• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

Racist Anti-Abortion Group Plans In-Person “Straight Pride” Event in a U.S. COVID-19 Hotspot

New Civil Rights Movement | August 4, 2020

Topics: anti-LGBTQ activism, Don Grundmann, MoPride, National Straight Pride Coalition, planned parenthood, Straight Pride Parade

The National Straight Pride Coalition, the California “straight pride parade” group from last year, is back — just what we need in the midst of a pandemic.

The so-called National Straight Pride Coalition (NSPC) is planning an event in Modesto, California for August 29, 2020 — in the middle of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic — even though their 2019 event only drew dozens of attendees and 250 counter-protesters.

NSPC’s organizers told ABC 10 that the second annual Stanislaus County Straight Pride event is meant to be “a celebration of life in all of its aspects: masculinity; femininity; the natural family of man, woman, and children; children born and unborn; Western civilization; Christianity – everything which builds the culture of life.”

But the racist, Islamophobic, and anti-LGBTQ undertones of that rhetoric hides the NSPC’s secondary agenda: hijacking the racial justice movement to oppose access to reproductive healthcare.

Their event will take place in the parking lot of a Planned Parenthood to “to illustrate the horrific reality that it is the greatest mass killer of blacks in the history of our nation,” NSPC’s website says. Because abortions only make up three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services, NSPC is arguing that supporting low-cost reproductive and other health services to women is racism.

The NSPC’s website calls transgender identity “insanity,” a “psychosis,” and a “sexual pathology” and equates the LGBTQ movement with pedophilia and Satanism. The website also specifically cites “Caucasians” and “Christianity” as two of its founding principles, which is telling for a group that purports to stand-up for Black people.

Last year, Don Grundmann, NSPC’s founder, said in a Modesto City Council meeting, “We’re a totally peaceful, racist group.”

MoPride Inc., a local LGBTQ non-profit has already planned a counter-protest almost immediately upon hearing about Grundmann’s event.

“We can’t just ignore it,” the non-profit’s Pride director Zola Hayes said. “They are absolutely representative of an emboldening of far-right groups that use hateful rhetoric to galvanize their base.”

California is currently the U.S. state with the highest number of coronavirus cases.

Written by Daniel Villareal, The New Civil Rights Movement. Top Photo via NCRM

California-Based Straight Pride Group Plans Another “Straight Pride Parade” For This Month

Marilyn Drew Necci | August 12, 2019

Topics: Don Grundmann, Matthew Mason, Mylinda Mason, National Straight Pride Coalition, Prop 8, Straight Pride Parade, Super Happy Fun America

Between accusations of white supremacy and condemnation from family members, the organizers of California’s Straight Pride Parade have faced widespread outrage.

We’ve already heard more than enough about the angry, discriminatory idiots planning a “Straight Pride Parade” for Boston on August 31. That group, Super Happy Fun America (yes, that’s their real name), most recently came under fire from multiple companies they’d listed on their website as “potential sponsors,” none of which wanted anything to do with them.

California’s more straightforwardly-named (pun intended) National Straight Pride Coalition are also planning a parade for the month of August. This one is planned to take place a week before the Boston Straight Pride Parade, on Saturday August 24 in Modesto, a city located about 90 minutes east of San Francisco.

While Super Happy Fun America comes off as either clueless or outright mocking in their site’s claim that “straight people are an oppressed majority,” their site largely has a positive tone, and is full of upbeat — yet, again, clueless — slogans like “We encourage everyone to embrace our community’s diverse history, culture, and identity regardless of sexual orientation.”

National Straight Pride Coalition dispense with this sort of rhetoric in favor of a fear-mongering manifesto which evokes both pro-life activists, with its background featuring pictures of babies and a huge opening banner that reads “Save The Next Generation Of Babies,” and the far right, as in its statement of the group’s purpose as “preventing the current and future generations of all races and colors from being destroyed by the inherent malevolence of the Homosexual Movement.”

Image via Modesto Progressive Democrats/Facebook

As the manifesto continues, we are told that “foundational principles of life” are “under unprecedented, sustained, and coordinated attack.” That list includes things like heterosexuality, the nuclear family, Christianity, nationalism (uh-oh), Western civilization (UH-OH), and… Caucasians.

If you read this manifesto as a barely-veiled appeal to the growing white supremacist movement in the United States, you’re far from alone. Indeed, one of the organizers’ own son has called it the same thing.

“Dog whistling to white supremacy, that is immediately inciting violence,” Matthew Mason told Sacramento’s Fox 40. “I am afraid of violence happening. I don’t want anyone in my community to be hurt.”

Mason, who is gay, is the son of Mylinda Mason, one of the main organizers of the National Straight Pride Coalition’s upcoming parade. And based on the group’s manifesto, he seems to have a point. On its list of “foundational principles of life” on its website is, as previously mentioned, Caucasians. Under that entry, the site reads: “the biological majority of the historical developers and founders of Western Civilization (This is a statement of fact with the consideration of Gal. 3:28 and Col. 3:11. Christ loves and values everyone).”

I suppose, since white people created the majority of western civilization, they should receive special privileges forever?

“It is again white Caucasians who did come to this country to start liberty and gave us the greatest Constitution in the world,” Mylinda Mason told Fox 40.

Just to add an outright ridiculous edge to this deeply troubling rhetoric, Modesto Straight Pride Parade organizer Don Grundmann made quite the gaffe when attempting to defend his organization at a Modesto City Council meeting last Wednesday. Accusing a council member of “pulling the race card,” Grundmann went on to say, “We’re a totally peaceful racist group.”

Of course, Grundmann claimed he’d only misspoken, bringing up his work with the activist group Whites Against Racism. He didn’t mention his activism in the 2008 campaign that managed to temporarily end marriage equality in California — but I’m sure we all could have guessed even if there weren’t pictures.

“This is the woman who raised me actively working against my rights as a human being, who I am as a person,” Matthew Mason told FOX40. He also told NBC News that the American history he was taught by his mother, who homeschooled him for Kindergarten through the 12th grade, was white supremacist in nature, and that “the genocide, slavery, and white nationalism that built [America]” were completely left out.

“This isn’t ‘straight pride.’ This is hate pride,” he told Fox 40.

After a contentious City Council meeting last Wednesday, the city of Modesto declined to make a decision about whether to issue a permit for the event. But they did release a statement, which reads: “We are exploring the ideas brought up by council and the residents, which may impact the timeline of making a decision. But nothing has come up that would lead us to believe that we could rule against the First Amendment.”

Whether or not they do end up approving the National Straight Pride Coalition’s permit request, it seems unlikely that we’ve heard the last of this particular group of far-right troublemakers.

Top Photo: Mylinda Mason, via screencap

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]