Straight Pride Parade: A Pointless Display of Ignorance and Homophobia
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September 10, 2019
Last weekend, the city of Boston was host to its first Straight Pride Parade, organized by the group Super Happy Fun America, in order to shed light on the way they perceive straight people to be disadvantaged, oppressed, and excluded from society.
Super Happy Fun America is a group advocating for more straight pride in America.
The group claims on their website that straight people are oppressed and not seen as equals. These beliefs are what led them to organize the event.
The parade featured signs saying “make normalcy normal again” supporting anti-gay propaganda, as well as many ‘Make America Great Again’ signs with messages of building the wall.
“Perhaps one day straights will be honored with inclusion and the acronym will be LGBTQS. Until that time, we have no other choice but to host our own events,” said John Hugo, group president.
While John Hugo and the rest of the group seem to believe otherwise, you can not oppress your oppressor and you can not oppress the majority.
Straight people still hold power in America socially, politically, economically, etc. They are still at an advantage for so many things while LGBT+ people are denied opportunities.
LGBT+ people are denied jobs, the ability to adopt, and are denied the right to exist freely in public by bigots who decide they can commit hate crimes just for fun.
Pride parades aren’t something that just happened for LGBT+ people to wear rainbows and dress in drag. Pride isn’t supposed to just be a fun thing that people do. It has a purpose; something straight people tend to ignore.
Pride parades began as protests when trans women of color threw bricks at Stonewall in opposition to police brutality. Yes, they are overcapitalized now and plenty of straight owned companies take advantage of LGBT+ people every year in the name of profit, but that doesn’t mean that pride isn’t still important.
Progress has been made since Stonewall of course, but many people, especially straight people, are ignorant of the violence and hatred still taking place. In 2019, I still get nervous being affectionate with my girlfriend in public regardless of our privilege of not having to worry about racism and/or trans-phobia on top of homophobia. With the number of trans people that have been murdered this year amounting to 18, most of which have been women of color, we still need pride.
Straight people, however, don’t.
Straight people have nothing to celebrate as they haven’t had to overcome years of being discriminated against, having to hide their identities, having people within their community murdered just because of who they love or choose to have sex with. Therefore, straight pride is inherently homophobic, just as white pride is inherently racist.
This parade was an excuse to be homophobic and racist, but the straight people participating will still try and mask it as them being ‘excluded’.
