Straight pride struggles to catch on

“IT’S HARDER to come out as conservative than gay,” complains David Elkins, a pensioner whose T-shirt reads “It’s OK to be white, straight, and male”. Luckily he found acceptance at Boston’s first straight-pride parade. Behind him a clown with a rainbow wig and green face-paint wandered past a truck festooned with “Trump 2020” posters, and a child held a sign that says “Make normalcy normal again.” The music in the background veers from “YMCA” (an odd choice) to “God Bless the USA”, before settling on a disco number whose chorus is just the word “freedom” sung over and over. “We don’t hate gay people,” insists Dawn, who is reluctant to give her surname, and stands amid a sea of American flags. “Some of us used to be gay.”