June 13, 2017
Charlotte Pride Issues Statement About Deplorable Group
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
After being thrust into the national spotlight two months before their scheduled annual Pride celebration set for August, the Board of Directors for Charlotte Pride have responded to their organization's decision to deny a permit application from a group who claim to be gay conservatives.
According to the statement issued by Charlotte Pride's board, the Gays for Trump group's application was denied because of the group's alleged history of hostility towards marginalized groups.
With regard to specific inquiries on the Gays For Trump/Deplorable Pride parade float: As a non-partisan, non-profit organization, the decision to deny the application was made on several non-partisan grounds. The Gays For Trump application was initially denied because of that organization's history of public comments and stances disparaging entire groups of people, including transgender people, people of color and immigrants.
We have since learned that the application was submitted on false pretenses by Deplorable Pride, a group not affiliated with Gays For Trump and whose organization's name did not appear on the application, but whose leaders have also publicly espoused hostile and disparaging stances toward members of the larger LGBTQ community.
Finally, we considered several concerns regarding the safety of our event attendees when denying this application.
Deplorable Pride's co-founder Brian Talbert isn't taking this matter sitting down. In addition to getting national attention on CNN and Fox News, he's gotten supportive coverage on historically anti-gay websites that include Breitbart, LifeSite, Christian Post and Drudge.
In a stunning case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Talbert and his group are rallying social conservatives who regularly support anti-LGBT discrimination to call on Charlotte Pride's sponsors (which include: Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and Bank of America) to pull their support.
"[Charlotte Pride's rejection sends] a signal that it's okay to discriminate. It's okay to exclude people," Deplorable Pride co-founder Derek Van Cleve said. "If you're not, 'the right kind of gay', then you can't participate."
The modern use of the term "deplorable" has its roots in a speech given by 2016 Democratic nominee for president Hillary Clinton to a group of LGBT supporters. In the speech, Clinton took on the divisive tone of the Trump campaign.
"We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it," Clinton said. "And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America."
The speech infuriated Trump's far right wing and largely anti-LGBT base, who have since taken on the term "deplorable" as though it's a badge of honor. It's not.
