One of the oldest celebrations of the LGBTQ community in the world has been New York City’s annual Pride celebration. The parade began 51 years ago and has long been a symbol of the strength, defiance, and pride of this community. The whole idea was to show the full spectrum of LGBTQ influence, participation, and expression in our society. This year, however, activists have decided to discriminate against one group: police officers. In a parade that was found to reject discrimination in every form, the organizers have told the Gay Officers Action League and other such groups that they will not be allowed to march. Their presence is viewed as a threat to others in the parade and a denial of a “safe space” for LGBTQ members. It is hard to imagine a more antithetical position for the parade in excluding officers who are part of the community and who want to publicly stand with other LGBTQ members.
The organizers have announced that police and corrections officers will be barred from participating in the parade until at least 2025. They declared “The sense of safety that law enforcement is meant to provide can instead be threatening, and at times dangerous, to those in our community who are most often targeted with excessive force and/or without reason.”
The Gay Officers Action League, an organization of L.G.B.T.Q. police, denounced the decision on Friday night. In addition, the NYPD is being asked to remain at least a block away from all events to ensure a safe environment for participants.
Activists have long opposed police participation and cite the anti-police riot outside the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan. However, the police participants have marched to show that the NYPD does not just support the LGBTQ community but includes officers from the community. It is the very rejection of the image of the Stonewall Inn riot and a testament to the progress made not just by the LGBTQ community but the NYPD.
Nevertheless, Beverly Tillery, the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project insists that “[t]he issue is, how do we make Pride safe for the people who feel the most marginalized and have often been left out of the conversations about how Pride is run?”
It is a terrible setback and insult for officers and their predecessors, who had to sue for the right to march in uniform and did so for the first time in 1996. They have fought to diversify the ranks of the NYPD and show that there are officers not just supportive but part of the LGBTQ community. That would seem an incredibly powerful and reassuring message to send to community members. The growing numbers each year showed the progress that has been achieved since 1978 when New York City mayor Ed Koch banned discrimination in police hiring on the basis of sexual orientation (over the objection of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association).
On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes called for an annual march for all “Homophile organizations.” The march was envisioned as a statement against exclusionary limits of every kind for members of the community:
We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.
We also propose that we contact Homophile organizations throughout the country and suggest that they hold parallel demonstrations on that day. We propose a nationwide show of support.
GOAL is one such organization and shows how much has changed since this call for a unifying celebration of everyone within this community. It was created in 1982 and each year around 200 of its members and their families participated in the march. They have now been told that they are not welcomed as a perceived threat to their own community. I cannot think of a message more counter to traditions or values of the annual parade. A movement based on inclusion has now embraced exclusion as a defining value.
So let me get this right. A group that has held a parade for those traditionally ostracized from society is now preventing a subset from marching with them because they are cops? Do they not see the irony? Do they call this discrimination? They want to preserve the safe space? Okay, how about that no cops provide protection and let’s see how the safe space is going to work now. Regardless of how one sees the LGBTQ issues, this is exactly the type of behavior they marched against originally. They are becoming the very thing they hate.
It’s the same type of logic seen in the days of AIDS. The gays split on closing the bathhouses in SF when gays came from all over the world. The leftist activists wanted the bath houses kept open for political reasons despite the danger. They won. They were a major cause of the rapid spread of AIDS that killed a couple of million people.
Of course examples exist over and over again. over 100 million were killed outside of war due to leftist type politics.
Wokism is part of the stupidity of the left. It will kill many and impoverish millions if given the chance to continue.
More than ever cops are beginning to think that to remain a cop is to compromise their identity, their beliefs, and their values. These Leftist jurisdictions are, by force of conscious, pushing police out of the profession. This is a milestone in America’s decline.
LMAO!!! Any day now cancel culture will cancel itself!
Map showing targeted areas in article.
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Yet Again, the Media Blames Israel for a Conflict Hamas Started
by Phyllis Chesler
May 12, 2021
https://www.investigativeproject.org/8846/yet-again-the-media-blames-israel-for-a-conflict
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Islamist terrorist groups, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have launched more than 1,200 rockets (and counting) toward Israel since Monday, and the United Nations (!), is keeping close watch, issuing warnings, and sharing their fears that a full-scale “war” is about to break out.
Continued at site.
Hey U.S. media:. Where does Hamas get all those rockets?
Obama, Rice, Jarret, Farrakhan, Kerry, Farkas, Power et al.
Amazon Prime
Part of that was paid for by Obama’s airlift of cash to Iran never approved by Congress.
I’m no fan of gay culture as I see it as licentious, anti-masculine and counter to propagating the species but we can tolerate them legally. As far as I’m concerned, the cops should stay away and any mayhem that ensues should be just as tolerated. You don’t want the cops? Fine, enjoy the criminals. Come to think of it, they might.
Yep. Let them police themselves. And when they get attacked by Antifa …..Oh well…
Maybe BLM should show up at the parade. Remember they are all inclusive. As a whole most blacks don’t care for gays. Without the police around, they could rumble and see who comes out on top. Then they can make it into a movie, “BLM meets the gay pride parade”.
Your comments are right on target. I’ll just add that in Twitterese, Parlerese, and Facebookese, the common reply to such occurrences is the observation that “Invariably, the Left eats its own.” If any group seeks control over others’ views, the end result is just this sort of atrocious hypocrisy.
Two thoughts:
1. As instances occur we get a better, more granular read on the new pecking order. We now learn that being a cop is worse than being LGBTQ+ is good–so, a gay cop is net “Bad” and gets cancelled. We already knew that T outranks the L, G, B, and Q, so our understanding of the new realities grows as our liberties are erased.
2. This will only get worse until the real evil, critical theory, is confronted and beaten back.