Pride and Prejudice...

   Well it's June... So you KNOW what that means.

Like the rainbow flags going up on Market Street in San Francisco , the annual debate over the merits of LGBT Pride celebrations re-surfaces like a perennial weed that just won't stay down.

It's a debate that rages  inside and outside the  LGBTQ community. Inside the community, the question is; does some of the imagery of Pride celebrations hurt the cause of equal rights? Also, in the wake of legal victories such as Marriage Equality; some ask  do we even need pride celebrations anymore?

While critics and opponents of equality love to point to that same imagery as evidence of Gay folks wanting "special rights", and then pull out their favorite chestnut, of asking why are Gay Pride Celebrations acceptable but Straight Pride celebrations are not?

Sigh.... Really? It's like asking why isn't there a "White History Month". I get tired of trying to explain to people who really do know better, just how stupid they sound whey they try to make these types of arguments. But fine, since clearly there is some "genuine" confusion out there as to the reason for LGBT Pride celebrations , allow me to clarify.

States in the USA where you can be fired for being Straight =0
States in the USA where you could have been fired for being Gay = 28
Countries that will execute you for being Straight = 0
Countries that will execute you for being Gay = 11 (actually 12 Uganda just re-joined the list)


Growing up, how many books, songs, television programs, and movies did you see that featured straight couples meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after? Pretty much all of them. Ask someone who is LGBT how many positive images in popular culture they had growing up that affirmed who they are? The answer is, none, or at best few, if any at all.

Thankfully this has been changing dramatically in the past few years.

But until those recent advances, Gay characters in movies and television were either creepy villains or camp comic relief. If you doubt that, you really should check out the groundbreaking HBO documentary, "The Celluloid Closet". It shows clearly the disparity in popular culture where messages about sexual orientation were concerned.

 
The Celluloid Closet - Trailer

Then there is the area of religion. The number of straight kids who have been told they are going to hell simply for being heterosexual = 0. The number of LGBTQ kids who have been told that they are going hell simply for being who they are?  = Too many to even try to count.

To my Straight friends, I have to ask, how many times have "respected" public figures, politicians, pundits and clergy gone on national television demanding that everyone be given the chance to VOTE on your civil rights?

How often has someone told you that not being able to discriminate against you was somehow an attack on them? When was the last time you heard a member of the Supreme Court saying that simply by being allowed to exist, you were "an attack" on the moral fiber of America?

Anyone?? Yeah...I didn't think so...

I have a flash of the obvious for you, EVERY month is Straight Pride Month." There is a word for someone who truly feels that equal rights for people they don't like is somehow an attack on them. That word is "Bigot".

Saying LGBT people are human too, isn't an attack on straight people. Those people who really think it is, are, quite simply, bigots. People who say LGBT Pride celebrations need to be stopped, are in fact, the exact reason they all started in the first place.

In 2026 one would think such battles would be long over, but in the light of LGBT rights victories in the U.S. over the past few years, the American Talibangelicals have turned their sights to new targets; Trans Kids and Drag Performers.

The rhetoric on the American cultural Right Wing,  would have you believe a man in a dress and high heels reading  books to kids, is a greater threat than the LEADING cause of death for children in the United States: Gun Violence.

Are Pride celebrations good or bad for the cause of equality? The answer is both. With visibility comes closer examination.  

Opponents of equality love to show images of drag queens, leather daddies and shirtless men   dancing on parade floats, and scream "See! it's not about equal rights! They just want to recruit your kids into THIS!! They never show the families, advocacy groups, welcoming and inclusive religious denominations, and workplace affinity groups who participate in Pride parades.    After all, that wouldn't fit their desired narrative.

Media coverage is often complicit. CNN loves to show the drag queens and Gogo boys, but when straight allies like the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest non-profit health care company in the U.S. .rides on a float in the SF Pride parade every year, with over 1,200 employees, their families, friends and colleagues, you'd think we all were invisible.

