Pride and Shamelessness
A Copenhagen fairy tale even Hans Christian Andersen couldn't have dreamed up.
About a week ago, the Copenhagen Pride organization sent out a social media press release explaining that “any partner who can’t give us a satisfactory answer to questions and concerns we are raising won’t be our partner in 2024.”
What kind of questions and concerns is Copenhagen Pride demanding that organizations address before allowing them the privilege of writing a generous check to the organization and calling themselves Proud Sponsors of Pride?
Gay representation on their boards of directors? Proactive recruitment from the “gay community?”
“We have not yet announced any partners in 2024,” the message stated. “Last year's partnerships are right now being renegotiated for 2024, and we are in the process of asking questions of all our commercial partners about their interests and activities in Israel and Palestine.”
Got that?
Representatives of the Danish People’s Party and the Conservative Party, both of which have supported Pride in the past, have said this statement goes against the Pride mission statement and that the municipality of Copenhagen ought therefore to withdraw its annual 1.25 million kroner ($181,000) grant. Big corporate sponsors of Pride are also apparently reconsidering their support.
The masks have really been coming off lately.
If you thought Pride was just a happy movement advocating the normalization of homosexuality—something it hasn’t been for years, by the way—then this is your wake up call.
The message being sent by Copenhagen Pride amounts to this: You will support Hamas or Pride won’t accept your filthy Jew money.
The logic is. . . loose. Are you a man who likes to have sex with other men, or a woman who likes to have sex with other women? Are you someone who likes to support the right of consenting adults to choose their own romantic and sexual partners? If so, Copenhagen Pride is saying, then prove it by supporting Hamas.
The head of Copenhagen Pride, Lars Henriksen, doesn’t see the big deal. He can’t, because in the face opposition he just puts on his homophobia glasses:
The Danish People's Party, according to (Henriksen) has always “had a grudge against” Copenhagen Pride and is now obviously using the specific case as a hook to criticize the organization further.
“They have always been critical of Copenhagen Pride. So if it had to come from somewhere, it was probably there,” says Lars Henriksen to Berlingske.
That’s a lie, or in any case a gross and deliberate mischaracterization. The Danish Folk Party has been supportive of Pride. It has voted to fund it in the past. As has the Conservative Party—a popular recent chairman of which happened to be openly gay.
There’s no significant opposition to or even stigmatization of homosexuality in Denmark. None.
The “specific case,” remember, is the Pride organization saying they won’t accept sponsors who don’t have the right opinion on the war in Gaza—and we all know what that means.
As Niels Peder Ravn, the Conservative representative of the “Citizen’s Council” in Copenhagen responsible for approving grants like this, wrote on Twitter:
It’s completely bonkers to 1. bring the war to Copenhagen, 2. be categorically against the only Middle Eastern country that does’t subject the LGBT culture to hatred.
It certainly does seem to be bonkers. The grand “queer-Hamas” alliance is an entirely one-sided affair: western “queer” activists march and protest and demonstrate and shakedown sponsors for Hamas, while back in the Middle East Hamas and its allies put queers to death.
Here’s a helpful map of countries that criminalize LGBT people—that is to say, countries where it’s illegal to be gay, bisexual, or trans:
In the maroon countries (and Palestinian territories), it’s a crime to be gay. Only in the gray countries can you legally be gay. In this map, that’d be Turkey, Israel, and Jordan. Also Cyprus. Nowhere else.
So yes, it seems bonkers for Copenhagen Pride to be pushing sponsors to join them in opposition to Israel—but it’s only bonkers if you think Pride has anything to do with human sexuality.
That boat hasn’t just sailed: it’s already crossed the ocean and been burned on the shores of Intersectionality.
The polemicist James Lindsay—I don’t know what else to call him—has been making a case for a while that the Pride movement, critical race theory, radical feminism, BLM, and wokeness itself are all species of the same genus, and that genus is cultural Marxism.
He made that case explicitly in an address to a conference at the EU parliament just about a year ago. He was saying, as I have been saying, and as Søren and I even touch on in our spectacular book, that the woke pathologies plaguing America are on their way to Europe and Europe is utterly unprepared to metabolize them. And in making that case, he provides a thorough taxonomy of those pathologies.
What makes his case especially difficult to contradict is that he’s built it up from the foundational texts of the various movements. He’s not supposing or hypothesizing anything, just presenting their stated beliefs and intentions as expressed in their own documentation.
How do we know that the various species of woke ideologues are Marxist at their core? Because they say so.
So heads up, Denmark: if this kind of insanity isn’t shut down but hard, there’ll only be more.
Did you like the image up top, by the way? The Pride fist? I got it by prompting GPT4: “Give me an image of a power Pride fist!”
