The God’s honest truth is, I forgot that the Bradley Manning fiasco isn’t the first time I have been irritated by San Francisco Pride. A year ago I wrote about this really remarkable float that materialized in the Parade:

We must take all measures necessary to stop Iran from obtaining dildos NOW: “Iran 180” float at SF Pride, 2012

That racist, rape-excusing representation of a leather queen forcibly sodomizing an Iranian politician decked a float which was crowbarred into the 2012 festivities by the neocon, astroturf, pro-war front group Iran 180. After I described it, the image began to haunt my dreams so intensely and disturbingly that only a truckload of sleeping pills and a botched prefrontal lobotomy could excise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the nuclear-tipped dildo from my fantasies.

But now I remember; now I see. It’s OK in the eyes of SF Pride officials to embrace a float indulging in racist stereotyping, promoting war, and inciting sexual assault. What’s not OK is to invite an antiwar activist who exposed US human rights abuses and lies. Kapish!

Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday about all the corporate miscreants whom Pride welcomes while barring Bradley Manning, because, after all, unlike Manning, they have money. But I think the Rape Float is in its own special category.

No doubt the honchos of Pride would insist that they don’t actually censor floats at the Parade; just Grand Marshals. First off, I don’t believe them. If the God-hates-fags fanatics at Westboro Baptist Church tried to fit a float in the procession, would the Board agree? If the KKK offered its decorative services, would they be gratefully accepted? Doubtful; It’s just anti-Iranian racism that in the current circumstances passes muster. And second: Bradley Manning was elected Grand Marshal of the 2013 Parade, by a somewhat larger electorate than the nine-member Board. Nobody voted for the Ahmadinejad grotesquerie, except the paid flacks and propagandists of Iran 180 and their funders.

They free us for our hatreds: US Special Forces patrol the sector of Market Street near Duboce Ave., just outside the SF Pride headquarters

SF Pride, however, has promised a new Dawn of Democracy in the Bay Area, possibly facilitated by US military occupation of its offices. The official statement by Lisa Williams, Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Board of Directors of SF Pride, condemned

a system whereby a less-than-handful of people may decide who represents the LGBT community’s highest aspirations as grand marshals for SF Pride. This is a systemic failure that now has become apparent and will be rectified. … [A]s an organization with a responsibility to serve the broader community, SF Pride repudiates this vote. The Board of Directors for SF Pride never voted to support this nomination.

The Purple Revolution comes to the Castro: You should see my other organs

Great!  Since the Board of Directors is suddenly conscious of its “responsibility to the broader community,” I suggest the broader community help it out by practicing that most elemental of democratic freedoms, the one the US promotes with such success from Florida to Fallujah: Voting.  Cast your ballots now! The question is:

Would you rather have Bradley Manning at Pride — an antiwar activist who exposed US secrets and is certainly controversial? Or a rerun of the Rape Float — from a secretive group claiming falsely to be “grassroots,” promoting war and inciting dildo-wielding racial hatred, and uncontroversial only because from its comfy PR offices it takes easy shots at politically easy targets?

You can cast your votes by writing SF Pride at info@sfpride.org;  social@sfpride.org; and donations@sfpride.org. Or you can call them at +01 (415) 864-0831.

Send them your vote now!  After all, as even Binyamin Netanyahu knows, when it comes to our tools — sexual and otherwise — our choices are the most important thing.