You never see CNN asking Tony Perkins, head of the certified Hate-Group, the "Family Research Council" on Fox News about the deadly cultural fetishization of guns and violence towards minorities on the cultural right, and how that had led directly to lethal antiemetic and homophobic attacks.

That would be admitting something of an inconvenient truth. 

It's much easier to just point at a group of shirtless men on a flatbed truck or women on motorcycles and say that they are the real threat to families.

I have always said that Pride celebrations are not really for the people who attend them. Instead, they are for the people who cannot attend them. Growing up as a Gay kid in a small town in South Central Wisconsin, there were times when I was convinced, I was the only gay person on Earth.

The constant message from popular culture, religion, family and peer groups was "boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married (or not) and have kids and live happily ever after". There was no happily ever after for someone who felt what I was feeling.

Then, for one weekend in June, I would turn on the TV News and see thousands of people just like me, in places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago saying "No, that's not true, you are not alone, and there is a big wide world out here beyond Sun Prairie Wisconsin. So hang in there .... we're here and we're waiting for you!"

1986 Pride Television Coverage

Now more than three decades  later, I watch coverage like this, and it seems so endearingly cheesy. Yet at the time, it was a lifeline to people like me, living with the fear and isolation of being "in the closet".

Pride Celebrations are the original "It Gets Better Project".

My straight friends never needed to be told that being straight was okay, and that they were okay because nobody ever told them they weren't.  

Pride isn't about celebrating being Gay, it's about publicly showing that being LGBT is just as much a part of the human experience as being straight is. I for one would love to see the day when Pride is obsolete. When that scared closeted gay kid, in some small town doesn't need to be told that he or she is fine just the way they are.

So this month we will see joyous crowds gathering in places like Market Street in San Francisco, Oxford Street in London, Halsted Street in Chicago, and Fifth Avenue in New York City, Hillcrest in San Diego, Montrose in Houston, and so many more.    And this year  Pride is more important than ever. We have a President, and administration  sees America's diversity as a threat, and seeks to use the LGBTQ+ community as a boogieman to distract gullible voters from his own failures and corruption.  

So in this Pride Month , it is still vitally important  to add our voices voice to the chorus celebrating the diversity of Americans and the American Experience.

If for no other reason to let that one scared kid know, it really does get better. There is a world where "boy meets boy" and "girl meets girl", where you can be the person that every fiber of your being is screaming for you to be. A world where yes, you can fall in love and (if they want to) get married, and even live happily ever after...

Happy Pride Everyone.

When The Seeds You Plant, Sprout Up…

I have always been a fan of the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, or as it is more affectionately known; “Nerd Prom”. Like the Al Smith Dinner during Presidential Election campaigns, it provides a welcome opportunity for overly serious and self-important figures in politics and media to endure some good-natured ribbing.

Sadly, the dinner has become a point of controversy. At the 2011 dinner, where President Barack Obama famously roasted Donald Trump, who was in the audience. Obama’s remarks, mocked Trump’s political aspirations and "birther" claims, and is widely cited by observers and advisors as a pivotal, humiliating moment for Trump that motivated him to run for president.

Donald Trump famously boycotted attending the dinner all through his first term as President. Leaning in hard on his traditional criticism of any and all negative coverage of him as being “fake news”.

So, when it was announced that Trump would be attending this year’s Dinner at the Washington D.C. Hilton, the expectation was that his remarks would be highly combative and critical of the Media. His press secretary Caroline Levitt, interviewed shortly before the Saturday’s event began even said she expected “shots to be fired”. Referring one assumes, to the speech Trump was going to give later on in the evening.

Well, be careful what you wish for Caroline.

By now most people know what happened Saturday night. At 8:34 pm, Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old man from Torrance, CA was confronted by security near the main screening area of the Washington Hilton; while the dinner has just gotten underway inside the main ballroom. He ran past the security checkpoint and is alleged to have fired at least one shot. He was chased and subsequently apprehended.

