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Loading ...Councilwoman retracts letter of support for San Diego gay pride
07.15.2009 1:05pm EDT
(La Mesa, Cali.) Ruth Sterling, a Councilwoman in La Mesa, California, retracted a letter of support she sent to the San Diego gay pride celebration after receiving pressure from conservative Christian activist James Hartline to do so.
Sterling, a Republican, was one of about 20 elected officials who had sent letters of support to the nonprofit San Diego LGBT Pride organization. After her letter was posted to the group’s website, Hartline told her he thought she should have it removed. Sterling said she initially refused.Last month, Sterling sent a second letter to the group after she discovered more about “the nature of some of the activities that take place” and that she “was shocked and shaken to my core to learn of the lewd and lascivious behavior and unconscionable activities portrayed.”
“Her letter was just disappointing,” said Ron deHarte, executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride. “The words she was using were disappointing coming from an elected official in the year 2009.”
Read the full San Diego Union-Tribune story here.
Kyle – You are right in implying that there are going to be people who find us offensive no matter what and its my experience in life that nobody is liked by everyone, and to attempt that is little more than a fools errand.
Your point that our “gay identity” is being somewhat blended away these days. I can’t even go into a gay bar without feeling like I am in a straight bar these days. It’s a sign of growth I imagine, yet it does change the dynmaic somewhat – and not necessarily in ways I always like.
Excellent Mark!…You’ve totally crystallized my thoughts on what’s pushed as “the gay community”.
However…I must say this. Parades and street parties often get…iffy in their behavior. I hear about gay pride parades/events, but I don’t hear anything about the things that happen at straight public gatherings.
Being from New Orleans, the gay parts of the quarter are often scrutinized for lewd behavior, while straights are using the entire length of Bourbon Street to show their breasts and penises from street to balcony and balcony to street to take part in the long tradition of stripping for beads!…
This is treated as…a part of New Orleans culture, and most people look the other way. All kinds of lewd activity takes place in straight bars as well. It’s just that when young straight people do things, it’s laughed off as men being men, young folk being young folk or New Orleans being New Orleans.
Let a gay person behave in a SIMILAR manner with someone of the same sex and…it’s called OUTRAGEOUS behavior!…
What about how obnoxious and tacky and gross straight people act at national sporting events, in over the top gag drag and inapropriate t-shirts, bodies painted crazy etc… This is considered an acceptable part of hetero culture and is laughed off as being “all in good fun”. Let a gay person act in a similar manner at a gay event and it’s offensive?
I guess I shouldn’t be so shocked. After all, straights think NOTHING of locking lips in the mall food court. If I were to just briefly hold my partners hand in the mall, the very same straights who were just swapping spit at Sbarro would likely get up in our faces and decry how we were “FORCING” our lifestyle on them!?!?!?!?
What do we do about the double standard?
Your parade must be a blast. I have been to ones in Dallas, New York, Toronto. None of those had lude behavior. Did they have floats with scantly clad hunks. You betcha. Where they dancing together, holding hands, God forbid Kissing. You betcha. Were they doing it on the float. Not that I saw. Please explain what happens at your parade that is so offensive?
Compare and contrast: Pride parade vs. Mardi gras parade?
The main difference I see is in New Orleans it is typically the women that get ‘lewd’. It is OK, appreciated, for straight woman to dance provocatively.
What goes on at the San Diego pride that does not go on at a very Catholic celebration?
Maybe if the pride celebrations proceeded 40 days of acting straight then it would be considered more cathartic?
So the whole fight to be allowed to be who we are not means that we shouldn’t celebrate what it means to be LGBTQ? No matter how diverse because that means it makes us look bad to embrace the possibility that meaning of gay could possibly be that for someone?
Talk about internalized homophobia!
she needs to attend a pride event before making that determiantion not all of us are that forward in public and even if we are so what? are her conservative christians that tout traditional family value and hten cheat on their spouse and pya severance pay from public coffers any better? shame on any elected official that does not investigate all the fact before turning over for the religious bigots of hte world – i’ll get off my soapbox now
I think it is sad that members of our community do not appreciate that all of the activities they dislike PRIDE for are activities that go on regularly in society-at-large, regardless of orientation.
