One of the most surprising things about the Pride Parade is not the number of gay people who are dressed outrageously for the occasion, but the number of seeming straight people who are dressed like gays who are, themselves, dressed to be outrageous. You know the world is changing when straight people are trying to look gay. The gay evolution, from closeted to virtually normal as Andrew Sullivan calls it has crossed over the tipping point. Maybe not in the Mississippi Delta but on the Coasts. It is thrilling to watch.

I wrote “What is not surprising, especially in San Francisco, is the number of politicians. I think that being in the parade must be mandatory for a politician just like marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was for New York politicians ten years ago.” But in looking at it again, it should be sort of surprising. Many, maybe most, of these politicians come from traditional backgrounds and cultures. Here they are saying, “Today, everybody is gay.” They are wearing pink, or rainbow colors, or, even, a Chinese woman wearing a rainbow top with beads and a grass skirt. It makes me want to run across the  street and give her a hug.

Mixed in with the politicians, sometime carrying their signs are people who those politicians would have run from twenty years ago.

Of course I expected the San Francisco Police and the Fire Department, but the Garbage men? That was a surprise.

I was very happy to see a large contingent of Free Bradley Manning people. Of all the things that Obama is doing that I don’t like, and the list is growing longer, keeping Bradley Manning in solitary confinement – for 23 hours a day, checked, naked, every morning as a ritual humiliation – without a trial is on top of the list. It is disgusting and unAmerican.

Google was there, but not Apple, and several churches.

And a small Jewish contingent with that rarest of the rare, A gay, Chinese, Jew.

Concluded with the next post: the start and the end of the Pride Parade.