08 Pride Post #26: Party’s over.

It’s all over, time for the clean up crew.

Real life rained on my parade and I didn’t get a bunch of planned posts up. Sorry for the abrupt ending. Thanks and hugs and kisses to those who visited and commented and linked.

Be proud, ya’ll!

08 Pride Post #25: Funniest Dyke in the World contestant Jane Lynch

08 Pride Post #24: Quotable Pride— “it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence”

“I have come to believe over and over again, that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood…. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you…. and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”
—— Audre Lorde (The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Sister Outsider).

08 Pride Post #23: — “The epitome of class and romance” — Johnny Mathis

08 Pride Post #22: A praetorian vanguard of queer power — Dykes on Bikes®

The spectacle thundered to life about 10 a.m. in the traditional manner, with hundreds of motorcycles ridden by the Women’s Motorcycle Contingent — the “Dykes on Bikes” — pouring off Beale Street onto Market Street. Greeted by their gay brethren’s cries of “Here come the girls!” the leather-clad and occasionally bare-chested riders whooped and yelled and carried signs saying: “We all deserve freedom to marry” and “We had sodomy for breakfast.”

DYKES ON BIKES®: 30 Years at the Forefront
GLBT Historical Society Hosts Exhibit
and Event Series with DYKES ON BIKES®

® We Fought for It. We Earned It. We Own It.

“The Dykes on Bikes are where it’s at. That’s what you want to see.”

— Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown

08 Pride Post #21: Sunday morning — in church with Calpernia

One of my television guilty pleasures this past year was Transamerican Love Story with Calpernia Addams, which could have easily been a total trainwreck, and surprisingly wasn’t. Much credit for the show’s success is due to the fact that it’s impossible to not like Calpernia Addams.

Holly at Feministe has a wonderful post with an overview of the show and why it worked, Addams’ tragic backstory and subsequent activism, and her dead-on scathing Bad Questions to Ask a Transsexual.

The video below is something completely different, and I think it speaks for itself. It was filmed during Pride Week 2003 at New York’s Metropolitan Community Church.

There is something that ties this video to Holly’s post and yes, even to the (seeming) trifle of Addams’ reality dating show. It’s something too many of us have learned the hard way, one of those life lessons that underlies what GLBTQ Pride is all about:

The mistake I made at first was putting my identity in other peoples’ hands.

Amen, my sister.

08 Pride Post #20: Late night — last year’s Pride home movies

For the overnight shift, check out last year’s virgotext Pride extravaganza. To see every post, be sure and click the “Next Page” link.

More new Pride tomorrow!

08 Pride Post #19: Funniest Dyke in the World contestant Julie Goldman

The longer version of this routine is somewhere on the AfterEllen.com site but I can’t find it anymore. It’s worth hunting down because it’s even funnier than the excerpt above. Highlight: bulldykes shopping for bras.

08 Pride Post #18: everyone will quote me on this line

San Antonio’s own punky homegirls Girl in a Coma are all over the place lately, most prominently as part of the True Colors 2008 gay benefit juggernaut line up, touring with The Clicks, and handpicked to open for Morissey.

Above, their video debut Say, below Road to Home, featuring lip synching by plastic surgery enthusiast and model Amanda Lepore. See if you can catch the Joan Jett cameo. Immediately after hearing Girl in a Coma, Jett signed them to her Blackheart label in 2006.

08 Pride Post #17: Quotable Pride-”After us will come many other countries”

“We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality.

…

We are not legislating, ladies and gentlemen, for remote unknown people. We are expanding opportunities for the happiness of our neighbors, our work colleagues, our friends, our relatives.”

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, upon the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain, June 30, 2005