Good morning!




It is Pride Parade day here in the fine city of Boston. It's the first time we're having one since 2019. Like many institutions around the country - the original iteration did not survive Covid.

It's actually a rather long and convoluted story, but in the end, the Pride Committee chose to disband themselves. At the height of it all, accusations were made that the committee was actually discriminating against transgendered people - and to their credit, they took a hard look in the mirror and said, "You're right". So, we've not had any sort of organized activities in a number of years.

The new Boston Pride committee has been working hard for over a year to make this year's event happen. It's not going to be as big as years past, but everybody needs to start someplace. Prior to Covid, the Pride parade was the largest annual parade in Boston, and the sixth-largest Pride parade in the country. I am hopeful that we can reach those heights again.

There is a lot of symbology associated with the Pride movement, and like every societal group in history, they need something to rally around. The basic rainbow flag is iconic today, but like everything else in America, it has since endlessly balkanized. There are many different flags, representing different things to different groups. As a vexillologist, I am attracted to the many juxtapositions of colours and patterns; some of those flags are quite pretty.

I've posted one at the top of the blog, it's the Straight Ally Flag. I loved it from the second I read about the history. It is based on the "Straight Pride Flag", which like all things associated with that movement, is rather drab and grey. It's simply a white and black striped flag, perhaps meant to symbolize their tendency to see relationships in black and white. It's become a noted symbol of Anti-LGBTQ hate. Which is why it pleases me that the Ally movement took that flag and slapped a rainbow on it, in the stylized shape of the letter "A", symbolizing an ally. I don't own one of these yet, but I will.

And pondering it all - I've noted elsewhere in these pages that I perhaps work for the most friendly company in Boston and maybe the country. Historic Tours of America (our parent company) is owned and operated by a pair of aging, white, conservative, Floridians. But that matters little. I'd daresay better than 50% of the organization in Boston falls outside the cisgender model. Straight, white guys are the minority here. Even more than that, a longtime friend of mine transitioned from Chuck to Cheryl during Covid. For me, the only thing I stumbled over was the name - I knew him as Chuck for 20 years, so despite my brain knowing the change, my muscle memory kept wanting to go to the past the first few times I talked to her.

And thinking about it all - I wonder what it is about the other side that has such a hard time grasping all of this? Each of the letters LGBTQ means something, and each of those letters represents a person, maybe even somebody you know. It seems to me that religious conservatives are more interested in labels and appearances than the person inside that external shell.