Last Year’s Pride Parade
Today is World Pride Day.
We Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the STONEWALL Riot,
Widely considered to be the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement.
1969.
What a fervent time!
The Civil Rights Movement was in Full Swing!
The Women’s Movement was in Full Swing.
And another Marginalized Group — Gay People — now got their turn. (more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 30, 2019
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2019/06/30/pride-2019-the-50th-anniversary-of-stonewall/
A Meme from the Internet
It’s Pride!
We March!
We Dance!
In Celebration of our Freedom!
It takes Courage Every Day
And we Dance in Celebration of the Courage to Be Who You Are!
For many Young People, it is a time for Dance Parties and showing off the Spectacular Toned Bodies of their Youthfulness!
Their Beauty and their Fire… So Full Of Wonder!
But there was a time when we danced in low-ceiling basements, hidden from the mainstream, without corporate sponsorship, and with way fewer folks lining Fifth Avenue.
We fought against Oppression and Marched Proudly for our right to exist (more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 24, 2018
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2018/06/24/pride-2018/
In Celebration of this Season of PRIDE, this is the Seventh and Final Post concluding this weeklong series about PTown. This is the Story of my experiences there up through the present day — and I am Happy to share it with You. Happy Pride!
Provincetown
PTown This Summer Just Begun
Last Week’s Gay Pride Parade in New York
The Pride Parade is held in New York City on the Last Sunday in June.
It is quite a popular Parade, made up mostly of Advertisers.
Last Sunday it lasted for over eight hours.
For Dancing,
For Hyatt,
For New York Life,
For Delta Airlines,
For Diet Coke
SUSI VILLA’s Float in Last Week’s Gay Pride Parade in New York
A comfortable three hours north on the Acela Express, followed by a 90-minute Fast Ferry Ride — The fare is somewhere around five hundred dollars, round trip; Seems like a big investment for a Weekend Away…
A middle-aged husband-and-wife, are walking along the shore at Herring Cove Beach.
An older man, remarkably fit for his age, emerges naked from the Ocean, having just enjoyed a fine swim, and crosses in front of them heading back to his towel.
The Wife seems mildly startled by the unexpected site.
The Husband explains, “There used to be a Gay Beach here.”
It does not occur to the Wife to ask how he knew that.
(more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on July 2, 2017
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2017/07/02/provincetown-vii-this-summer-just-begun/
Provincetown
Summer 2000- 2005
Randomly running into STUARD & THE WENDY’s on Commercial Street… Community!
New York is hosting the Pride Parade on the Last Sunday in June.
It isn’t called a March anymore.
It is a Parade.
A New Generation is Coming of Age.
For them, Gay is not so much an identity.
They have sex with a variety of Genders, and they do not think of themselves as “Gay” or “Straight,” particularly.
When they engage in Oral Sex, they do not count it as Sex.
Never underestimate what the President of the United States says,
and how it can affect a New Generation of Americans.
Young.
Impressionable.
We must be very careful about whom we Vote into the Office of President,
if only for the Power and Influence of their Words,
And the Effect those Words have on our Children!
Thank Heavens that America has learned that Lesson now in the year 2000,
So that we shall not have to repeat it.
Heading to PTown
(more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 29, 2017
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2017/06/29/provincetown-iii-summer-2000-2005/
In Celebration of this Season of PRIDE, I have culled a few writings from my Summers in Provincetown, as well as pulling together some photographs from over the years. And so Today begins a weeklong series about my experiences there. Happy Pride!
Provincetown
Summer 1980’s
Commercial Street 1980’s
The Pride March is held in New York City on the Last Sunday in June.
It isn’t called a Parade, then.
It is a March
For Rights,
For Freedom,
For Equality,
For Our Lives!
My friends MICHELE and WENDY invite me to come for a weekend to this place they are staying for the summer.
The three buses from New York take some 13 hours, door to door.
The fare is somewhere around twenty-seven dollars, round trip —
Seems like a big investment for a Weekend Away.
(more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 26, 2017
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2017/06/26/provincetown-i-summer-1980s/
“I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney. However, this is the time to begin the healing process. To show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy. To use this as the first step in my own closure about losing Matt… Mr. McKinney, I’m going to grant you life, as hard as that is for me to do, because of Matthew…Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.”
— DENNIS SHEPARD, father of MATTHEW SHEPARD, in his Statement to the Court 11/4/99
AARON MCKINNEY and RUSSELL HENDERSON, nearly two decades ago, beat MATTHEW SHEPARD striking him 19 to 21 times in the head with the butt of a .357-caliber Magnum Smith & Wesson pistol. They then tied his dismembered body to an A-Frame fence in Laramie, Wyoming, leaving him to die.
He was beaten so badly, AARON KREIFELS, the mountain biker who discovered him the next morning, said that he could not tell if it was a human form that he saw. He thought it was a ScareCrow. Sheriff REGGIE FLUTY reported that SHEPARD’s face was caked in blood except where tears had left tracks along his cheeks.
That was in the Autumn of 1998.
It seems like it was Two Weeks Ago.
Two weeks ago —
It seems like it was Eighteen Years Ago —
OMAR MATEEN entered PULSE NightClub in Orlando Florida.
He killed 49 innocent people, and injured 53 more.
(more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 26, 2016
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2016/06/26/forgiveness-and-pride/
NYC Pride 1982
When I was a twenty-something, I didn’t understand why it was called “Pride.”
I didn’t March back then.
Today I understand
Today I feel it
Today I March
Because We are All One.
What happens to one of us happens to All of Us.
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 26, 2015
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2015/06/26/pride/
In this Season of Pride, I Offer the Following…
Coming of Age
Ten Years after StoneWall
How the Older Men looked at me with such envy
I was oblivious to what their struggle had bought me.
I took my Freedom to Love quite for granted.
I looked at them just as Old Men who understood nothing
of what I and the other Young Men were capable.
I saw no connection between what they had been through
And my Freedom to Love whomever I chose. (more…)
Posted by Arnold J. Mungioli on June 26, 2014
https://livethequestionsnow.com/2014/06/26/gay-pride/
Live The Questions Now 