| dat face soldier |
14 december 2012 12:38 |
Folsom Street Fair: hoe ver mag een "Gay Parade" gaan?
Ieder jaar sinds 1984 wordt in San Francisco de Folsom Street Fair georganiseerd. Dit is een soort Gay Parade die zich meer richt naar de zogenaamde "BDSM/leder subcultuur". De parade staat geregistreerd als een liefdadigheidsinstelling zonder winstoogmerk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folsom_Street_Fair
De organisatie gebruikt de zogenaamde "Leather Pride Flag" om te adverteren:
De deelnemers zijn hoofdzakelijk homosexuele mannen en de doelgroep is voornamelijk de BDSM/leder subcultuur-sectie van de holebi-subcultuur. De voorloper van de Folsom Street Fair was de California Motorcycle Club Carnival, een gay leder-BDSM kermis en fuif met rockbands en DJ's.
In 2007 was er een controverse rond de poster die de Fair aankondigde, waarop bekende gezichten uit de holebi- en BDSM/leder-beweging stonden, en volgens tegenstanders gericht was op het schofferen van christenen:
Ongeveer 400.000 mensen van over heel de wereld komen ieder jaar af. sadomasochistische activiteiten worden in het openbaar begaan, en dit gedrag worden aangemoedigd. De Fair wordt gesponserd door Miller's Beer, een gekend biermerk, die zich van het controversiële niets aantrekt.
Ook kinderen worden toegelaten:
http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/004352.html
Citaat:
Security volunteer Adam Hawkins said it is up to the parents to decide what was best for their kids, and that he wouldn't stop them at the gates.
|
Volgens sommigen is het aanschouwen van dergelijke praktijken onschuldig en zelfs leerzaam voor kinderen:
Citaat:
Father of two, John Kruse said it is an educational experience for children. He said there were conservative parents against having kids at the event.
"Those are the same close-minded people who think we shouldn't have children to begin with," he said.
|
De vraag is hoe zo'n parade ook maar toegelaten kan worden in het openbaar, laat staan dat er kinderen aanwezig zijn. Ik raad iedereen aan om deze blog te bekijken, de foto's van een bezoeker van de 2007 parade:
http://www.zombietime.com/folsom_sf_...rt_1/index.php
Citaat:
As the controversy grew, some Christian leaders described the Folsom Street Fair as an "open-air gay orgy." Wait a minute: is that really true? I thought the argument was about the appropriateness of the poster, not a condemnation of the entire event itself.
Well, I hadn't been to the Folsom Street Fair in many years, and decided this was as good an excuse as any to go. So I went. And beforehand, I said to myself: I'll report exactly what I see. I'll try to be an impartial, fair observer. If it isn't an orgy, and the critics are wrong, I'll report that, and say it was all a tempest in a teapot. And if ... well, you can see where this is going.
The truth is -- I shouldn't have been surprised -- there was open-air sexual activity. And plenty of erect penises, and flaccid penises, and more. And I photographed some of what I saw.
Which put me in a dilemma. I was determined to "report it like it was," which would mean confirming (to a certain extent) the critics' worst fears and assumptions about the fair. But to do so, and to "prove" that what I'm saying is true, I'd have to post X-rated material online, even though I do not run and have no intention of running a Web site containing "pornographic" material on it.
Several people have already asked me why I am publishing this report. Because of the sensitive nature of this issue, I probably should say a few things about my personal philosophy, and my rationale for doing this.
First of all, I am not anti-gay. Since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a great number (perhaps a majority) of my colleagues, friends and associates are gay, though that fact is not of any significance to me. In past years, I've even marched in the Gay Pride parade as part of a charity organization. I don't consider myself "conservative" (though others have tried to categorize me as such). People can do whatever they want to do sexually, as far as I'm concerned.
I am also not a Christian, and I am pretty much completely non-religious. Yet by doing this report, I know full well that I'll be handing ideological ammunition to the anti-homosexual forces, and a propaganda coup to the Christians who were laughed at for claiming the event featured open-air sex.
But after much pondering, I felt it would dishonest to self-censor, to hide the truth, just because I may not like the ramifications.
|
Enkele van de foto's die hij nam:
Citaat:
So: Is there public sexual activity at the Folsom Street Fair? Well, as this picture plainly shows (especially if you click on it), the answer is yes. Here, a naked man was being gently masturbated by a man in a kilt holding a cup of Miller Beer. I quickly discovered that such scenes were commonplace. Not only were naked penises everywhere in evidence, but erect naked penises -- and as you will see below, as often as not they were being stimulated one way or the other.
|
Citaat:
Just a few minutes after I arrived at the fair, I stumbled across this scene in a doorway on Folsom Street: a naked man was performing oral sex on another man, as a small group of spectators looked on approvingly.
|
Enkele bezoeker:
De politie ziet geen problemen:
Citaat:
People who have never been to the fair often ask: Where were the police? If men are engaging in public sex and nudity, why is no one arrested for this behavior? Do the police not even know about it? Well, the picture you see here pretty much answers that question. The police are on hand. They keep an eye on the proceedings. They know what's going on. But they rarely if ever do anything more than "observe." I can only suppose that the officers must have some kind of directive to not arrest or cite people during the Folsom Street Fair for acts that would otherwise be illegal. Sort of like a modern-day Saturnalia in which the normal rules of society are suspended for a brief period.
|
O ja, er is sinds 2003 ook een Folsom Street Fair in Europa, met name in Berlijn.
Tot hoe ver zullen we de drempel blijven verlagen in de maatschappij van vandaag? |
