A dress code? Really? A FUCKING DRESS CODE?
South Florida Gay News (FINALLY) reports:
In the week since Wilton Manors’ city commission voted unanimously to amend the permit for the Stonewall Pride Parade & Street Festival, people on both sides of the issue on whether or not to comply with drag laws have lashed out.
The amendment ensures event producers follow all laws, including ones passed since the permit was issued in February. The practical effect is to comply with the new law that appears to classify all live drag entertainment, regardless of content, as adult entertainment, and prevent drag performances on outdoor stages that will be set up all along Wilton Drive for the June 17 party.
It appears people in drag will be allowed into the event and to participate in the parade. However, performing in the parade or on any exterior stage is likely to be prohibited due to being labeled adult entertainment. Producers of the event haven’t finalized standards for admission and participation, but have said there will be a “dress code” applying to all participants, vendors, attendees, and performers.
It started this way in Germany. And please don’t tell me I’m being dramatic.
Pick up a history book not published in Florida.
I think they should do one of two things: 1) Cancel the event altogether OR turn it into a major protest demonstration. Preferably the later. This is BS.
Back in 1959 – I and others helped found the Gay Liberation Front becuase we were dissatisfied with the assimilationists of the Homophile Movement that wanted dress codes enforced and age limits. I was denied being able to join the small picket single line in July 4, 1967 by ECHO because I was wearing jeans and not a suit and too young at then only age 18. Two years later I was elected at the last ECHO Conference – to never have that group meet again. GLF ended the Homophile Movement – and did not ban cross dressing, etc. participants. It is clear that the assimilationists who were able to be more open years later because of GLF and those wanting a better movement, never cared about anything BUT THEMSELVES to adapt and accept. We need them to become aware of why a activist movement involving ALL is the way to advance and not to return to “respectable closets and spaces allowed” Those spaces will all be eliminated unless we defend our whole Community and not accept going back to the suffocating isolation and self-hatred that was the daily life before Stonewall Rebellion and GLF. Our Pride events should not be controlled by hetero bigots on what they only want. They want NO Pride Events and Nothing Visible.
I meant 1969 in founding GLF and not 1959 that I mistakenly wrote above.- poor eyesight.
I hope I have your permission to reprint your message
Friends were discussing this at dinner last night and came up with two great ideas: 1) everyone attending, I mean everyone, should dress in drag. They are the audience, not performers so it is not breaking that law. 2) a group should dress in white rubber DeSantis boots and goose step down the parade with a Nazi salute.