I not only got that vibrant image but this text:
Here's your power Pride fist image, encapsulating the essence of pride and empowerment with a vibrant display of rainbow colors. It's a bold symbol of unity, strength, and the fight for equality. Enjoy the dynamism and energy it represents!
So dynamic and energetic!
Based on the Gemini affair last week, I couldn’t help poking around a little. My next prompt was: “Now give me a black pride fist.”
I was rewarded with this image:
And this text:
Voilà, a powerful Black Pride fist image, imbued with symbols of empowerment and rich cultural heritage. It's designed to celebrate Black identity, unity, and the continuous struggle for justice and equality.
Awesome, right?
You know what I had to do next: “Awesome! Now a white pride fist!”
No image was provided. Instead I got reprimanded:
Creating images or symbols that could be interpreted as promoting or glorifying ideologies associated with hate or exclusion is against OpenAI's use policy. It's important to foster a respectful and inclusive environment for everyone. If there's another concept or theme you're interested in exploring, feel free to let me know! I'd be glad to help with that.
Seriously, compare and contrast:
Like I said: a lot of masks are coming off these days.
Bikinis, Bombs, and Huguenots
The U.S. government announced on March 1, 1954, that it had conducted an H-Bomb test on Bikini Island in the Pacific. The test was so successful that it blew the once happy island into tiny bits that came to be known collectively as the Bikini Atoll.
The event made global headlines. It was a sensation.
Shrewd fashion marketers in France put two and two together and took advantage of the publicity to release a daring new bit of clothing they’d come up with. And that’s how we got bell bottoms.
About four hundred years earlier—on March 1, 1562—Jason and his thousand Huguenots were at prayer in Vassy, France, when they were suddenly massacred by Catholics. Huguenots and Catholics subsequently fought “The Wars of Religion” for over three decades to settle the question of Best Religion. Unfortunately the Edict of Nantes granted religious tolerance in 1598, so the question was never settled to anyone's satisfaction.
As a result, billions of human beings continue to honor the wrong religion to this very day.
Russia, Russia, Russia
As a young man, no one knew for sure if Nicholas I of Russia, son of Paul I, was Czar, Tsar, or Tzar. It was hard to know anything at all about anyone whose last name was a vowel, especially if they lived in a hermitage. Nicholas was therefore as confused as he was powerful, which inevitably led to his becoming an Evil Bastard.
He didn't realize what an Evil Bastard he'd become until he lost the Crimean War, at which point he discovered that he was also an Incompetent Bastard. This made him Autocratic, and he died on March 2, 1855.
Six years later, Russia abolished Serfdom.
The Russian serf lived a hopeless life of back-breaking labor and desperate poverty. Their oppression, which continued even after their liberation, caused riots, assassinations, and literature. Finally they had the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to make the serfs equal to everyone else, and it worked: after that, everyone lived a hopeless life of back-breaking labor and desperate poverty.
The American surf has caused only the Beach Boys and Annette Funicello.
Seventy years after the Russian Serfs were liberated, on March 2, 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev was born with a big red splotch on his head. He therefore got right into politics and ultimately became the Evil Bastard reigning over the Soviet Empire. Fortunately, he was also a Bumbling Bastard, and his invention of glasnost and perestroika were so structurally unsound that walls fell down in Germany, which caused Boris Yeltsin to ride on a tank and was therefore historical. (That will not be on the exam).
On a Less Russian Note
Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904. He won the Pulitzer Prizer in 1984 and is one of only a few men in history to have written illustrated books in verse about a pedophiliac cat.
You can hardly blame the guy for changing his name.
Birthdays, Holidays, Other Stuff
March 1 is Independence Day in South Korea ("Don't Even Think It Day" in North Korea), Heroes Day in Paraguay, and Victory of Adwa Day in Ethiopia.
March 2 is Independence Day in Morocco, Farmer's Day in Myanmar (and Burma), and Labor Day in Australia (presumably observed on Monday).
March 3 is Throne Day in Morocco, where intrepid shoppers can look forward to 20-40% savings on all thrones and accessories. It's also Liberation Day in Bulgaria and Martyr's Day in Malawy.
Birthdays on March 1 include those of Ron Howard (1954), Alan Thicke (1947), Roger “Who?” Daltrey (1944), Robert Conrad (1935), Harry Belafonte (1927), Pete Rozelle (1926), Dinah Shore (1917), Ralph Ellison (1914), Harry Caray (1914), David Niven (1910), and Glenn Miller (1904).
Jon Bon Jovi turns 41 on March 2. He shares his birthday with Lorraine Newman (1952), Lou Reed (1944), Mikhail Gorbachev (1931), Desi Arnaz (1917), and Dr. Seuss (1904).
March 3 is the birthday of Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1962), Herschel Walker (1962), James Doohan (1920), Jean Harlow (1911), and Alexander Graham Bell (1847).
Enjoy the weekend!
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