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San Francisco resident Katy Birnbaum is eager to gather with other queer people on Pride weekend, especially after such a violent attack against LGBT people in Orlando. But when roughly a million people pack into downtown on Sunday for one of the largest, most high-profile Pride festivals in the world, Birnbaum won’t be standing in the crowd. “It just feels like a big Miller Lite tent,” said Birnbaum, 31. “With the corporate floats … it’s co-opting queer identity as a way to make money.” Instead of attending the formal SF Pride events at civic center on Sunday, Birnbaum will be going to an intimate LGBT film festival in a community space six milesin an area known as the Bayview – one of the only remaining black neighborhoods in the city. Birnbaum, who helped organize the all-day film event, is one of many LGBT people in the Bay Area who plans to skip the mainstream Pride festival in the northern California city known internationally as a mecca for gay people. While queer people said it’s important to come out on Pride as a way to stand up to the violence in Orlando and discriminatory laws across the country, some said the San Francisco parade has become too corporate, straight and white to feel like an appropriate setting to show LGBT solidarity. On Friday, Black Lives Matter announced that it was pulling out as a grand marshal, due to concerns about the police’s plan to have an increased presence at the parade and heightened security measures. Some local LGBT people are finding alternative ways to celebrate. Whether theTrans March on Friday, the Dyke March on Saturday, or other queer art shows onSunday, the city has a number of events that organizers hope will attract much more diverse crowds than the Pride parade.“Pride really should be for queer folks,” said Amy Sueyoshi, a lifelong San Francisco resident, who identifies as genderqueer. “It’s not for straight people to demonstrate their queer-friendliness. I’d like that they do that in their daily lives.”
See: Folsom Street
Folsom Prison might be a better place for some of these participants in displays of public lewdness.
Imagine that. Despite getting nearly everything they wanted, some are still not happy. Like BLM, the radical gay lobby is about sepratism and supremacism, not integration.
