When The Crime Is Who You Are Part IV: Prancing, Prejudice, and When Bigots Lie

So these are The Prancing Elites:

Yep, they are dudes. Yep, they are wearing make up and skirts. Also they dance.

But as you can tell if you watched the video, some people are “outraged and appalled.” As a result of this group going and performing like they were invited to do, they have lost their slot at a larger parade in Mobile, AL which is their home town.

Carol Hunter, president of Events Mobile, sent this response Tuesday to Alabama Media Group on behalf of event organizers: “The Prancing Elites expressed an interest in participating in the New Year’s Eve parade, however the Events Mobile committee has decided not to include the group in this year’s event.”

The Mobile parade organizers claim that the issue is the costumes that The Elites wear.

OK, let’s examine that claim.

Yes, The Elites wear skirts and they bare their midriffs.

I mean, I guess those are short shorts and the skirts are quite short. Yeah you know, it totally makes sense that they wouldn’t want kids to see people in dresses that short. it’s important that a community have standards

Oh look, it seems I spy a little hypocrisy.

Hey what’s that a picture of? Oh, you know, just a group of girls from last year’s parade. Check that out, those appear to be identical fucking outfits.

Yeah, so the clothing thing isn’t really the issue. Clearly the outfits are not the issue, since the Mobile parade organizers seem perfectly fine with seemingly adolescent girls wearing them. The issue is that biological males are wearing those outfits. Further the issue is biological males wearing makeup and dancing in what most people would consider a feminine way. This is made certain by the fact that The Elites manager offered to have the crew change their clothing choice and march, entirely covered, in jogging suits.

The answer was no.

All the people who aren’t shocked please raise your hands.

Yes, my hand is raised.

This is the worst part about the way that bigots operate. It’s not just that they are ignorant and hateful. It’s that they are complete liars as well.

They claim that they are protecting their values. but that’s an equally obvious lie.

The real motivations of the parade organizers and the people who expressed distaste at the smaller parade weren’t motivated by anything other than a desire to make difference in gender expressions invisible.

So let’s pause for a moment and examine the “values” that these parades are promoting.

Young girls parading in scanty clothes? Fine family fun.

Adult males doing the exact same thing in functionally identical outfits? Horrifying and vulgar.

I mean seriously, if some of the people of Alabama want to act in a publicly ignorant and bigoted fashion they could at least do the rest of us the courtesy of not blatantly lying about it. Because, seriously, it insults the intelligence of the general public and pretty much anyone over the age of five or six. You know, anyone who isn’t convinced that ignoring something will actually make it go away.

And you know what? The lesson that these bigots are going to learn is that their ignorance and hate, will have the exact opposite result to which they were hoping.

Ignoring The Prancing Elites will not make them go away. In fact the opposite. As of right now, The Prancing Elites have been invited to perform elsewhere in Mobile on New Year’s Eve, they have received support and donations from all over the world to the point where they are able to rent rehearsal space whereas previously they were practicing in a parking lot. They have been asked to participate in a number of other parades, appear on television and even choreograph a video.

All this because a few small minded people in one small town decided to show their bigotry in public.

So…that seems like it didn’t work out the way the people of Semmes and Mobile were hoping.

Here is a prediction for 2014; the more people try to make even simple things, like an expression of creativity and joy, invisible simply because those things are connected to different expressions of gender or love or whatever, the more and more visible those things will become.

It’s going to be a fun year.