If an activity is truely illegal, PRIDE does not suspend the law. If it is not illegal, but mearly distasteful to the observer….quit observing. Freedom of expression and speech is a protected and valuable right. If it is OK for the KKK to stage a parade and public event, with hoods and hateful, even inflamatory, speech, I am not going to ask for or expect any grief nor apologies for what happens at PRIDE celebrations. Grow up and roll with the whole “diverity” concept.
Yes I do judge people by my own personal standards of healthy behavior, and I do not apologize for this.
Alternatively there have been slutty people who have judged me because I refuse to roll in the mud with them and screw.
I am a discerning individual, and middle American voters are discerning too.
I think that pushing buttons has it’s place – Stonewall, during the AIDS crisis – but I think that the current environment has evolved where these tactics have a shelf life which is over. Old school in-your-face activism has a place when the situation called for it, but not when Iowan’s and five other states allow you to marry.
Old school in-your-face activism has a place with Fred Phelps, Focus on the Family and with the current raids on the gay bars in Texas.
But outside of a few situations, we don’t need to beat up middle America with a strong message when there is already growing acceptance.
People are already receptive, and pushing their buttons means pushing them away. I don’t believe in pushing people around, I believe that real change is done by building alliances, awareness, understanding and cooperation within the community.
Standards are set in every community – in the workplace, in schools and in the public square, and yes one standard should be set which both accommidates individuality and the freedom of expression within reasonable limits, but also balances the needs of the group whole with providing an environment which is tasteful and appropriate. I find that GayPride parades are
greatly slanted towards the needs of almost any individual to do almost anything imaginable. It has just gone too far.
The issue with the “us and them” arguments over the GLBT community and the mainstream majority of voters is that there are legal and social reprocussions for one individual “screwing normality”, yet also serving beacon of visibility for
public perception. If someone wants to screw normality only in the private bedroom as suggested, then that is their perogative. When it becomes as issue within the public square, then this affects everyone, then it is everyone’s business.
Likewise fundamentalists Christians in my opinion can also preach hell fire and brimstone within their own churches, but they have no right to spew their propaganda in the public square. Unfortunately some fringe elements of the right wing still try.
GLBT people should be held to the same standard, too. Unfortunately some fringe elements of the left wing still try and push boundaries too.
If we want to be treated equally, we have to learn to play by the same rules regardless of our own idealogies.
I will not send her any letter, my married partner and I don’t allow our kids to go to gay pride parades with us due to the fact they are quite offensive and usuall do a piss poor job of winning over any hearts and minds, heck we have stopped going for the most part.
For those of you who are slamming all the “lewd” behavior (which I must admit I am not particularly fond of myself) I pose this question– Have you ever seen some of the other parades?(in New York City for example) plenty of behavior that would most definitely be considered “lewd” and “inappropriate” can be seen at these STRAIGHT events believe me.
I know many of us may be uncomfortable with this sort of thing and it is not our cup of tea so to speak but when we start standing at arms’ length and judging our own we begin to sound just like the very people that are trying to keep us down. Think about it. I might not want to parade around the streets half naked with nipple clamps on (Good Lord that vision might just scare some you straight LOL!!) but I won’t judge or condemn those people who do. I don’t understand it but I won’t try to insist that everyone travel to the beat of my drum to be “acceptable”.
As far as the comment regarding these people needing to get a life. You would be surprised how many of them are professional people with great careers in their “normal” daily life.
BudBud
Your point is well taken, however consider that heterosexuals are not currently trying to gain acceptance to get married, nor are they denied their civil rights. I recongnize that it is a difficult and unreasonable standard to expect all GLBT people to exceed all heterosexual standards of vice and walk on water. But I don’t think that we should necessarily excuse unhealthy behavior either because we see our counterparts making mistakes. Irresponsible heterosexual behavior does not excuse anyone as an individual or group to be lowered to the same standards.
