CapitalPride
This past weekend was CapitalPride and I left my camera in my desk at work, how silly!
Despite a full day of rain on Saturday the sky cleared at 6 in time for the parade kickoff at 6:30. Julie, my parents, and I watched from the sidewalk around Dupont Circle and had a great time. Last year I marched with PFLAG so it was nice to watch the entire parade this year. There are, as a point of clarification, quite a few cod pieces in the world, far more than I had previously thought.
In part due to weather and in part because of the bad economy both the parade and the street festival the next day were smaller than previous years. I spent Sunday morning operating the Americans United for Separation of Church and State table with Beth while the festival got going. Other than a horribly overpriced food experience, Pride is such a wonderful opportunity to get to see the LGBT community, family, and friends come out and celebrate their culture and their identities.
I have often heard people complain about these events because they represent to some a needless expression of difference. I have even heard them called a continued source of the problems and discrimination. If this is the case it is not because these wonderfully proud people are standing up and enjoying who they are, the problem is with a system that fails to accord full protections to what they are standing up for. Without a Pride celebration and without LGBT organizations we would not know the true depravity of the opposition as highlighted by Attorney General John Ascroft's refusal, the first at a federal agency, to allow the employee group to have a Pride celebration. Many thanks to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, for leading the charge in defense of federal employees (you will note when reading this article that "Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in a statement today that he had asked Mr. Ashcroft before confirmation about DOJ Pride's use of government facilities. Mr. Ashcroft said then that he had "no intent to treat this group differently than any other."")
If on the other hand these events are not feeding into the problem of discrimination and are simply expressions of difference and identity they still warrant protection and celebration. If we are to struggle to preserve autonomy as the highest value of a free and open society then ought we not reap the benefits of celebrating the cultures and identities that individuals in our midst live for themselves? I love the Pride celebration because I am being given an opportunity to publicly celebrate as an ally with a strong, healthy, and diverse community of individuals that share this city with me.
Failing all of those reasons, it was at least an opportunity to expand my collection of pins for good liberal causes. My favorite new one is from Amnesty International.
Who is this guy?
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