Nope!

Rather a brave activist and friend who stood near Saint Patrick's Cathedral during today's New York Pride march.

A moment of silence for the brothers and sisters who remain lost.

A Spanish Catholic priest who came out earlier this year tells a sad story which will not surprise most of us, even today.

The Spanish nun who walked into Father Jose Mantero's confessional was not wearing a habit, but that was not what was troubling her. "I have fallen in love with one of the sisters, with another nun," she whispered through the grille separating them. "She wanted me to call her a monster and a sinner. Instead I told her about a gay association in Seville. She was furious and stormed out. I didn't even have time to give her absolution," says Mantero. "That's what the Roman Catholic church does to homosexuals."

Mantero himself remains in the Church, although suspended from his duties, and he continues to enrage the hierarchy while also tweaking the faithful everywhere with his knowledge of Church history:

"Pope Paul VI was a great queer," says Mantero. "And when I say that I mean it with respect. He was also a great pope."

On this very special day of ours, the oh-so-queer-positive NYPost gives us this present: a story about pistol-packing homos.

"Pick on someone your own caliber," declares its excellent Web site (www.pinkpistols.org). "We are dedicated to the legal, safe and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community," it continues. "The more people know that members of our community may be armed, the less likely they will be able to single us out for attack."

So, um, uh. Maybe the thing speaks for itself, but stop the world, I looking to get off.

This day is especially for those around the world who haven't yet made it out, or at least not all the way, more than for those who are able to actually parade.

It remains a Very Big Thing for that reason above all.

And yes, the Croatian image reminds us of how far we still have to go.

Cheers for the queer Israelis!

A few more pix:
Zurich and Zurich again
Various cities, incl. Rome, Tel Aviv, Paris, Vienna, Zagreb, Manilla
Toronto

Though too late for some, the myth of the homo macho man is, maybe, dying, and good riddance!

The world that queer radicals would create is one where no man needs to butch up to fly right. Masculinity would be something every male possesses, not a test every boy must take. Gay men would be free to follow their hearts without sacrificing prestige—and so would straights. After all, macho is a wound for everyone. It isn't just about boys bonding and dads passing their cojones along to their sons. It's also about boys brutalizing each other to establish a hierarchy based on fear of the feminine, and fathers injuring their sons for failing to make the grade. It's about mothers repressing their daughters, and butch girls suffering through the female equivalent of the playground trauma: the prom from hell.
....
The unfinished business of gay liberation is to break these chains. Only then will we know what it really means to be gay.

This one is really just for those of you are not fags or dykes, or otherwise queer; the rest of us know about this already. We live it.

There is still nothing in the universe worse than a queer.

But more than anything else, the absolute worst thing that can apparently be said about me among the spurts of hate mail I invariably receive whenever one of my more politically charged columns pokes at the oozing sores of rage over at some right-wing Web site, is this: I must be gay. Really, really gay.

Boycott Coors, still.

The National Lawyers Guild's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Committee is
disappointed at Out Front Colorado's refusal to run its advertisement
educating the queer community on the Coors family's funding of bigoted
activities, and released a statement June 13. Out Front is one of the main LGBT papers in Denver.

The Coors' family seeks to maximize profits but hide its politics, including its involvement with right-wing politicians and political organizations which aggressively seek to roll back even progressive laws and gay rights already established and recognized.

A slick PR campaign has flooded our [queer] community with claims that Coors Brewing is now our friend—that Coors has domestic partner benefits, sponsors LGBT groups and events (usually in return for having the Coors logo prominently displayed), and that there are gay members of the Coors family. Some of this is true, but what they leave out is that the Coors family continues to give millions of dollars to our enemies
....
The Coors family has a long history of supporting racist and anti-gay groups, and their support of anti-gay bigots continues today. We could fill this newspaper [This text is from ads palced in the press] with more examples. When you buy Coors products, you enrich a family that gives millions to our worst enemies.

Coors products include Coors, Coors Light, Killian’s Red, Zima, Keystone, Belgian White or Blue Moon.

Ok, now from the paper-of-record, its report on Gay Pride in Jerusalem. Certainly too much is being made of "god" by all parties, but perhaps the venue has something to do with that (must be awfully hard to sell secularism in that city).

My favorite:

"People can do what they like," said Ofir Ben-David, 30, as he watched from his souvenir shop. "Live and let live. They're colorful and they're livening up downtown, which was dead."

From a party who would appear to be about as disinterested, in the better sense, as a party could be, a very good account of the Archbishop Weakland affair.

Only in this case, no child had been molested. Instead, a man had been outed — a bishop, a rare liberal one at that. What's more, news organizations that ordinarily shy from exposing homosexuals plunged into this one. Somehow Weakland, like a dolphin caught in a tuna net, became just another priest hauled in by the burgeoning pedophilia scandal.

Apparently I'm not the only one who smells a rat.

Jerusalem survived its very first lesbian and gay pride parade today. A colorful band of a few hundred "crazy fools" marched through the center of Jerusalem, a city revered as holy by three monotheistic faiths which all oppose homosexuality (except, privately, in its practice).

Banners called for "Love without Borders."

The National Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Transsexual and Bi-sexual Organization which sponsored the parade is aggressively multicultural and welcomes people from all sections of Israeli and Palestinian society.

Ha'aretz reports that 4,000 people took part in the parade.

[Hagai Elad, parade organizer, said] "This is an important event, and not only gays should be proud of it. It's our response to the voices of hatred."

Among other elements in the parade, the Traveler's Prayer were [sic]recited in Hebrew, Arabic and English, and black balloons, symbolizing both Jewish and Arab victims of the conflict, were released.