Also there are many different arenas in which heterosexuals demonstrate the perception of themselves, and New Orleans (and I will add Sturgis and Las Vegas) are some but not all venues. Other venues are everyday life in which heterosexuals already know that not everyone who is straight is having a naked party.
The problem is that not everyone sees GLBT people in everyday life situations, and sometimes the only venue of visibility is the GayPride parade – therefore this is the only perception readily available.
If the social climate was the same and there were more visiable opportunities for GLBT people, and if more people in straight America really could see GayPride as their Marti Gras (and some straight people to their credit can) then this would be less of an issue with visibility and public perception.
The double standard is one additional injustice that we face. How we handle this injustice as a community is how the problem will get solved or not. Awareness and education serve as better catalysts for change than being confrontation with the double-standard. The issue is not disagreeing with the injustice, the issue is how we handle second class citizenship without making emotional-based decisions or resort to tactics out of anger. Holding it together and having a strategy to reach these people will fare better than acting from outrage. The outrage is warranted, but in order to win the war against homophobia, we have to be careful about the tactics we use in battle.
Turning on ourselves, and apologizing for each other may earn us respect and acceptance, but at the cost of our self respect and our identity as one solid community. We become…politicians. And that’s not cool. I think our pride should come first over our victory. We may attain victory, but we make ourselves cowering sell-outs. I’m not selling out, even if it means achieving acceptance a few days earlier.
Mark -
I think it may be more a situation where the people watching these parades on seem to focus on the lewd stuff and not see all the groups and people involved in causes marching. The unfortunate part of this is people will only see those parts of these events that they want to see. Not all of it is a sideshow you know. I marched with my husband with his diversity group from work.
First of all, La Mesa is a little, tiny town outside of San Diego that barely even registers as a city in the first place – it is more like a suburb that incorporated, but nobody really pays it much attention.
Second, who really cares? A councilwoman? Really? Of a two-bit, small town? So she caved in to a Fred Phelps wannabe to protect her seat on the council. Big deal.
As for those that want to say they are “ashamed” of what happens at Pride celebrations and parades – grow up. If it wasn’t for those very Pride celebrations, you wouldn’t even have the rights to sit there and bitch about what’s going on right now, much less all those rights that you take for granted in your personal life every day.
Do some LGBT people not conform to “accepted” heterosexual “standards” when it comes to monogamous sexual practices and ideas of “sexual decency”? Of course! So do many heterosexual people!
The LGBT community is extremely diverse, as it should be, and we should be accepting of that diversity within JUST AS WE EXPECT OTHERS TO BE ACCEPTING OF US!
On a final note, I spent many years in San Diego and even volunteered for the Pride organization there several years, including one where an idiot threw a tear-gas canister into the crowd during the parade.
The vast majority of the groups that participate in the Pride Parade there are groups like PFLAG and the MCC Church, along with local bars that have Go Go boys dancing on their floats. Nothing outrageous or lewd at all. The only thing that might *possibly* be considered “lewd” when I was there was a single exhibit in the Pride Festival that was a restricted, adults-only celebration of alternative sexual (BDSM) displays, and that was EXTREMELY well policed with ID checks and completely enclosed to prevent anyone under 18 from getting in.
San Diego Pride is one of the best run, best organized events I have ever seen. They do an excellent job of representing ALL of our community and should be praised for their work, not trashed.
Mark said:
“If we want to be treated equally, we have to learn to play by the same rules regardless of our own idealogies.”
Sorry, Mark, but if your answer to gaining equality is conformity, then you will never gain equality. It is through people like you and your idea of “equality” that we gain things like “Civil Unions”, “Domestic Partnerships” and Prop 8, not equality.
If we want real equality, we stand up for what is RIGHT, not “acceptable”. We force the other side to face reality, face the facts and do the right thing. That means making them see the hypocrisy in their actions, accept us for who and what we are – even if that means seeing us with our shoes untied and our hair mussed up.
Embrace the diversity and celebrate it, don’t shove it back in the closet because you think it is unseemly. By doing so, you are no better than the straight people 40 years ago who tried to shut down the initial gay rights movement for being too different, to non-standard, too flamboyant. Where would you be today without them?