Gay journalist Chris Crain’s blog observed last month that in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the world’s gay pride parade has been ruined by an annual onslaught of some 2 million people, among them foreign tourists and violent heterosexual carousers and gangs, that have scared away the resident gay population.

Overwhelmed by enormous crowds, police were unable to stop an antigay murder at the Parada last year and a drug-related death this year.

The author of the post concludes that the Parada’s failure to articulate a clear message has turned the event into a meaningless party for people with no commitment to equality:

It was big and utterly pointless. It was a tragic search for pleasure in vain, and a moment which made a beautiful sense of life and purpose appear worthless in the end. It left nothing behind but questions. It made none of us feel prouder, or more secure. It taught us nothing, and betrayed a sense that we have learned nothing.

I get emails from American gays fairly often which tell me of a rising level of disgust at gay politics in the United States. To many of them, it is run by a group of hacks who lack vision and courage, who cater to politicians of both parties that have no qualms about throwing us overboard. And these critics are not outraged so much as ready to turn their backs on something that was once an inspiring movement full of hope and joy. One of them, an activist who started in the 1980s, wrote me that she felt like she was watching “my baby, all grown up, just laying there dying and I can’t do anything about it.

The writer’s leap of logic from Brazilian carnival to U.S. activists is a stretch; he seems to ignore the growth of gay religious organizations, pro-marriage groups, anti-violence groups, and gay employee groups, and gay sports and fitness groups.

But Exodus International’s “ex-gay” executive vice president Randy Thomas — who opposes hate-crime laws, pro-equality political messages, and sexual health education — makes a far greater leap in logic: (Read More)