While I'm on the subject, I made a serious mistake several years back regarding transvestites. I accidentally referred to them in a way that I thought was positive, but some people refused to take it that way at all.
What I did was compare the transvestites in Gay Pride parades to the clowns in other parades, such as circus parades. Thier function, I hypothesized, is highly similar. Both groups wear outrageous make-up and costumes, and are there to entertain and make us laugh.
Well, this didn't go down well at all with the Gay Left Politically Correct Police. I had called the transvestites clowns, which can also mean either a habitual buffoon or joker, or a boor. Were these GLPCP willing to listen to my use of the other definition of the word "clown"? Of course not. THEY knew that they were right, and that I was guilty of bad thinking.
That this came up when der Brucer and I were manning the Log Cabin Republican booth at the Long Beach Gay Pride Festival didn't calm them down any, of course.
After a few of these festivals, der Brucer and I realized that this was just a part of the GLPCP behavior pattern. Every time we helped man a booth (sorry, to be correct that should be "helped person"), we would have to deal with a half-dozen people coming up to us during our two-hour shift and screaming at us at the very top of their lungs.
Now, I ask you, has anyone every learned anything from someone who was screaming at them? (Other than screamers who were mothers or drill sergeants, that is.) These people weren't interested in holding a discussion of any sort, they just needed to scream.
I didn't mind them so much, but I did think the occasional spitter was going a bit far. Worse would be when the spitter would hock a lugie. No matter how carefully I'd planned what I was wearing, the green of the lugie would never go with the color shirt I was wearing.
And, of course, the underlying message the screamers would be that der Brucer and I were siding with "those fill in the blank's who hate us!"
Now, compare their behavior with their counterparts at California Republican Party conventions. Log Cabin California regularly hosted a reception area in a hotel room at the convention center, whether the convention was being held in Burlingame, Sacramento, Palm Springs or Anaheim, and once that I can remember in San Diego. And, of course, members of the radical right would come in to down some of the booze and tell us how we were wrong to be gay. Strange, however, that they never yelled at us, no matter how much of the booze they had consumed, either at our hospitality room or previously. And I never had to worry about coordinating my shirt for the event. In fact, the only thing we had to worry about were the young women with the Young Republicans coming in and filching the creams and other beauty aids the hotels would lay out (and charge us for later if they were gone).
There was one time, in Burlingame, when we had a booth in a designated area outside the convention floor, along with several other organizations. It was the only time I was ever yelled at when attending one of these conventions. We had a supply of books, a supply of six titles in all, by various authors. We weren't expecting to sell any, of course, but it would have been nice.
As it happened, I was the only one helping man this particular booth who had read any of the books, and I was at least familiar with the two I hadn't read. Naturally, when people came up to the booth and asked my opinion about the books, I told them what I thought of them, whether one book was well written or not, and I was always thanked for giving my opinion. There were, of course, some conventioneers who simply walked by, sniffing with their noses in the air, but no confrontations, save one.
The one person who yelled at me was the President of Log Cabin California at the time. How dare I say any of the books weren't wonderful, he screamed at me.
It later turned out that he hadn't read any of them, of course. What a clown.
