Recently, Bill Donohue decided to make parades his new championed cause. You see, he got super annoyed that, upon it being declared that gay people couldn't march in the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City with any identification that they were gay, Guinness (and other beer companies, but he's chosen to ignore the other ones) pulled their sponsorship of the parade.
It infuriated him so much so that he devised a genius plan: he was going to demand to be allowed to march in the next LGBT pride parade in NYC with the banner "Straight Is Great!" To this idea, the pride parade organizers were all like, "Sure, come on, you're welcome."
So, now that he's been told he can join the pride parade with a "Straight Is Great" banner, what's the problem? He's still infuriated.
See, to participate in a parade, you can't just go plopping down the street any ol' which way. You have to know what's going on. And in order to know what's going on, you have to attend an informational meeting, or "gay training session," as Donohue calls it. And he thinks that's preposterous.
Here, I'll let him speak for himself.
For the past few days I have been engaged in an e-mail conversation with officials from the Heritage of Pride parade, New York’s annual gay event; the dialogue has been cordial. I asked to join the parade under a banner that would read, “Straight is Great.” The purpose of my request was to see just how far they would go without forcing me to abide by their rules. It didn’t take long before they did.
Today, I informed Heritage of Pride officials that I objected to their rule requiring me to attend gay training sessions, or what they call “information” sessions. “I don’t agree with your rule,” I said. They responded by saying that attendance was “mandatory.”
The St. Patrick’s Day parade has mandatory rules, too. It bars groups representing their own cause from marching, which is why pro-life Catholics—not just gays—are barred from participating under their own banner. But only gays complain: they refuse to abide by the rules. Indeed, they went into federal court seeking to force a rule change. They lost. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that private parades have a First Amendment right to determine their own rules.
It is hypocritical for gay activists to complain about having to abide by the mandatory rules of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and then inform me that I cannot march in their parade unless I respect their mandatory rules, rules that I reject.
Good luck to the Heritage of Pride participants. I may be watching it from afar, but I sure won’t be downing a Guinness afterwards.
It's pretty clear to me what happened. Donohue thought that the parade would deny him participation because he thinks LGBT people hate straight people as much as he hates LGBT people. But when they were welcoming, he had to manufacture a reason to refuse to participate since they weren't actually blocking him from participating. He knows plenty well that if you're going to be in a parade, you have to know things like what the actual route is and where the staging area is and what order each entrant will march in and how to handle potential emergencies, and that that information is what the information meeting would cover. But because he didn't get the reaction he wanted, he had to fake a reason to not march because he never had any intention to march in the first place. The man is a giant liar. A deceiver. And here I thought there was some being in Christian belief that presided over lying and deceiving, but I can't quite remember who that being is. Hmm. Anyway.
Personally, I want to hear more about these "gay training sessions," because honestly, I could use a little bit more training in how to be gay.