Got Gay Pride? Posted on 6-07-06
by Erin Quinn

            Enough is enough! While President Bush is once again exploiting the issue of same-sex marriage to try and solidify his crumbling conservative base, the death toll in Iraq grows. Millions of Americans are living below the poverty wage, can’t afford health care coverage, and have to debate between gas and food while Exxon and their oil giant cohorts post record breaking profits. 

            Is he kidding? It reminds me of Eddie Murphy’s Saturday Night Live Character satirizing “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

I’ve never seen such a political act of smoke and mirrors in my 35 years, probably 25 of which was somewhat politically aware. I’m not a political strategist and there is great debate by analysts as to whether or not this tactic will work, but all I have to say is this, while the issue of legalizing gay marriage is a critical civil rights issue, it does NOT pose a threat to the moral fabric of the country, to the church, to heterosexual god-fearing couples in America. Without the legalization of gay marriage divorce rates have already climbed to 50 percent. Maybe gay marriage will help strengthen the vows and tip those statistics down to a mere 40 percent, since they’ve had to fight for them since before Stonewall and after Mathew Sheppard. 

            Last week in New Paltz, we celebrated the Second Annual Pride Festival and March. Ironically it coincided with the President’s announcement that the following day he’d be speaking to Congress and the American public about the dire need for a Federal ban on same-sex marriage. 

            Well, damn. He should have cribbed some notes from some of the speakers at the Pride event, where more than 1,500 people, gay, straight, married, single, young, old, colorful, drab, marched down Main Street, in our small town of 12,000 and celebrated with a music festival at Hasbrouck Park the rest of the day. 

            “He’s [President Bush] pimping the issue again,” said Virginia Apuzzo, the Grand Marshall of the Second Annual New Paltz Pride March, and a former member of Governor Mario Cuomo’s staff and a former assistant and advisor to President Bill Clinton. “He’s going to exploit the issue again. Drag it out before the American public once again because he has so alienated public trust, even in his own conservative party. This is the red-meat issue. To think that he can come before the American public and parade this hateful ban in front of them, tell them that it somehow looms larger than the issue of the working poor, the shrinking middle class, the immoral, treacherous war in Iraq, the environment that is near the brink, is such an insult to us and to all American citizens…but he’ll walk away from it tomorrow. Drop it, until the issue becomes useful for him to pimp again when his ratings are down. But tomorrow, we’ll be energized, we’ll be inspired and we’ll be moving forward.” 

            And you know what? People were energized. There were as many straight families as gay families, single heterosexuals as single gay men and women. There were Democratic and Green Politicians, Church leaders and local officials all convened at a park, decorated in rainbow flags to celebrate Gay Pride, yes, but also to celebrate community. 

            Since Ohio seems to have been the battleground where the election was stolen, [read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent article on the NPN main page] I think that the New Paltz Pride March and Festival should reach out and create some sister-cities in Ottoville, Ohio or Wilmington and Gypsum, Ohio, and help organize Gay Pride marches there as well.  

            I think we need these marches throughout middle–America, in every small or large village and city to finally bring it to the President’s attention, that gay marriage is not the issue at hand. Lying to congress is, illegal domestic wiretapping, eavesdropping on reporters to catch their whistle blowing sources, paying Halliburton billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans after they let it crumble, left the poor to die and did nothing to prevent the catastrophe, and once it struck to help our fellow citizens.

             While headlines across the Country are claiming that “President gathers support for Federal Marriage Act” they should be saying or I wish they were saying, “President loosing support for the War in Iraq,” or “President Bush to go through impeachment hearings for presenting false and manipulated intelligence data to Congress to justify a pre-emptive and illegal war in Iraq,” or better yet, “President continues to derail negotiations with Iran because his Defense Department already has a plan for preemptive military strikes against the country as part of a larger goal of regime change in the Middle East.”

             Action is the word of the day, and I’m still alarmed, that people are not marching in the streets in every corner of the country heading towards Washington to oust the neo-con posse from office and replace them with people like Congressman Maurice Hinchey [D-NY] or Congressman John Conyers [D-MI], Bernie Sanders [I-VT], Maxine Waters [D-CA] or Sheila Jackson-Lee [D-TX]—people inside the capitol that still have a fervent belief in democracy and aren’t afraid the Jimmy and Johnny or Denise and Debra’s marriages are our greatest national security threat. President George Bush and his Leo Strausian approach to the hegemony and global imperialism are our greatest threats to Democracy. 

            So let’s call our friends in Ohio and get some Pride Marches going.

To read the review of the Second Annual Pride March and Festival by Erin Quinn log onto www.ulsterpublishing.com or check out Thursday, June 8th edition of the New Paltz Times.

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