Gay Pride Parades are Intended for Adults

There is an increasing conflict regarding gay pride parades and the sometimes over-the-top, edgy behaviors sometimes exhibited at them.  This conflict has increased in recent years with the rise of the gay family, including young children — some people want the behaviors restricted due to the presence of children (and some want them restricted because of the presence of straights and the media), which of course pushes some people to go more extreme.

The push/pull of this is felt very strongly by the Leather Community.  Already branded as sexual outlaws and oddities by both the straight worlds and the mainstream gay world — a branding embraced by many in the community, and played up accordingly — leatherfolk are heavily in the spotlight regarding this issue.  How do we (legally) present our edgy play and sexuality in a way that doesn’t sideline or minimize it?  In other words, how do we express our pride?

How pleasant, then, to read this article about the Stanley Cup being exhibited during Chicago Gay Pride, and especially this not-quite-a-quote regarding the pro hockey player (and his wife) who is bringing the Cup to the Parade:

When the [Blackhawks professional hockey] club passed along the request to players, Sopel and wife Kelly volunteered.  The couple doesn’t plan to bring along their kids, saying the festive, sometimes-bawdy atmosphere might be a little too chaotic.

Amen.  Here’s a couple who apparently gets it: the Gay Pride Parade is a party for adults.  There’s nothing wrong with a bawdy atmosphere, but it isn’t appropriate for kids.

So let’s stop the discussions about dumbing and damping down the parade and start the discussions about where it’s appropriate to bring your kids, and how we can have age-appropriate other events for them.
 

College Bowl for Kids, and the Triumph of Comics

My partner, Rusty, has an 11-year old adopted son from his second marriage.  Josh spends about every second weekend at our house.

Today, he and some of his schoolmates competed in “Battle of the Books” (or something like that).  The kids had six months to read a set of sixteen books, and then they competed to answer questions based on what they had read.

According to Rusty, Josh’s team won, beating out nine other teams, and they will advance to a regional competition.  Further, Josh was the only one of the kids who had read all the books.  (I’m not sure if this was just on his team or amongst all the kids.)  Further, until Josh started coming to our house, he didn’t read much at all.

The cause?  Comic books.  Since I’ve been reading them for 25 years, I’ve got a lot of them around, with an increasing number of collected volumes which are on bookshelves, easy to access.  I buy a few titles specifically for Josh every month (but I read them, too) — Teen Titans, Teen Titans Go!, Justice League Unlimited, and the now-cancelled Hardy Boys series — and he reads my copies of a few other books every time he is at the house, especially Usagi Yojimbo and most recently, Adam Strange.  Josh has also read the likes of Impulse and Scion, and he really liked the new Bone color volume and can’t wait for the next one.

(In contrast, Rusty’s daughter Sarah almost never reads — and certainly not for pleasure — saying that she has no imagination.  Personally, I think her imagination has been muted by TV and movies and loud music; who needs to work your own imagination when stuff is pre-imagined for you?  But even then, we got her to read Mystic, and she pulled Blankets off the shelf of her own accord.)

If it gets kids to read at all, comics are a good thing.  Even more so if gets them to read stuff other than comics!

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Added links on October 7, 2011