A beautiful, sunny June day brought out record crowds exceeding 30,000 to this year's Circle City Pride parade on Massachusetts Avenue and the festival in University Park. Derek Hartley of Sirius OutQ's Derek & Romaine show emceed this year's festivities. With each passing year, the event grows larger and larger, adding to its success. It has truly become one of the most successful, diverse events for downtown Indianapolis. City tourism proponents and civic leaders typically fall head over heels to promote events like this one, which draw such large crowds and help show off our city, but not Mayor Greg Ballard or a single representative of his adminstration. He was nowhere to be seen today. He didnt' even have the decency to send a welcome letter to today's attendees as Mayor Peterson did in the past. Instead of silly talk about a "China town", Mayor Ballard would do well to simply celebrate the diversity his city already offers. On that point, he could take a cue or two from U.S. Rep. Andre Carson. While Carson received little support in the GLBT community during his recent special election and primary election contests, he was there reaching out and building bridges. Shame on Mayor Ballard for turning his back on a community which reached out to him in last year's election. If you want to be a big city mayor, you've got to think Big Tent.
9 comments:
Sir Hailstone raises an interesting point on his blog that I hope you'll address:
Question for the resident Log Cabin blogger of the Indy Blogosphere:
Why should Mayor Greg Ballard take a chance on pissing off 60% or so of his base by pandering to less than 5% of the city's population?
http://www.digitalfarmers.org/2008/06/mayor-and-indy-pride.html
I'm not sure why he didn't post it here, but whatever, it should be addressed.
I do think Ballard ought to attend. He recently attended a celebration the name of which escapes me, that was primarily done by African Americans, and as with the gay community, they don't vote for him either.
From the pictures and the ones on their website, Circle City Pride looks to be about as white as a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.
There are two active liberal "communities" in Indy, one is almost all white, the other almost all black. Funny how liberals can't mingle. Maybe the Obama candidacy will begin to change that. I think a lot of it has to do with the tendency for white people - especially white liberals - to always be telling other people how to run their lives:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/10/62-knowing-whats-best-for-poor-people/
Some very selective choosing of photo there. Why didn’t you put up some that I saw? Men dress in dresses and those that were dressed in leather? Bashing Ballard again for not showing support of this lifestyle? Maybe he had other things to do like his own normal family. If I see him today I will ask him why he did not show up.
dokkaq, Mike Jizierski made such outrageous statements last year when he was an at-large candidate for city-county council. He tried to remove all of the offensive Internet posts after people learned he was Sir Hailstone. He was the only slated at-large council candidate to lose in the primary. He lost to a minority candidate, Barbara Malone. Mike is a nice guy, but his thinking on this issue is just dead wrong. The vast majority of people could care less about a person's sexual orientation. A candidate loses far more votes by taking public, bigoted stances against this bloc of voters than he/she gains from seeking support from them. Julia Carson figured that out and obviously her grandson is following in her shoes. What people like Mike forget is that those people he damns to hell have family and friends who are equally offended by people like he and David who make these kinds of statements.
rogers61611 said, From the pictures and the ones on their website, Circle City Pride looks to be about as white as a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. That's not the case at all. It is a very culturally diverse crowd. Some of you might be surprised at the high percentage of people who attend the event who aren't gay.
Mayor Ballard should have attended or sent a letter of support because it is the right thing to do. isn't he mayor of all of the citizens/ David Myers, I am confused. You said you would NOT attend and now you are describing scenes you saw at the festival.......?????
Agreed on Ballard, but please don't even try to write something positive about André Carson now. You have no credibility on this.
While I think our new mayor mostly gets it right, he misses the boat on understanding culture, what it means to people in a city, and that culture cannot be manufactured.
I was there with the Libertarian Party of Indianapolis. It was a marvelous event and I'm proud my city hosts it. Kudos to Indy Pride once again.
I agree with Gary, shame on Mayor Ballard for this one.
--Melyssa
If Gary Welsh wants to say something nice about Andre Carson, please, please, please don't stop him!
I saw that Andre Carson and Mary Ann Sullivan were present. Was Jon Elrod? For that matter, was ANY Republican?
It would be a lie, of course, to say that all Democrats are comfortable with GLBTG lifestyles because they aren't.
But I don't think I'm wrong in arguing that the more inclusive political party isn't the Republican one.
The GLBTG caucus calls itself "bi-partisan" to lend a greater air of legitimacy, but of the 52 original members, TWO are Republican. One of the member is Andre Carson,
a man whom certain bloggers (who I won't name here) argued would be anti-gay because of his religion.
This leads me to ask the following question: when will it become clear to the Gary Welshes of the world that you will never be accepted in the Republican Party because its largest constituency thinks you choose to be gay, and you are evil for it.
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