The suspect never reached the actual ballroom and no one inside the event was injured.

The incident prompted the Secret Service to immediately evacuate President Trump, the First Lady, the Vice President and the various members of the Trump Cabinet who were in attendance. The event was then ended and Trump went on to hold a performative press conference back at the White House where he cited then incident as a reason his proposed new Ballroom adjacent to the now demolished East Wing was needed for reasons of security.

Really… He actually said that.

What is most interesting in the aftermath of Saturday’s incident is the public reaction. Yes, folks are decrying the preponderance of political violence in America, as well we all should. But the predominate reaction seems to be one of … skepticism. Social media was immediately flooded with memes suggesting the entire event was staged by the Trump Administration.

I don’t believe the attempted attack on Saturday was some sort of “false flag” operation. Clearly Cole Allen, is a disturbed young man who claimed he didn’t recognize the country he was living in, and felt compelled to take drastic and violent action because of it. In a “Manifesto” investigators found in his home, Allen is purported to have written:

“I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me. And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes... Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

What has been interesting to see, is the voracity of the responses suggesting the whole thing was staged to help Trump’s dismal approval ratings. Responses originating not just on the left but on the far right as well. In the weeks leading up to Saturday’s shooting, social media had been full of posts by MAGA supporters now questioning if Trump’s previous assassination attempt in Butler, PA during the 2024 campaign had been staged.

The Trump Administration having an adversarial relationship with the Truth, is not a new phenomenon. It goes back to the very first day of Trump’s first term, when then Press Secretary Sean Spicer lost any hope of credibility in his fist ever White House briefing when he made the ridiculously false claim that the crowd at Trump’s inaugural earlier that day had been" the biggest one ever…, PERIOD!"

That was followed a few weeks later, by White House official Kellyanne Conway telling “Meet the Press” that the demonstrably false statements that Trump was making were not lies, but were “alternative facts”. Setting the stage for Trump to basically disregard any truth he didn’t care for as “fake”, and claim any statistics or election results not favorable to Trump were “rigged”

.

All culminating four years later on January 6th, when unable to face the fact that he lost the election, Trump urged a mob of his supporters to do exactly what 31-year-old Cole Allen tried to do last Saturday. Affect change through political violence.

The fact that so many people are ready to believe that Trump orchestrated last Saturday’s attack as a way to help himself, is nothing less than the logical and very predictable end result of the constant attacks on facts, truth and … reality by Trump and his various MAGA mouthpieces over the past 8 plus years.

Political Violence should never be seen as a viable method of change in a civilized democratic nation. Yet the easy acceptance by a large percentage of Americans of the idea that Saturday’s attempted attack was merely political theatre produced by Trump to make him look heroic; Is the Trump Administration reaping what it has so enthusiastically sown.

When you make attacking truth, facts and reality the hallmark of your Presidency, you lose the right to be outraged when wild conspiracy theories come back to haunt you.

A Letter to My Hometown...

Dear Sun Prairie, Wisconsin

Recently a high school classmate asked me if I would be attending our class reunion later this year. I really wasn’t sure how to answer that. As I honestly hadn’t made a decision. For years, the idea of attending an SPHS reunion struck me like asking a Titanic survivor if they were interested in attending a commemorative North Atlantic cruise.

It has been said that your hometown is the fire out of which the person you are today was forged. I find I struggle with that sentiment, and probably always will. My relationship with you, my “hometown” is, as Facebook might describe it… “complicated”. So, I thought it’s a good time to clear the air about a few things.

The primary motivation for moving back to the United States nine years ago, was to be closer to my parents. Having a number of lifelong friends who recently had lost one or both of their parents, I was keenly aware that I had fewer days ahead with them than behind.

