A Mockery of Activism: #StraightPride

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Let me know if this sounds familiar: a group of marginalized individuals fight for their equality, they get a month, a week, a day dedicated to their fight, and then others cry out, “What about us?”


If we have Black History Month, someone asks, “What about white history month?” If there’s an international women's day, people ask, “What about men’s day?” June is pride month; it’s a time dedicated to encouraging members of the LGBTQ community to express themselves openly. June is meant to celebrate their accomplishments and acknowledge the struggles faced by the LGBTQ community.
A writer, Rachel Brougham, says, “I have a lot of questions, the main one being: Since when do straight people need space to embrace their straightness? Don’t straight people own that space 24/7, 365 days a year already — even during Pride Month?”
But, of course, there are people yelling, “What about straight people?” 

One specific event a month ago took us back about a century in terms of human rights.

The straight pride catastrophe began in the late 70s/early 80s in an effort to retaliate against gay pride parades. The organizers supposedly started-up straight pride parades to promote heterosexual sexual awareness and protect heterosexual peoples’ rights. Apparently, white supremacists were supremely jealous of the attention the LGBTQ community received during June, Pride Month. They’d had enough, so they officially organized a “Straight Pride” parade. However, it is believed that the organization started doing their own parades to ridicule and point out how unnecessary the gay pride parade was.
The straight pride movement began with very little momentum, and had very few supporters, but the recent parade in Boston, coordinated by Super Happy Fun America (SHFA) on Aug 31, 2019, has drawn widespread attention to the “movement” on Twitter.
Twitter operates as a window to view all sides of an issue, so that people can be informed about them and comment. In theory, this would inspire a lot of debate between people with different viewpoints, but in practice this is not the case.
Many use Twitter to surround themselves with people that think exactly the way they do so that they will never be challenged by someone with different viewpoints. And if you ever run into somebody that does disagree, you can just block them. Others use Twitter specifically to get into conflict with people that think differently than they do, either because winning an argument validates them or because they feel it is their duty to fight for the set of ideas that they represent. Others are just on Twitter to make jokes and don’t care for debate or agreement.
For these reasons, Twitter can be a very divisive platform or an echo chamber where ideas clash without any real debate occurring.
Check out this tweet about “#HeterosexualPride” from 2017 . . .

. . . and this one from the opposite side of the argument, same year.
The organizers of the parade are part of the then for-profit organization, Super Happy Fun America (SHFA).  President John Hugo, VP Mark Sahady, and Grassroots organizer Samson Racioppi—all straight, white, conservative, cis-gendered males—are in charge of this organization. All three of these men possess ties to alt-right, white supremacist groups.
Here is SHFA's mission statement:


The organizers claim their movement is inclusive and accepting to everyone. News sources have called the Straight Pride Parade's protestors counter-protestors, insinuating that the Straight Pride Parade is a protest.

To demonstrate SHFA's inclusivity, the parade featured Milo Yiannopoulos a gay conservative infamous for inflammatory jokes on Twitter directed against marginalized individuals. It seems they are only inclusive to people on their side of the isle. In fact, the parade featured a Trump float, and many of the marchers wore MAGA hats.
Either way, Twitter gave those that subscribe to straight pride a voice . . .
Their opinions may match yours, or may be against yours. Either way, they are out there. They are given a voice. Just as those against #StraightPride are given a voice.

While it may be obvious that the supporters of SHFA are blinded by the privilege inherent in their being white and straight,--the dominant demographic in the Straight Pride Parade--the movement signals worrying trends. A 2019 GLAAD survey shows that straight millennials are becoming more uncomfortable about members of the LGBTQ community in everyday situations.

It should be no surprise then that the Straight Pride Parade never accomplished its stated goal of unification. Instead, the parade erupted into a backlash of violence between Boston police and counter-protesters. Around 36 counter protesters were arrested and several were injured with pepper spray while being detained. Jailed, the counter-protesters faced a legal fight against a Boston judge in an effort to escape persecution. 
All the while, Twitter kept the masses updated.








After the straight pride parade erupted into chaos, Twitter blew up with posts, which is the reason why this “movement” gained so much attention. Countless video clips, numerous quotes, and a plethora of tweets followed the parade. An interesting aspect of Twitter is how it maintains posterity for an event and people’s reaction to it in real time. We can see real people reacting to unfolding events, such as the arrest of the counter-protesters.

The conversation continues.

Even now, people are arguing about the outcome of the parade, debating whether the police went too far or if they didn’t go far enough. Additionally, people are discussing the arresting of counter-protesters and the judge who refused to let these protesters go. 
Without Twitter, this “movement” would have been over before it even started. Had people not been outspokenly outraged by the mere proposal of a Straight Pride Parade, and just ignored it, it would not have gotten the attention and the momentum it received. The end result--the parade--would not have happened.
All of the organizers, especially their guest appearance Milo, have a history of inflaming tensions on partisan issues for the sake of publicity and humor. While the outrage of the LGBTQ community came from a good place, it played into the hands of the people that wanted the parade to happen.
The discussion of this "movement" continued for weeks after the parade took place. People all over the world used social media as an outlet to comment and spread the story. It gained traction in mainstream conservative circles.
Minority groups have been silenced long enough. Despite spurring on the straight pride event, those that spoke out made very valid and informative points.

 In addition to giving everyone a platform to have their voices heard, Twitter helps movements become mainstream and will continue to keep it mainstream until a new movement, a potentially more radical movement, take its place.

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