Sponsored in part by PG&E, brought right into the living rooms of America by Jim Gabbert of KOFY, Channel 20. Candace Gingrich was there. Just about everybody in America was there, or watching, or representing, in some way, shape or form, just about everybody else in America:

Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered people, straight people, Dykes on Bikes, Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard, Digital Queers, the National Park Service, San Francisco Paramedics, SFFD, SFPD, California Highway Patrol, Hi-Tech Gays, SHANTI, the men and women carrying the 300' Rainbow Flag, Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, PFLAG, the brave Mary Griffith (mother of Bobby "Prayers For Bobby" Griffith), Mayor Frank Jordan, Tom Ammiato with his fabulous "Clinton Blue" gloves ....

AND: did I forget anybody? The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (yoo-hoo, Newtie!), Willie Brown, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, Roberta Achtenberg, UCSF AIDS Clinic, Food For Thought ...

Let's not get chauvinistic: San Francisco isn't the only city which holds Gay Parades. New York's is almost as big. What's special about this parade can also be found in Montana, when Montana can have a parade at all: ordinary men and women from all over the country assembled to celebrate the fact that they happen to be gay, they happen to be well-adjusted and happy.

They happen to be "out" in a country which still teaches its young men in uniform that looking at another man's pee-pee can turn you queer.

Chances are, Newt missed this broadcast, but you can bet hundreds of followers taped the whole event, as "proof" they can find something offensive in everything. Newt's band just doesn't get it. To them, just as to the Rev. Phelps and his own congregation of frightened followers, this is all about sexuality: nasty, brutish, ungaaaaawdly "sex". Three or four hundred thousand people gather from all over the country to celebrate freedom to be themselves. What the Newt Bandwagon hears is an in-your-face "flaunting" of an intrinsic truth. Within their own genders, these men and women find their own lovers, friends, partners and family, from within that greater community of human beings who are capable of loving anyone in the world at all.

We say it can't be wrong to give pleasure and comfort to those you love. They say, oh, yes it can. We say, but there's a lot more: we're complete, whole human beings, born both gay and free, who live and work in America just the same as you do. They say, oh, no, you aren't. We say: we have the same rights as you do, and we demand respect for these. They say: not as long as we refuse to stop, look and listen.

... Angela Alioto, District Attorney Arlo Smith (where was Dan Lundgren?), National Task Force on AIDS Prevention ....

We say: we will become part of the democratic process. They say: stay out of this; we don't want the vote of your kind.

Imagine a Newt Gingrich, for a moment, as a guest in a fabulously wealthy mansion:

Here is a grand palace outfitted with libraries from all over the world, electronics and scientific gear to tempt a Nobel winner, fantastic entertainment theaters featuring culture from every continent; kitchens and dining halls specializing in any conceivable cuisine or ethnic cooking, and even mind-boggling gardens and arboretums displaying flora from tropical fern to mountain lichen in every known environment and subclimate. And this palace is staffed by some of the finest minds in every discipline, and by many of the finest and most creatively imaginative people in the world, including educators and chefs and engineers and architects and landscape artists par excellence, and by their staffs of plain, honest, hardworking men and women of every region and ethnicity...

ENTER Newt, heading straight for the nearest bathroom: he just wants to look at the plumbing.

Pity people of the Newt persuasion. They just don't get it. One of Gabbert's announcers observed that this is an incredibly diverse community. We saw Asians, African Americans, Pacific Islanders, South Americans and Norte Americanos. We saw pilots, clowns and mimes, caregivers, grandmothers, preachers, priests, cops, impersonators, acrobats, choruspersons, and nationally known political figures. All these thousands and thousands of people have intricate, complicated public and personal lives. They work very hard to support these lives and have a little left over for the community, and then, at times like this Parade, they share a little of this with the rest of the world.

All that the Newt proteges wants to know is, what do we do with our plumbing? To them, it's Mars invading Earth, and so they step forward and say, "Take me to your bathroom."

These folks just aren't comfortable in the living rooms of the world. In grade school, any of them could have been the kids who hung around in the lavatories, checking to see who latches the stall doors. As adults, often risen to prominence, they bring considerable talent to bear on reducing complicated issues of architecture and gracious living to a single question: where's the loo? If they see splattered, rusted pipes and unflushed porcelain bowls, they'd call that love, and they'd revel in being offended. If they see gleaming chrome, platinum, gold and alabaster fixtures and a heated spa, they'd call that love, and revel in being offended. That's what happens when you confuse the plumbing with the whole house, something real, working plumbers wouldn't be liable to do.

The parade goes on. The Harvey Milk Lesbian & Gay Democratic Club, BART employees Lambda Guild, Dignity... As in life, you can't see it all. Folks like Newt who never get past the pipes and bowls are part of life too, and, unfortunately, they still have too much say on who gets to live in the house.

This, too, will change, though it'll take many more Parades. Folks like Newt will fade off into that past shared with bad guys like Sheriff "Bull" Connor (Selma), Joe "Un-American Activities" McCarthy, George Wallace, and Adolph Eichmann. I try not to dwell on the fact that we're given only one lifetime to outlast them.

RELUCTANTLY, I leave the Parade, the beautiful smiles, and KOFY Channel 20 for now, to pursue my more stereotypically faggy plans for the remainder of this wonderful Sunday afternoon. As I finish repairing my chainsaw for that tree limb in the back yard (you know how we are with flowers and plants), I'm sure I'll at least wonder how many people see "gay" chainsaws. As I work on my computer program to merge two dictionaries and eliminate duplicate words (you know how expressive we are), I'll try to imagine a world in which programmers are hired just to trace exactly which coding is compiled by homosexuals.

OF COURSE I know you can't sex chainsaws, and that the binary zeroes and ones bits of a C input/output stream aren't "charmed" into gayness, even by us fabulously talented gay creators. And, I know that "a world like that" wouldn't work, either, even if an omnipotent dictator willed it so. And, of course, you know that, too. Don't you wish everybody did?