Sound the outrage alarm! 🚨🚨🚨
As Clarksville, a growing Tennessee city with a population of nearly 177,000, prepares for its Pride Month celebration, right-wingers in the deep red state are gearing up to clutch their pearls and spew vitriol on social media.
To be fair, the celebration, which takes place this Saturday, June 29, sounds like a huge middle-finger to Tennessee conservative politicians, who passed a ridiculous law in 2023 to outlaw “adult cabaret” performances –– read: drag –– in locations where minors would be present. (A Trump-appointed judge later ruled that the act violated First Amendment protections. Ha!)
How about we take this to the next level?
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According to the event’s website, there will be “nonstop drag shows” and guest speakers like Democratic Mayor Joe Pitts, who will issue a proclamation “officially declaring” the 29th as the city’s Pride Day. It’s an especially important event for the town’s LGBTQ+ population, considering the city hasn’t held any kind of queer celebrations in nearly 20 years.
For that reason, a social media posting reading “kids 10 and under get in free” did not bode well with the stuffed-shirts at The Tennessee Conservative.
“The individuals trapped in [LGBTQ+] bondage need our prayers, deliverance, and the hope that can be found in Jesus, not a lifestyle that God’s word clearly defines as an ‘abomination,'” conservative writer George Carneal told the outlet.
Bless his heart!
That being said, it sounds like a lot of outrage is coming from the Silent Majority Minority. When Pitts was up for re-election in 2022, he won over his Republican opponent with a whopping 54.5% of the vote.
It’s this open-mindedness, but a previous lack of support, that inspired C-Pride president Anne Hart to take up the call and re-establish LGBTQ+ festivities from a grassroots level.
“We came to Nashville Pride last year, me and my family, and coming away from it, we just really wanted to have that same experience in Clarksville of having the visibility and the welcoming atmosphere for anyone that would come,” she told NewsChannel 5 Nashville.
And as the C-Pride website reads, the newly-established non-profit’s goal is “to create a welcoming and safe space for LGBTQIA+ individuals to come together and celebrate diversity, acceptance, and equality.” Furthermore, its code of conduct states that the celebration “[recognizes] the past struggles and future possibilities of the LGBTQ+ community” and participants “are expected to embrace and respect this.”
Perhaps the queer community in Clarksville said it best when they wrote on social media: “You don’t need to fully understand the nuances of gender identity to know that each individual person knows who they are better than YOU ever will.”
Preach!
For more info on Clarksville’s Pride on June 29, visit the C-Pride website.
Woody
G R O O M the Kiddies.
abfab
Perv^^^
Woody
Unfortunately, many in our community reserve the r i g h t to be a
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abfab
No, just the one. You.
SoPluckyWhat
Gaetz…is that you?
Woody
Jamaal Bowman, buh-bye.
inbama
D r a g wasn’t allowed in the first p r i d e marches back in the 70s.
Now it’s our face.