Do Gay Day Celebrations Let You Down?

Are you like me and spend most of the calendar year wondering and thinking how much fun it's going to be celebrating Gay Pride Parades and the inevitable wonderfully exciting events? Well If your like me then you must also be wondering after much of the festivities are over, whats all the hoopla about . You diet and go to the gym like a madwomen on morphine, working your body into a state of panic until you finally feel that you've achieved a state of perfection that only a stint on the parade line can do justice. Figuring out which of the many events to go to is a task not unlike picking a good accountant, during tax season, so many to choose from and ultimately so many are the same. 

So many festivities and events to go to, every single one geared to appeal to all the various and different types of individual in a multifaceted society like ours. You can march in the parade in the morning have beer in the beer gardens at noon, buy leather chaps by three and dance to RuPaul in the evening. 

But I can not help to wonder that in all of our celebrating we have some how forgotten so many other things that we need to do. For one we need to remember the countless men and women who have sacrificed their lives and souls for the privilege we now enjoy in simply marching hand in hand. We need to remember the countless who have died so that we can now speak of the dangers of an illness that nearly destroyed our community. We must also remember that even in this day and age, we are still being denied basic civil rights in all but a handful of the states we live, work and pay taxes in. We are still denied the right to marry and love and live and raise families in simple privacy and dignity. Let us remember that as we dance the night away to the tunes of Cher and Madona, that many in our community are being ravaged by drug addiction and sexual compulsiveness. The crystal meth epidemic that currently engulfs the gay community put a damper on the partying as the number of new HIV infections continue to rise. Yet so few in our community seem to be paying attention.