Some of us simply did not fall for the gaslight. Rolf Maurer goes in on last weekend’s so-called “Straight Pride Rally”!

Rolf Maurer

When Cora Santaguida and I first arrived at Copley Square before noon last Saturday, August 31, 2019, the first thing we noticed was the deceptively family-friendly carnival atmosphere the organizers of Super Happy Fun America were trying to attach to their “Straight Pride” parade, a three-hour event featuring speakers Marvina Case of Moms For America and infamous Alt-Right fixture Milo Yiannopoulos.

#Boston #StraightPrideisHatePride pic.twitter.com/2sE2gs9vs9

— Idavox (@IdavoxOPP) September 6, 2019

As founder John Hugo and other SHFA principals were preparing, members dressed as Santa Claus and the obligatory stars-and-stripes superhero were accompanied by a T. Rex and a shark, who engaged Bostonians through ill-defined animal analogy to explain why the rights of the “hetereosexual majority” needed to be upheld against a cultural onslaught by an LGBTQ community so militant, one speaker even compared it with the Alt-Right.

More pointed examples of ideological misdirection and confusion included an oft-repeated insistence on their desire for inclusivity, enlisting the attention of college students by feigning concern for their monumental debt and participants wearing T-shirts with conflicted graphics, such as an image of a smiling JFK wearing a Trump cap and the familiar two-color portrait of Che Guevara with the nose and dot-like eyes of an emoji- or stick figure in place of his natural features.

It wasn’t clear if such tactics were for ideological cover, passive-aggressive antagonism, as public-targeted lure into believing SHFA might in some way be on their page–or all three, but among the few outside the parade route who were “fellow travelers”, we did witness Hugo, himself, invite a sympathetic African-American woman to cross the police barricade separating paraders from the public to not only take part in the march, but to ride atop the cross-country Trump Unity Bridge float from Michigan.
Another woman took heated issue with the absurdity of “straight pride” as a legitimate cause for social advocacy and was met with a female SHFAer whom, in keeping with their posturing commitment to openess and conviviality (they define Antifa as meaning “Anti-Fun”), cooed condescendingly about her “anger problem”.

From beginning to end, however, amidst bull horn taunts, sloppy argumentation about male heterosexual victimhood, not to mention a fervent pre-march women’s prayer circle, it was clear the number one concern to the organizers was controlling media access as tightly as the voting district gerrymandering of an ambitious politician.
Early on, one independent reporter made a furious stir directed both at Hugo, organization Vice President Mark Sahady and indifferent local police for removing him from the parade line, even though he, like several others, had credentials fully-vetted by SHFA prior to the event, granting him permission to interview paraders. Seeing how mainstream media enjoyed ready access to all members of the organization, it was obvious Hugo and his team wanted to insulate themselves from anyone who would bring anything but the most superficial coverage of the march and Super Happy Fun America.

Bookending this was the reported attack against journalists with pepper spray by another group of police, following the closing guest speeches at the Boston City Hall at 3:00, who appeared to have been transported for this express purpose in three city buses, as the tail-end of the parade (perhaps a few vehicles behind an SUV bearing a hastily-scrawled sign declaring “Blue Lives Matter”). Such blatant coordination made a mockery of another officer overhead on the sidewalk after the parade, describing it to a student inquiring about all the road blocks as a generic “freedom of speech”.
In between, we witnessed several arrested Antifa members being marched through the street by police–one being carried by as many as four officers–to spirited support by anti-march protesters.

Most gratifying to witness by march’s end, was how clearly this hate group, at two hundred, failed to match the resounding response to thousands of people representing every form of self-classification imaginable, from librarians to belly dancers, in joint opposition to one of the most recent proponents of a xenophobic, Dominionist and white supremacist agenda.