue. People are tired, and when they get tired they get truculent, a fact the legions of activists ignore. When they’re tired enough, they get silent. That’s not going along; it’s quiet quitting society.
But now we have a bulwark again in Donald Trump, and those of us who kept our mouths shut and our powder dry know the man in charge thinks the way we do. He is a source of energy. Pride month is toned down because of the quiet quitting. Part of it is not spending money on people who hate you. The rest of it is Donald Trump, who realizes he has a weary legion standing behind him.
I remember a piece in The Onion back from 25 years ago (the last the The Onion was funny) entitled “Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years”
Back in 2015 when Obergefell was decided and same-sex marriage became the law of the land, the gay rights movement could have collected its winnings in terms of social acceptance and retired to a form of genteel bourgeois acceptability. Instead as Mark Steyn said once they achieved victory they immediately went around and (metaphorically) shot the wounded by pressing home cases like Masterpiece Bake Shop and revealing an authoritarian bent in regard to society at large. Never mind that Phillips as a Christian not only didn’t bake cakes for same sex weddings, he didn’t bake them for Halloween or divorce parties either, never mind that there were plenty of other places to get a cake made… Phillips had to submit.
About that time but certainly by 2020-21 the transgressive element of the gay rights movement made its public return. Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual became the Alphabet People turning into LGB then eventually into LGBTQIA2S+ as the movement associated itself with every sexually-themed group outside what was so recently the mainstream.
The hidden surprise was what the “+” meant…. it was more than just a shorthand for future expansion but rather covered certain loves that dare not speak their names such as the infamous MAPS (Minor Attracted Persons), better known as Pedophilia
The gay rights movement never developed an off-switch, a boundary line that defined something beyond which it would never go. It never lost its transgressive core and energy, even when portraying itself as simply wishing acceptance. The problem with transgressiveness is that it is by definition relative, rather than pocketing its new social acceptability and accepting the associated social responsibility it chose to be the perpetual out group. It was not only the (ongoing) dalliance with MAPS but the sexualization of children especially with graphic books available in school libraries.
The other part of that transgressive worldview was its embrace of transgenderism and the accompanying demand that society at large adapt to it in all its institutional forms even down to the level of bathroom assignment and passport documentation. Then there was of course both the mutilation and social transitioning of children and on and on and on…. that was a public step too far. It’s one thing to ask or even demand acceptance, but it’s quite another to force others to bend to your will.
I can think of no better way of revealing the current gay rights movement as a bunch of fanatics as its embrace of transgenderism. A number of radical feminists such as JK Rowling have been attacked for their pointing out that transgenderism means repudiating both women and by extension lesbians, but she has too much money to be fully canceled. Martina Navratilova however? Perhaps one of the gutsiest people out there as not only a defector but as someone who came out as a lesbian while a public figure 40 years ago (why isn’t there a Subaru model named after her?) has been canceled for pointing out what transgenderism means for women sports. On the other hand you have sellouts like Meg Rapione who fully support men in women sports… of course Rapione only did so at the end of her career.
Yes people are exhausted by it and it all peaked before Trump’47. On the other hand I don’t expect much in terms of rollback. The basic ideology, the core of followers is stay there and the ghost of Matthew Shepherd still fills their dreams… sometime over the next five years there likely will be another breakout.
One other cause of possible “Peak Pride Month” and that is the infamous Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light can.
I was initially taken by surprise by the backlash to it because it was 1) a promotional item, not something available in stores 2) Bud and other companies had been providing Pride-themed merchandise for bars for years.
Of course what fueled things was the tone deaf response of Bud Light, especially their marketing VP who couldn’t understand why people were objecting NOW after she had been queering the brand for so long.
Full disclosure: While in the Navy, for a short time my dick thought it was a lesbian. It went through a phase but only because some of them were hot. I’ll never March in a gay parade however. The hot ones don’t do that anyway.