WALSH: If A Straight Pride Parade Is Stupid, So Is A Gay Pride Parade

Personally, I agree with the people who say that the upcoming “straight pride parade” in Boston is a silly stunt. It’s not something that I would have any interest in attending, though I do appreciate the intentional irony of Milo Yiannopolous being named the parade’s grand marshal.

I believe I am on stable intellectual ground in calling the parade silly, as I have also said the same about gay pride parades. In fact, I think parades, in general — festive traffic jams, as I call them — are kind of stupid. But there are at least some justifiable reasons to throw one. Winning a war would be one good reason. Winning a Super Bowl would be another. If we are going to have a parade to announce our pride in something, it ought to be a real achievement. Or else it should at least be some occasion for actual celebration, such as a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas. But your sexual orientation is neither an achievement nor a holiday. You have not accomplished anything simply by being attracted to one sex or another.

It is argued that the real purpose of a gay pride parade is to resist and protest the persecution of homosexuals. Heterosexuals are not persecuted for being heterosexuals, so the argument goes, and therefore a heterosexual pride parade is pointless. But if that’s the point of a pride parade, then why do they call it a pride parade? If it’s really a protest, then call it a protest, or a rally, or a demonstration. And in that case, why do they hold these “protests” in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, rather than Tehran or Riyadh? It seems that these pride parades are held in precisely the places where gays are not persecuted.

All the evidence indicates that gay pride parades are indeed gay pride parades. That is, they are parades that give gay people the opportunity to announce their pride in being gay. Indeed, the New York City Pride Parade website calls its event a “pride celebration.” Another LGBT website puts it plainly: Gay people should “feel pride in being gay.” If you agree that gays should feel pride in their gayness, and that parades ought to be held across the country to celebrate that pride, and to “create inclusive places for self-expression” for homosexuals, then it would obviously be a ludicrous double standard to insist that heterosexuals are not entitled to a similar celebration for themselves.

The double standard becomes even more pronounced when you take into account the whole buffet of sexual orientations that have now attached themselves like barnacles to the broader LGBT ship. Gay men and lesbian women aren’t the only ones celebrating pride at a pride parade. There are also bisexuals and transsexuals and pansexuals and asexuals and greysexuals and demisexuals and the genderfluid and the gender-questioning. Is it reasonable to say that all of these people can and should publicly declare their pride — but not heterosexuals?

By the way, when was the last time a pansexual was persecuted? I wouldn’t know how to persecute one if I wanted to. No, again, this has nothing to do with persecution. This is about boasting of your sex life. Why, then, can’t straight people boast?

As I said, I’m not in favor of anyone boasting about this sort of thing. But I’m even less in favor of arbitrary rules that allow some to boast while telling others to keep quiet. The Left is famous for such rules. Maybe, on second thought, the straight pride parade is a bit more than a silly stunt. Maybe the point is to defy the Left’s rules just for the sake of defying them. Perhaps there could be some value in that, after all.