More regurgitation from me: Wrote this when covering SF Pride festivities this year for a now defunct pop-vulturtish dot com mostly trafficked by hetero-ladies. The events today and these sign people bring it to mind—

One of the first things I spotted today were the religious wingnuts and virtually no one was paying them attention. They are one of the guaranteed participants in all queer festivities. I’m a gay guy who makes the rounds, but these homophobes make it out to more LGBT events than I do. They plopped themselves on a particularly busy corner and I watched for a few seconds, because I just find these people fascinating.

After a few minutes I saw a guy walk out of Walgreens totally fuming. He pulled a newly purchased marker out of a bag and started to scribble furiously on a scrap of cardboard. He then held his creation high with determination in front of the Fred Phelps right wingers. He said nothing really, and I asked him where he was from. Turns out he isn’t gay, he just couldn’t stand the sight of those people and felt like he had to let the world know that as a heterosexual he was not in support of what he saw.

“i’m sick of all this hatred. we have too much of it. your parade is about love and i am all for that. LOVE KICKS ASS!”

If you aren’t queer but support anything at all that I prattle on about with any amount of regularity.. I need you. My entire community needs you. Women didn’t get suffrage because of all the women who were working for the cause. It took the black community along with sympathizers to make gains in previous civil rights struggles.  It takes everyone. Namely, people just like you. We are a minority in this country and no matter how many of us come out of the closet, we’ll never amount to a majority vote.

I see your IPs and have even gotten crazy enough to search your email addresses in Facebook. Most of you don’t comment and choose to message me privately, but you’d be surprised how similar we all are. Change has happened in the past because some folks just got tired of witnessing the way things are and felt motivated to see how things could be. We need your help. We appreciate it. YOU are the going to make the difference for the rest of us. I’m begging. My victory will really be OUR victory.