So instead of being 4,000 miles and a 9-hour flight away in London, or 2,000 miles and a 6-hour flight way in San Francisco, for the past year and a half we were 940 miles and a 2-hour flight away in New York City

Then Nine months ago, We moved back here. The original reason was my dad’s health taking a prolonged downward turn back last June. When he passed away suddenly on his 87th birthday in early July, the reasons for moving back shifted to being here for my mom, but the overall context remained the same.

Now I find myself once again living back here. Granted, we live in Madison, not Sun Prairie, but it is still living in Dane county, some 30 plus years after I left. Which has been an odd experience. It’s like one of those Science Fiction movies where someone travels in time then gets back to the present and notices how the timeline was changed. Things are mostly familiar, but there are glaring differences that make it clear that the place you returned to, is not the same place you left.

The first thing you notice, is how much BIGGER the city is. Growing up here there were 5 elementary schools, one Jr. High and one High school. Now there are 10 elementary schools, 3 middle schools, 2 high schools and 2 of whatever Phoenix Academy  & Sun Prairie Virtual School are.

The area of Madison where I live in is also completely unrecognizable from when I was growing up. What is now a sprawling cityscape of strip malls, Costco, and apartment complexes, used to be just cornfields and a dive bar called the Twilight.

On a previous trip back here in 2022, the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal sports section had a full-page story on the first ever football game between the Sun Prairie East Cardinals and the Sun Prairie West, Wolves. A game that was played not just on Ashley Field, but rather AT Ashley Field IN the Bank of Sun Prairie Stadium.

My family moved to Sun Prairie when I was in first grade. I went from Pier Elementary School in Fond Du Lac, to Northside Elementary in the fall of that year. I remember at the time, thinking how, Sun Prairie with its proximity to Madison felt like a real “city” compared to tiny, small town Fond Du Lac.    In time, however, that feeling would wear off.

I have said my relationship with Sun Prairie is a complicated one, and that is very true. But let me be clear, I feel very lucky to have grown up here. It was a wonderfully safe, and yes for the most part, fun place to be from. Sun Prairie Public Schools, while certainly not perfect, were better than most and gave me a well-rounded education that has served me in life. I had and continue to have amazing and wonderful friends here. Friends who played a huge role in my becoming the person I am today.

Sun Prairie, Wisconsin is and will always be my ‘hometown’. It is where I am from.

But…

One of the nice things about getting older is that old friends can be honest with each other. So here goes...

I am from here, but I have never ever felt like I belonged here.

Growing up here you made it very clear, that … “noticeable individuality” was something that would make life difficult. It's safe to say that back then, I was not someone who was in with the "popular kids". My varsity letter (yes, I have one) was in Extemporaneous Speech. (Yeah, I know... you actually can letter in that, who knew?)

So, I didn't fit in very well. I was an awkward kid with mild stutter, who wasn’t at all interested in sports, had a graduate school level vocabulary and interests that greatly differed from most of my classmates.

And for better or worse, in the 1980’s, Sun Prairie was not a place that smiled upon being "different". As a result, it became clear that I would always be on the outside looking in. Consequently, moving back here has been an emotionally mixed experience. Part nostalgia and part PTSD.

Don't get me wrong, I had (and still have) amazing friends here and great memories. Yet “back in the day” (as the kids say), the “vibe” was quite different. Growing up here as a gay kid was a daily exercise in terror.

The ultimate put-down was to say something was "gay" or to be called a "fag". You saw kids who were even slightly effeminate or "different” tormented on a daily basis. Sun Prairie High School, while providing a very good public education, was (like most American High Schools), stratified to the point of making the caste system in India look like outtakes from “The Breakfast Club”.

In my Junior year, I was one of the editors of the school newspaper, the Cardinal Courier. An organization called “The United”, (a groundbreaking non-profit organization that provided support and counseling services to Gay and Lesbian teens in South Central Wisconsin) contacted us. They wanted to buy an ad in the paper advertising their crisis counseling phone line. The reaction was… stark.

