Well, i did it. I rode in the gay parade down Market Street carrying a sign. I did this two years ago and found the affirmation thrilling, as i’d never before been applauded and cheered by tens of thousands of people. Unfortunately, as described in the above link, i failed in my attempt to organize a parade contingent last year and did not attend.
But i decided to try it again by myself and this time managed to at least construct a semi-professional sign. Bought stencils, spray paint, masking tape, and a 20″x30″ posterboard. Composed an IMHO witty and moderately inflammatory message, laid it out on the posterboard indulging in even a modest amount of kerning, taped it all up, and sprayed it. Little bit of bleed under the letters but not too bad for a beginner:
Then i taped the sign onto a 10 foot long 1″x2″ that i could rest on the platform of the Segway and keep upright with one hand. Ta da.
Rode down Mission to Spear and over to Market, where i infiltrated the parade and rolled along for the entire route between two authorized contingents. Didn’t fall and break the sign this time, so when i got home i put it in my front window for the delectation of passers by. Here’s a shot taken by my friend Mark during the parade. And yes, that is one of the original Act Up “Silence = Death” tee shirts from 1987 that i wear on special occasions.
So how’d it go? you ask. Well, i got some laughs, and some applause. But nothing remotely close to the acclaim i reaped the last time i did this. The problem is that i was too subtle. Yes, moi. For once. Very few people figured out i was addressing His Grace, George Niederauer. Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco and widely believed among gays in our generation in Southern California, where he’s from, to be gay but to be so consumed with desire to be made a cardinal that he mounted the vicious and mendacious campaign against gays that led to the passage in 2008 of Prop 8. Well yes, nothing like a lying, homophobic campaign to win friends in the Vatican. See, lies aren’t a sin if they’re in the service of a higher good, and what higher good can there be than advancing the cause of Church doctrine?
So i’m starting now, right now, determined to try again to find a dozen gay men with enough balls to form with me an anti-church official contingent in next year’s parade. And nothing wimpy like the above sign but rather something everybody will understand. For starters, stuff like “His Grace Is a Self-hating Queer.” “Like Hoover, His Grace Has a ‘Companion’.”. “Come Out Now, Your Grace.” “Hey, Grace, Bless Us!” And maybe some marchers in mitres. Lavender mitres. The sort of thing that’ll get us the screaming adulation of the crowd like i got year before last.
I mean, the Roman Catholic Church used to have enough power that the notoriously and voraciously gay Cardinal Spellman of New York was not outed during his lifetime even though he was well known in the gay community for the orgies on his yacht for assorted cupcakes plus selected closeted, right-wing gay friends like Roy Cohn. We need to out Niederauer while the scumbag is still alive.
I need a few good men, here, guys. And if there’s only one gay man with balls in the entire Bay Area, then he and i can do an infiltration by ourselves, swimming in a sea of sissies.
Oh, and here’s a bunch of sissies putting up the pink triangle yesterday morning. First time i ever got a pic of it in progress.