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Sydney Mardi Gras - World Pride 2023
Having seen the Mardi Gras on TV I was in love with the love and spirit.
But the commentary on the main TV channel here in Oz was abysmal, embarrassing and tbh I felt it was generally juvenile and disrespectful.
From a protest in 78 to a corporate show 50 years it seemed to lack the truth of the original marches.
Proud to have marched in the early 80's and saddened to see us now being used as a corporate branding exercise.
Thought? Did you see it? Did you hear it? What did you think?
Times change, hillsboy1, as does the audience: if Fred Nile prays for rain, he does it privately these days. From milk crates to bleacher seats and back to milk crates, even so the crowds were there in even greater numbers, with only four arrests, a far better behaved crowd than in the decades before - the crowd was on our side. Woo hoo!
I've marched, though somewhat after you: it was/is a right of gay passage (pun intended) to march when you were ready (or angry) enough to do so, particularly for our urban-based brethren. (Our rural brothers had their own battles, often brother against genetic brother, without many social defenses.) So the straights allow our march-cum-parade - how could they now not? We've dragged them on our 'journey', so what if we have to carry some baggage?
Part of that baggage, as with any ongoing event or similar, is the newbie. I was a little aghast at seeing a non-binary newbie given a microphone and a long leash, partying away with the marchers, but I had my youth to inform me. I was taken aback by the usually staid and suited newsreader wearing gold sequins and eye shadow, but I had to shrug while he was interviewing the marching incumbent Prime Minister.
Visibility for the gay community has never been an easy struggle despite positioning (arts, entertainment); being the progressive vanguard for the binary and non-binary continuum(s); being sidelined for being open, both vocal and demonstrative; being represented in most family lineages. And now we negotiate product placement. Isn't that a validity of a mainstream position?
Yes, Aunty's* coverage was a little more homespun than expected, occasionally cringeworthy, but then, that’s back to the roots of the 1990s mainstream incursion: we're here, we're queer, we wanna take our gear! The gay community, particularly out from Mardi Gras, has pushed for greater community party safety, straight or gay. We are the leaders in fun.
Okay, Alan Joyce is a pillow biter, and QANTAS cabin crew have a certain reputation. Not so the Singaporean Optus, a rapacious bunch of band-wagonners riding with any cause for a profit, and the first to parachute at the slightest wind-change. However, if they siphon donations towards gay support charities, then I will bite my tongue. Show me the money.
Yes, I promoted the Mardi Gras parade here - it's the biggest and best party in town, and I'm proud of the last 45 years of social progress and inclusion, after all. Australia can offer a sizable piece of the progressive puzzle to the world, and we can party. Sure, there are wall-flowers, but join us. See where holding hands takes you.
*Australian Broadcasting Commission, the taxpayer-funded national television and radio broadcaster.