LGBTQ+ Rights and America

Yeah, I get that it’s abhorrent but considering what was actually happening, it kinda felt like stumbling upon a bloody murder scene and getting angry...that the killer left their wallet behind with their driver’s license inside.

Something I discovered during the Trump years is that stupidity tends to be the part that sticks out more in my head and drives me to vexation then the constant evil.

“At least try just a little, at least pretend for five seconds that you aren’t blatantly doing what you’re blatantly doing in front of everybody!” Must have been a mantra every time I looked at the news.

San Francisco police officers said Monday they will not march in the city’s LGBTQ Pride parade this year, in an act of protest.

Cops are gonna cop

To expand on this, they're refusing to march because the Pride parade is asking for marchers not to go in law enforcement uniforms, because someone might be traumatized by seeing uniformed cops.

I was wondering what they were protesting.

That’s...odd.

Okay? Bye? Kinda threatening us with a good time here.

Edited by Perseus on May 24th 2022 at 2:40:50 AM

The mayor, London Breed, has also said that she won't march unless the ban on law enforcement uniforms is lifted.

The supervisor Matt Dorsey also said something to the same effect.

I love (hate) how Breed cites LGBTQ+ people in uniform as a reason not to participate in a pride parade. Like, no, you just didn't want to do the parade and it's disgusting that you're using these people as a justification for your actions.

(There's also a nuclear-level hot take, quoted on the Twitter thread and presumably from an officer, whining about how "the leather community" and "the drag community" are being allowed to express their identities, but when police officers aren't allowed to wear their uniforms it's oppression. I could go on all night about this, but in short: wearing "leather" [I'm assuming BDSM stuff? Not sure, article is paywalled] and drag is an expression of a person's identity that has often been deemed unacceptable by society, and that's why people wear that type of clothing to pride parades where they can freely express that part of themselves. This is in no way similar to police uniforms, where the people wearing them are generally held in high regard by society and by no means deemed deviant from society at large, unlike the former two groups.)

because someone might be traumatized by seeing uniformed cops.

Um. What is this based on?

The eternally tense at best relationship between LGBT+ communities and the law?

Just my opinion, but I think in these cases you want concrete examples to point at.

That terrible, scarring experiences between the LGBT+ community and the police are a thing (as in, not uncommon) or the idea that police uniforms can serve as an actual psychological trigger?

Edited by fredhot16 on May 24th 2022 at 1:41:48 AM

The latter. That LGBT-police interactions are often problematic isn't really in dispute, whether it's sensible to banish police uniforms from a pride parade to the point that it becomes a controversy very much is. Yes, I know I am a results-oriented person.

I think it's an entirely reasonable demand whether or not it constitutes a genuine psychological trigger. Why the flying fuck do you need to wear your cop uniform to pride, anyway?

Edited by Perseus on May 24th 2022 at 7:50:37 PM

That was the reasoning given by the event organizers. With all respect, I'm sure they have a better understanding of what traumatizes them than us randos on the Internet.

Nonsense, obviously a bunch of probably majority straight randos knows what's best!!!!

Internet Nazis are sharing a picture of an innocent trans claiming that they're the shooter

They did it with two trans people. The first categorically proved their alibi so they just switched targets.

The problem with Internet anonymity strikes again - the first sounds like a guaranteed libel case.

Because people want to be openly out in the workplace? Because people take pride in being LGBT representation within a particular career sector? Because people just got off shift and don’t have the time to change? Because workplaces want to clearly show that they as an organisation support LGBT+ people?

People wear lots of workplace uniforms to Pride, I don’t see why the logic of police uniforms doesn’t apply to them.

The uniform ban is a pretty clear attempt to ban police from marching in Pride without doing so explicitly. If the organisers of Pride believe that police are a group who don’t deserve to have a place at Pride and that being a cop makes you a traitor to the LGBT+ cause then they should come out and say so directly, not hide behind a uniform ban.

