The
message was clear. At least, they thought it was. On a glorious hot weekend in
Los Angeles, rainbow colored flags, clothes, scarves, jewelry, dogs (you name
it, rainbows owned it) took to the streets to celebrate Pride.
Except for THEM. The tiny group
being penned in behind a metal barrier and being carefully watched by the
police. They were like the Cybermen, sinisterly lurking in wait to attack the
Tardis of pleasure. Their banners said it all - or would have done, had one man
not also had a microphone, into which he bellowed the terrifying message. God’s
pronouncement on the ten plagues of Egypt could not have been more sinister. I
tell you, ten minutes later I could barely keep my cost price Pride Special
Breakfast down.
Putting things in your “rear end”
is WRONG! the beast declared. God is going to punish you for using your bottom
as a parking lot (my words; you really don’t want to hear how explicit he was).
So there. Engaging in this heinous activity will give you AIDS. “How many of
your friends have DIED. . . Do you WANT HIV?” The capital letters rained down
like a plague of locusts.
Then he got started on lesbians,
for whom he had saved most of his wrath. “Wait till you get licked out by God!”
(To be honest, he seemed to know a little bit too much about it all for my
comfort. Does God even know what licking out means?). “Your vagina was not
meant for a dildo!” He declared. Hey, mate, it wasn’t meant for yoghurt,
either, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
I was in two minds whether to go
over and bring him up on a point of order: straight women use dildos, too -
usually when pricks like this make us lose all hope of ever finding a man.
Here was the legal issue: was it
lesbians per se who were going to hell, or just the dildo-wielding lesbians? Or
was the dildo itself the real crime of the drama? If a straight woman uses a
dildo, does she stand more chance of passing the pearly gates than the heinous
gay one? If a straight woman’s man is away on business, is she allowed to
indulge as a point of desperation? I was so anxious to try to clear this up; it’s
a moot point.
And back to the rear end. The
voice boomed out that there were all sorts of unspeakable things that men were
putting there (dildos suddenly sounded the least of everyone’s problems).
Indeed, we wouldn’t believe what men were capable of in their uphill gardening
(ok, the gardening bit is again mine, not the speaker’s; he had all sorts of
words for the unsavory trough awaiting planting). The suspense was killing me.
For the love of God, mate, tell us! My imagination was running riot. What goes
up there? A toaster? Air con unit? A condo?
I have a lot of gay friends, male
and female, and rear ends hardly ever enter the conversation; in fact, a lot of
my gay male friends are rather averse to that part of the proceedings. Maybe
they need to buy a toaster.
Apparently, the God Squad group
gets smaller every year, which is a blessing. On a day celebrating diversity
and tolerance, it’s ironic that it was only the Born Again Christians yelling
their messages of hatred. If cars had been allowed on the street, I’d have been
sorely tempted to...well, rear-end them.
How do people find the time to
worry so much about what others are doing in their sex lives? I can barely get
it together to think about whether I can be arsed to reach the remote for the
telly, let alone hire a speaker system to discuss what people get up to amongst
themselves. Who cares? Unless there is evidence of abuse, you can build a multi-storey
in your vagina or rear end and you won’t hear any complaints from me.
Homophobes and lunatics aside, it
was a joyous weekend. T-shirts backed their various causes - “I support planned
parenthood”, “Lesbian single mom strong” - and strangers mingled with
likeminded people as if they were long lost family.
I will admit to having felt a
little bit out of it though - The Only Straight in the Village (the opposite of
the UK’s Little Britain show featuring The Only Gay in the Village). With the
exception of the friend I met for drinks, I didn’t meet one straight person the
whole weekend. That’s nothing new, really. As friends have pointed out in the
past, if I will take up residence in Soho (London), West Hollywood (Los
Angeles) and Hell’s Kitchen (New York), I’m not going to meet Mr Right or, as I
now prefer to say: I’m going to have to kiss a lot of toasters before I meet my
Prince. And, let’s be honest, time’s running out. I’m 60 years old now: at the
rate my underused innards are shrinking, I’ll be lucky if I’ll be able to
harbor a cocktail stick, let alone a dildo.
One thing I took away from the
day was what a family day Pride has become. Rainbow-decked kids were out in
force with their families, gay or straight (I didn’t ask), and I felt proud (yes,
pride with a small “p”) to be living in a time (at least, in our part of the
world), where being gay does not make you an outcast; where those young people
I saw on the street will know that being gay is not an affliction. To thine own
self be true (Shakespeare). Be good to one another (Jesus - so stick that up
your rear end, arseholes!).
Alas, much of the world and much
of our own society in the so-called civilised world does not concur, as
witnessed by the fanatics behind the barrier. But that barrier served as a
metaphor: the bigots are behind bars, screaming to ever-decreasing circles as
the world changes and evolves. Be proud.
And if I ever do meet Mr Right, I
don’t want an effing toaster for a wedding present. Goddit?
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