No, contrary to what you might have deduced from the title of this wee ditty, this is not about Phish, or Grateful Dead, or people who make their own clothes and have hair down to their b-holes. This blog is actually about another subset of the Burlington population- the gays. Now before anyone gets their little knickers in a twist, here’s a little nugget of full disclosure for you: these are my people I’m writing about. No, not neo-hippies. The gays.
So this weekend is Vermont Pride. Or Pride Vermont. Or Vermont Loves The Gays. It’s a time when the gays can celebrate their differentness by trying to rally for things that will make them the same. Like marriage. Anyway, LGBT pride events tend to happen around this time in the summer. They are meant to celebrate/commemorate the Stonewall Riots that happened in New York City on June 29, 1969. During the riots, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay haunt on Christopher St., and the gays weren’t having it. They fought back and the incident is historically deemed as the beginning of the gay civil rights movement. You can thank me for your pride primer later.
Most cities have some sort of pride celebration involving a parade with floats, string bikinis, club music and lots of glitter. Burlington, not to be outdone by other much larger cities, has a little pride parade of its own. It runs basically the length of Church St. and doesn’t have nearly the number of half naked men as larger pride parades do. Pity. Anyway, the parade is over in about 49 seconds and the tourists go back to eating their lunches after having a good neck-craning gawk.
Pride Week (or weeklet, since it only runs from Wednesday to Sunday) was officially kicked off on Wednesday when Mayor Bob Kiss declared it “LGBTQQIALMNOP Week” in Burlington. After he made said declaration he raised the rainbow flag over City Hall. And by raise the rainbow flag I mean he unfurled it over the construction barrier outside the Church St. entrance. What a way to celebrate a community, eh kids? Nothing says pride better than a wrinkled rainbow flag slouching over a wooden barrier.
What I can’t wrap my little pea brain around is why they can’t just raise a proper rainbow flag up the regular flag pole. Take down Old Glory for a couple of days (ensuring that it does not touch the ground during its descent down the pole) and fly the rainbow flag. Other cities way less progressive than Burlington do it. When I lived in Syracuse, N.Y., yonks ago their Irish Catholic mayor hoisted the gay flag atop City Hall himself.
It’s sort of insulting and a lot embarassing that a tiny flag draped over some construction zone is supposed to be a symbol of pride for the gay community. To add insult to injury, there are two more dinky rainbow flags scattered on the wooden barrier. One is about the size of a Post-it. They don’t really scream “Pride!” or “Acceptance!” or “Waxed chests and Ginch Gonch briefs!” They sort of just wimper “Um, there are some gays here. Don’t throw things at them.”
I don’t know with whom to speak about getting the flag up the pole, but if he, she, ze or hir is reading this (which, why would ze?) perhaps it might be nice to do the gays a solid and fly a proper rainbow flag on the proper flag pole. I’m sure the construction workers fixing the steps would thank you.
