A man twerks at an unspecified Price event attended by children (Twitter screenshot, photo by Rebecca Brannon, @RebsBrannon)
Pride parades are intended to celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. Like any other parade, they are supposed to be a procession of marchers, floats, and feature performances and speeches from different LGBTQ+ groups and advocates. Most parades happen during the month of June, which has been designated Pride Month.
But some say Pride parades have gotten out of control and to sexual and definitely are not kid-friendly events.
Kim Iversen, one of the hosts of The Hill’s popular web show “Rising” and host of “The Kim Iversen Show” on Rumble, thinks the parades have gotten too pornographic for kids.
Iversen is known for “fringe views and misinformation,” according to The Daily Beast. For example, she once caused a stir among The Hill staff for allegedly repeating Kremlin talking points about Ukrainian neo-Nazis. One The Hill staffer told The Daily Beast, “Kim is a conspiracy theorist. I think she’s really bad news.”
In regard to Pride parades, Iversen tweeted, “Pride has definitely gone way too far. This is supposed to be about celebrating different families and people, something many of us can get behind. It’s instead about sex. It’s often pornographic. Gay families should rise up against this because it’s giving them a terrible name. Nothing should be sexual. Make it only about love, acceptance and allowing others to live a happy peaceful life.”
Iversen, however, isn’t alone in her feelings about the current state of Pride parades.
In an opinion piece for Newsweek, conservative commentator Rob Smith, an Iraq war veteran and founder of the social media StopWoke, said Pride has been taken over by “fringe gender ideology activists.” Smith isn’t calling for an end to such events, but stressed that Pride events “need to get back to basics.”
“Every year on June 1, when Pride Month begins, conservative media and commentators start complaining about Pride events… And they argue that it is time to kill Pride. Let me be the first ‘conservative commentator’ to say that, no, it is not time to kill Pride. There will never be a time to kill Pride because there is a rationale for it that still holds water,” wrote Smith, who is Black and gay.
Smith pointed out that the reason Pride events started was that “gays and lesbians were beaten in the streets, banned from congregating together, and lived under the constant threat of being fired from their jobs due to their same-sex attraction.”
But now, in 2023, Smith complained, “Pride has unfortunately turned into a free-for-all in which people parade their sexual fetishes in public, and corporations are bullied into supporting this nonsense for fear they’ll be seen as ‘homophobic’ or ‘anti-LGBT.'”
Smith said he feels Pride events need to “get back to basics.” He wrote that as progress was made on the gay rights front, the celebrations shifted.
“That success caused a problem for Pride events, apparently. Because what we’re seeing now at Pride events across the country has nothing to do with hardworking gays and lesbians fighting for equality before the law,” wrote Smith.
According to Smith, Pride events are now “nearly entirely centered on a transgender and ‘queer’ fringe that is myopically focused on pushing what is all too often an agenda focused on children that is far out of step with the general public’s views on these controversial issues.”
But Smith wrote he is not calling for an end to Pride celebrations.
“The answer is to rein it all in,” he said, and to give corporations that have now flooded money into the Pride movement direction.
“The answer is to give companies and corporations an off-ramp from insanity, to let them know that it’s OK to support gays and lesbians without wading into deeply controversial waters of gender ideology, Drag Queen Story Hour, and the medical transitioning of minors. They can support gay and lesbian Americans without being held hostage by the Human Rights Campaign or GLAAD, or any number of LGBT-oriented organizations that have been captured and overtaken by the TQ fringe,” he noted.
Independent journalist Brad Polumbo, the co-founder of conservative nonprofit multi-media platform BASED Politics, wants Pride participants to leave the “public kink and fetish displays” at home.
“It should go without saying that performing or even simulating kink-related sex acts in front of children is wildly wrong.,” he wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Post.
Like Smith, Polumbo said he isn’t calling for an end to Pride events, but he wants them to be much more family-friendly. “While many Pride parades and events are genuine celebrations of love and family that aren’t inherently inappropriate, many are often hypersexualized or, in part, include near-nudity or explicit conduct,” he wrote, adding that he is a member of the gay community.
“But as a member of the gay community, I think we ought to have a reckoning over why kink is conflated with LGBT pride at all,” he wrote. “The two things really have nothing to do with each other. After all, heterosexual and homosexual people alike have various kinks and fetishes. I have libertarian sensibilities, so I frankly don’t really care what happens behind closed doors, as long as it’s between consenting adults.”
He agrees with Smith in that he wants the events to go back to their roots.
“It’s time for the LGBT community to step up and reassert some basic standards over Pride events. Kink and fetish displays shouldn’t be welcome at Pride — and if they’re going to occur, we absolutely must demand they be limited to 18+ environments,” he wrote.
He added, “And to the broader public understandably outraged by these viral incidents, please don’t hold the actions of a small minority against our entire community when many of us want nothing to do with such indecency.”
A man twerks at an unspecified Price event attended by children (Twitter screenshot, photo by Rebecca Brannon, @RebsBrannon https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon)