I’d hardly say that cops are held in high regard in LA, seeing as they’ve just been de-facto banned from a major city event.

Edited by Silasw on May 25th 2022 at 4:50:28 PM

The police have historically been used as a weapon against the queer community. Like, in the UK, when there's a commemorative event for Stonewall, it is legitimately really disgusting for cops to show up in uniform to celebrate it. Because the cops were the ones trying to shut it down at the time.

There's been no significant reckoning or reparations or even significant apologies made, in many places, the police just kind of quietly tried to ingratiate themselves with the queer community when they saw the wind changing and tried to avoid mentioning all the stuff that happened in the past.

That's why the police should not be in uniform at Pride events. Police officers can be there if they aren't in uniform, IMO, but an active and official-looking police presence as part of the events flies right in the face of decades of actual history.

It's gross in the same way that Christian churches trying to appropriate exclusively Jewish celebrations is gross. It's the historical oppressor pretending that none of that bad history happened and acting like they have some right to be part of the traditionally oppressed group. There are no valid reasons for a Christian church to hold a Purim or Rosh Hashana event, and there's no valid reasons for the police to have an official, uniformed presence within pride events.

Edited by Zendervai on May 25th 2022 at 12:01:15 PM

Sure, and that’s an argument for saying that police are the enemy of the LGBT+ community and as such aren’t welcome at Pride. If the organisers want to ban cops then they should be doing it explicitly, not trying to do it via the backdoor via a uniform ban.

Say explicitly “cops aren’t welcome until the force apologises for and makes recompense for all the abuse it has done to the LGBT+ community over the years” and you’ve got a stronger argument than “we can’t allow uniformed cops because they might traumatise someone, even though there will probably be cops there in an official working capacity doing crowd control and security”.

The problem is that the police have significant political power in a lot of places. An explicit ban can very easily lead to the police leaning on the city council and getting the Pride event banned completely in return.

It looks wishy-washy and milquetoast, but stuff like this is difficult to argue against and make a case against, so it gives the police way less power in this context than they would have in terms of an explicit ban.

And I can guarantee you, if they did just explicitly ban the police, it'd be national news with wailing and gnashing of teeth about how horrible the queers are to those poor defenseless police officers who just want to march in the parade, when right now, it just kinda peaks at "these police officers want to march and you won't let them." "They can just march out of uniform, they're still welcome." You can't really build a lawsuit out of that.

Edited by Zendervai on May 25th 2022 at 12:12:58 PM

Cops at pride is a PR exercise, they want to whitewash their organizations by associating it with tolerance and inclusivity.

Individual cops may or may not be pro-queer, hardly guaranteed given how disproportionately reactionary they are, but collectively it's a very cynical attempt to make their departments look good.

Yeah, it's literally never just individual cops happening to show up, it's always a concentrated group putting in a deliberate appearance. It's always a PR move.

,

The difference between cop uniforms and other uniforms is that as an institution cops are harmful to the LGBT community. Individuals can come, but their institution is not welcome.

Edited by ciyinwanderer on May 25th 2022 at 3:28:58 PM

Genuine question, is this parade going to have like a police presence or security? I assume the answer is yes, in which event I can't help seeing something like this as performative and unnecessarily exclusionary even if I can understand the reasoning behind it.

Like, saying means nothing, if you're not actually doing anything meaningful about it, and it doesn't actually sound particularly meaningful. I think that's what Silsw was getting at too.

But maybe I'm just misunderstanding what this would actually do.

Edited by LSBK on May 25th 2022 at 2:36:15 PM

There's probably going to be traffic direction, and a lot of these events hire private security firms to keep the peace. There's a difference between "the police are here because the city told them to direct traffic" and "we have them actively marching in the event as the police."

They're not saying the police can't be anywhere in the vicinity, they're saying they can't march in uniform. So if the police have to direct the flow of traffic, there's no issue or conflict of interest.

And I just figured out why it was worded like that definitively.

Edited by Zendervai on May 25th 2022 at 3:39:21 PM