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.”
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