A Californian man's proposal for a 'straight rights' march was laughed out of a council meeting when he inadvertently said that he represented "a totally peaceful, racist group".
Don Grundmann, who is the founder and leader of the National Straight Pride Coalition (NSPC), on Wednesday was putting forward a motion for a 'straight pride' march in the city of Modesto on August 24.
"You attack us as racist and you pulled the race card to pull in attacks against us," Grundmann told the meeting, pointing his finger at Modesto City Council member Kristi Ah You.
"We haven't done anything. We're a totally peaceful, racist group," added Grundmann, to which the chamber erupted in raucous laughter.
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Grundmann's application for a straight pride march in Modesto was still under review, according to US media reports.
One young activist leading the charge against Grundmann's march is 29-year-old student Matthew Mason. Mason, who is gay, has found himself in the awkward position of taking on his own mother too, who he says has sided with Grundmann and is one of the organisers of the Straight Pride parade.
"I am not surprised at the fact that she is doing something like this publicly. I'm just frustrated and very hurt that she has instilled this sense of fear and worry in my community. And you know, this is her home town, she has lived here her entire life, she should know better," Mason said in an interview with Reuters.
Mason said Grundmann went "completely off script and "made a wonderful Freudian slip and said that they are a peaceful, racist group".
"And there was a short beat where everyone was like 'What? Oh' and then the entire council chamber just erupted in laughter and applause. And actually he got a standing ovation from most of the people there because that was the one thing they agreed with him on.
"This organisation is basically a white supremacist, far-right ideology. It talks about the superiority of the caucasian race, the superiority of the Western civilization, they have a motto called 'West is best'. They have a very anti-LGBTQ platform.
"It is a very chauvinistic platform, they believe in a very archaic definition of gender identity and what it means to be masculine and feminine and how men and women need to be sorted into this sort of binary. So, it is not straight pride, it is celebrating a hetero-normative, straight, white, Christian view of the world and that is not pride."
Reuters