Teachers and classmates that I had thought would be somewhat progressive were suddenly “seriously concerned”, angry even that we might be “promoting the homosexual lifestyle”, and even potentially pushing some poor confused soul into it, just by running an ad for a crisis counseling hotline.

The experience taught me a very clear lesson; Sun Prairie, while not a bad place to grow up, would be a very very difficult place to be grown up. There would never be a first date, a dance or a kiss stolen at a locker in between classes. To even attempt such a thing would be suicide. Literally.  

There was no such thing a Gay-Straight alliances, or “Safe Spaces” for LGBT youth. As much as my classmates would never want to admit it today, had a student in our High School class “come out” publicly as Gay or Lesbian, the response would have been quite simply, to bully him or her to death..

When I see  movies and streaming series' like "Heartstopper", "Young Royals", "Love, Simon", or any of the scores of high school romance series' coming out of Asia, I can only smile and be grateful that in some ways and in some places society has moved on.

Thankfully one of the “alternate time-line” changes you notice coming back here is the daily reality for a gay kid at Sun Prairie East is, (at least to a certain extent) far better today.   I recently saw on Social Media at Sun Prairie  even has it's own LGBTQ Pride celebration.  

Yet even now decades later, driving around town still prompts very real memories of that feeling of being on the “outside looking in”..

So I didn't choose to live IN Sun Prairie, I do live right next door on Madison's far... FAR East side.   As much as I would have liked my Parents to have moved to California, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic made that big of a move, impossible. And with my Dad buried here, it is not reasonable to ask my Mom to leave. So, here she will stay, and We will as well.

Yet at the end of the day, I am grateful to be able to say that I am from here. But I am also able to make peace with that fact that I did not, still do not, and never will, belong here.

Not a bad thing, just the truth. Who knows? I may even go the reunion. If for no other reason than to see who it is we all have become.

Go Cardinals… I still hope you beat the Wolves.

Love,
Dave

Truth Worth Sharing...

California based speaker and consultant Marc Puckett, recently posted this on LinkedIn.  It's worth sharing.

It doesn’t happen all at once.

There’s no announcement, no warning, no moment where life taps you on the shoulder and tells you:

“Look closely… things are changing.”

It happens quietly.

You’re busy — working, raising kids, paying bills, rushing through days that feel too short.
And then one afternoon, you go home to visit your parents…
and something soft inside you shifts.

You notice the small things first:

Your father gets up from the couch a little slower.
Your mother asks you to repeat something she once would’ve heard clearly.
The house feels the same —
but the people inside are aging gently, silently.

You notice they hold the railing when they go downstairs.
They double-check the locks before bed.
They sit more than they stand.
They nap more.
They walk a little closer together.

You realize things you never thought about before:

Who changes the lightbulbs now?
Who carries the heavy groceries?
Who helps them understand the new phone they’re afraid to break?

And suddenly, the roles you’ve always known start shifting.

The hands that raised you
now tremble when pouring tea.
The voices that soothed you
now need reassurance themselves.
The people who once felt invincible
now feel beautifully, heartbreakingly human.

You begin to understand something deeper:

Growing older isn’t just happening to them —
it’s happening to you, too.
And love starts to look different.

It becomes:

• driving them to appointments
• fixing things they didn’t want to ask help for
• listening to stories you’ve already heard
• staying a little longer instead of rushing out
• calling even when you’re tired
• appreciating all the little sacrifices you once overlooked

Because now you finally see it:

Your parents aren’t just aging.
They’re winding down a chapter they spent decades writing —
a chapter filled with you.

And the quiet truth is this:

They won’t say it out loud,
but they’re hoping you’ll walk through their door a little more often.
Not to fix anything.
Not to bring anything.

Just to be there.

To sit.
To talk.
To laugh.
To listen.
To remind them that they’re still needed…
still valued…
still loved.

One day, you’ll realize these are the visits that matter most.
Because time moves fast.
But moments with aging parents?
Those are the memories that stay soft forever.

Love them while you still have them.