That means no one should have to examine their conscience before going.

That means sponsorship from ethically dodgy corporations is problematic.

How would you feel if you’d been kicked out of your home by a bank flirting with the edge of the law, and you knew a friend of yours was going to a big party sponsored by that same bank?

A friend of mine in London is avoiding World Pride because it’s sponsored by Coca Cola.

won’t be attending World Pride on Saturday as I would rather not support events which accept sponsorship from (ie, advertise) companies which use subsidiaries/suppliers who threaten trade unionists with death.

As a trade unionist I think it would be bizarre for me to do so. When it comes to a trade off between workers’ rights and LGBT rights (which Saturday unfortunately does) my priorities still lie with the former.

Having said that, I hope all those who do attend have a cracking time. Pride’s important, both as a celebration of how far we’ve come and, more importantly, as a message to those who can’t have prides that things can get better.

And that’s a reasonable point. Could World Pride not be more inclusive by not giving advertising space to ethically dodgy companies? Yes, it could. Of course, they might then have less money. There are trade offs. But it’s certainly a place where ethical disagreement is possible.

Here’s another thought, from Greta Christina. This is perhaps more relevant to the way the editorial was written.

Pretty much any time people from a marginalized group speak out about their/our marginalization, the story will get re-told in a way that omits the most pertinent details, the very details that form the foundation of the protest — thus making the protest look trivial and ridiculous.

TRiG.

If corporations are (like) people, then it seems self evident that they can do bad things as well as good, and we should be free to hold them responsible for the bad they do–socially even when legal prosecution fails.

Evidently you found very different meaning in The statements of the Occupriders.

As is muddling someone else’s message and then attacking them for having a muddled message. In your piece that started this, you do that repeatedly. For instance, look at the last quoted passage and your analysis of it. You have two different marchers attacking two different issues.

One decries the over-commercialization of an event that originated with a kind of revolutionary zeal that no companies supported or would have. What was once about marching in the streets to claim our rights as citizens, oppose sodomy laws and police crackdowns is a big corporate party to sell us beer and Oreos. You may disagree with him over whether this change is a good one or not, but it is a real one. His point doesn’t seem to be that corporations should be banned, just that we should be aware of the changes at the event and make a space in our celebrations for those who share some of the zeal of those original revolutionaries to remind us what we are about.

A second laments that the event financially tied itself to financial institutions, and at least one of the ones she named was notoriously tied up in some of the worst abuses of the mortgage and foreclosure crisis–paying huge legal fees to our government for illegally pen-signing documents, having numerous stories in the press about foreclosing on people who hadn’t defaulted on their loans, foreclosing on people when the banks did not even possess the legally required paperwork to do so. Who cares if they’re good to their gay employees when they are responsible for such foul abuses? What she calls for is not unlike the San Francisco fetish street festivals and IML in Chicago banning producers of bareback porn: Do we want to give our imprimatur to institutions we consider destructive to the larger community by allowing them in the parade. Again, agree or disagree (I tend to disagree–both with her and the street fairs–because I think banning speech is never the answer), but her argument is neither without precedent nor incoherent.

But you moosh their two separate arguments together to “As best I can tell, what makes evil corporations evil (other than just being part of a capitalist system) is that they fail to give back to the community, they put profits over people, and they just aren’t being responsible neighbors. So we should protest their funding of gay pride events. (Irony isn’t really their strong point.)” This isn’t fair representative of what either of them said. So you argue against a strawman of your own making and then declare rhetorical and logical victory.

Imagined motives, imagined arguments: It’s not all that different, and it’s always easier to see when it is being done by someone you disagree with.

I don’t think Occupride is the answer, but I think they are raising important questions. I try not to see the Tea Party as just moneyed interests cynically trying to channel the angry and uninformed lashing out by a group distressed that the world is changing such that they and their children don’t automatically enjoy the same level of identity-based cultural privilege they once did. I don’t always succeed, but I try to recognize that, though I think that characterization is mostly true, it can lead me to false strawmen when looking at Tea Party reaction to particular issues or events (or not: Look at Rand Paul’s comments about the Constitutionality of the Supreme Court’s ACA decision).

Your defeat of the strawmen in your essay that started this conversation thread is impressive–but that’s really all it is. That you now come back and charge Neon Genesis with doing more or less the same, only from the other direction, is a delicious irony.

I have no idea what you believe about the free market. But on this we agree: making up motivations for other people and then railing at them for having these imagined motivations can make one appear a fool.

It’s not that hard to figure out. If you’re a candidate who hates gays, Muslims, and liberals as much as the Tea Party does, then they won’t mind overlooking their race, but if you’re not the right type of racial minority, then you’re the spawn of Satan for coming to America to take away Amerikan jobs. It’s a modern day Uncle Tom basically.

Their statement’s pretty much boiler plate, don’t you think? It has nothing to do with Wells Fargo or Nabisco.

But I guess I come at this with different perspectives than they do.

I remember when I was on the parade committee one year, if we could have gotten Nabisco to fund the event we would have danced in delight. The objections then were that the only people willing to put up funds were alcohol and tobacco companies – selling products which were addictive and harmful (okay, maybe Oreos fit).

Now if they were protesting a corporation that had demonstrated itself to have anti-gay policies – say Exxon/Mobil – but who wanted PR, then I’d see the point.

But Wells Fargo lost a huge chunk of business about a decade ago when (I think it was) Focus on the Family led a charge to get Christians to pull out of that bank over their gay support. So yeah, in a way they are what we fought in the streets for. They sided with us – not our enemies – and they earned a place in our community.

I get that some folks don’t like the economic model that allows certain business entities to dominate the marketplace and that wealth is unfairly distributed. I even get that some people don’t like that there is a marketplace at all. And I’m all for letting them be heard. Let them Occuspeak and Occulecture at Occuberkeley if they occulike (and I reserve the right to do a little occumocking).

But don’t protest the folks who step up for us. Even if you just can’t stomach banks, try and look the other way when the bank that contributes to No On 8 comes by. Our community is not so flush with supporters that we can shun any.

Unless, of course, you really do have a money tree. And… if that’s the case… are you single?