I’m straight, I should get a parade!


This is going to be amusing. A small group of white men are planning a “straight pride” parade for Boston in August.

“Straight people are an oppressed majority. We will fight for the right of straights everywhere to express pride in themselves without fear of judgement and hate. The day will come when straights will finally be included as equals among all of the other orientations.” – John Hugo, President of Super Happy Fun America

It’s three bros with a website who think they are oppressed. For being so diamond-hard straight, they’ve strangely chosen Brad Pitt as their “mascot”, presumably without his permission. They have made a flag.

They are so danged rigidly straight that they’ve looped all the way around to gay, themselves. I expect their parade (with floats!) will either be the campiest event in Boston, or will simply droop in pathetic impotence…which will be fine with them, since if no one joins in their limp effort, it will be evidence that they really are persecuted!


Oh, wait! They had a Straight Pride Parade in Seattle last year!

One guy showed up.

He brought balloons, though. Totally worth it for balloons.

Comments

  1. ardipithecus says

    I live for the day when us straight guys can get educations and decent jobs if we are lucky and work hard and go to the bathroom of our choice. Some day . . . some day . . .

  2. blf says

    I’m straight, I should get a parade! — carried by shouting spiders and flamingo-dancing zebrafish, with a 41-squid ink salute. Complementary crackers made from the flesh of a mythical person, with spittle-flicked loonies shouting…

  3. davidnangle says

    To pump up the numbers a bit they should combine with the Wool Wearers of America. For their parade. In Boston. In August.

  4. says

    Satire? I wouldn’t bet on it. One of their propaganda precepts is to try phrasing things humorously so they can deny it as a joke. Al Franken’s term, “Kidding on the Square,” is a useful descriptor. “Ha ha! We should beat the crap out of you… with a duck! What? I’m just making a joke, you humorless git!”

    Not saying it is or isn’t, but your outright Nazi sites always try to sound flippant when expressing hate, and other RWers have been known to call their groups silly names (eg “Sad Puppies”) to try and pass as humans with the ability to laugh at anything apart from the suffering of others.

  5. ridana says

    I thought this was satire too, along the lines of Ladies Against Women, but while it is a parody, it’s making fun of LGBTQ+ people and rhetoric. The organizers are faithful MAGAts, with John Hugo being a Republican politician (got obliterated by Katherine Clark (D) in MA 5th District last year) with 100% ratings from gun lobby and anti-abortion groups, Chris Bartley who is part of Gays for Trump, and Mark Sahady, organizer of Resist Marxism, who had collaborated with American Guard, a hard-core white nationalist group.
    So not quite so harmless or “super happy fun” as they try to seem.

  6. says

    Well, it seems extremely ambiguous. You can’t tell from the content what point they’re trying to make. If they really are MAGAts, they seem to be succeeding more at mocking themselves than anything else.

  7. PaulBC says

    And please don’t try to tell me it’s a “closeted pride” parade. Those feathers are worn with manly cis dignity!

  8. Chris Capoccia says

    there’s nothing preventing him from having his parade about whatever he wants. just get the permit and pay the fee. you can walk down the street too. if you just want a protest, stay on the sidewalk, be orderly, and you don’t need a permit at all. either way, be prepared for counter-protest, mocking and if you attract a big enough crowd, police

  9. ridana says

    11 @ cervantes: What do you mean by “If they really are…”? They really are. I don’t know why you’re trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. If you think they’ve succeeded at mocking themselves, well, the self-own is Republicans’ specialty.

  10. Skeletaldropkick says

    I actually don’t think this is satire or parody. I think they are serious. The “president” is also running for congress in MA and his twitter is short, but representative of a man thinking he is being infringed upon.
    https://twitter.com/hugocongress?lang=en
    “I am so tired of hearing about “toxic masculinity”. We need to push back against the “WAR ON MEN” #MeAlso”
    I think he means it.

  11. woozy says

    I like to think my satire meter is pretty good. (Comparing it with my peers it has a good track record but it has an occasion waaayyyyy off days.)

    I believe it is satire but it’s satire of gay pride. i.e. they don’t actually want a straight pride parade and don’t think straights are an opposed minority, but they don’t think gay pride need or should have any acknowledgement either. (In other words, it’s satire they are still the anti-gay rights jerks they appear to be.)

    At least, that’s what I think.

  12. rietpluim says

    robro Last year they were waiving a “rainbow” flag of different shades of grey.

  13. says

    Shouldn’t the colours on their flag be the other way around since blue is often associated with male which is the symbol on the right and pink is associated with female which is the symbol on the left?

  14. says

    lakitha@7 they want to play at being oppressed, to enjoy feeling like a hero fighting against impossible odds, without all that actually being at risk stuff.

  15. unclefrogy says

    a hero fighting against impossible odds, without all that actually being at risk stuff.

    well they are kind of responding of the suspicion that if real equal rights and real liberty are “granted” and not just an abstract idea enshrined in the Constitution but are actually acknowledged they will be marginalized. They are correct to be worried but they are also missing the detail that they are already being marginalized by the corporate class and the 1%. Their protests are a beneficial distraction that is being encouraged by the rulers of the status quo.
    also they are as dumb as a sack rocks.
    uncle frogy

  16. gijoel says

    Just because something looks like a Poe doesn’t mean that they don’t genuinely believe it.

  17. jackal says

    I guess they didn’t bother to google flag colors, or they’d know that pink, yellow and blue are the colors of pansexual pride.

  18. John Morales says

    Ahem, as per Wikipedia: “Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views.”

    So, starskeptic, the issue at hand is the indistinguishability between actual extreme views and a parody thereof; the issue of actual belief in those claims is not relevant to that concept.

    (Me, I’m still bemused by the realisation that, in all likelihood, some professed religious believers actually believe what they profess, instead of merely LARPing)

  19. susans says

    @10, as a former member of the Los Angeles contingent of Ladies Against Women, all I can say is that I was too busy being Mrs. Mormon Hatchett to think up anything this clever.

    These guys are idiots. Brad Pitt supports marriage equality.

  20. alixmo says

    @susans,

    They may have chosen Brad Pitt because of the role he played in the movie “Fight Club” which is extremely popular in Men’s Rights circles.

  21. blf says

    (The original was posted by Lynna in poopyhead’s current Political Madness All the Time thread, and in reinforces what ridana@10 pointed out…)

    The organizers behind Boston’s Straight Pride Parade should concern you

    Some of the organizers are close to neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

    While Boston’s planned “straight pride parade” has created a fountain of hilarious jokes, there is a serious issue at hand with organizers’ close ties to far-right groups.

    The three men organizing the parade, planned for August 31, are John Hugo, Mark Sahady, and Chris Bartley, who is called the “gay ambassador” on the event website. Sahady has ties to groups like the Proud Boys, the New Hampshire American Guard, and the Massachusetts Patriot Front.

    Hugo unsuccessfully ran for the Massachusetts’ 5th Congressional District in 2018 with support and endorsement from Resist Marxism, a group that is considered to be “alt-lite” and holds anti-Semitic, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ views. […]

    More at the link.