Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Life Goes On for Southern Decadence and Mardi Gras

"It's New Orleans, man. We're going to celebrate," Matt Menold, a 23-year musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung on his back, told the Associated Press...
"The shocking callousness of New Orleans' gay activists towards the severe suffering of its fellow citizens cannot be adequately articulated in a news report," says James Hartline, a former homosexual, who describes the "Southern Decadence" festival as being "replete with tens of thousands of men and women engaged in public nudity, prostitution, illegal drug use and destructive public S & M sex."

World Net Daily
Probably the last thing a city inundated with water and filled with human misery needs is a parade, much less a Mardi Gras.

But just a week after Hurricane Katrina unleashed its devastation, there already are signs that New Orleans is remaining loyal to its partying ways.

Washington Post
Southern Decadence is billed as the largest gay event in New Orleans. Organizers probably didn't have Katrina in mind when they posted a history of the event on their official website, but it was oddly prophetic.

"Not even the fire from a dragon's breath would keep participants and watchers from assembling in the 1200 block of Royal Street on the first Sunday before Labor Day for a celebration that has gotten bigger and more wonderfully insane each year since its casual creation in 1972," it said...
"Everyone's drinking. We're all happy," said Andy O'Brien, 23, a bare chested carpentar's apprentice who has been getting by on canned goods, borrowed food from shuttered bars and help from friends and neighbors.

Mercury News

Thousands are homeless, hundreds if not thousands are dead, and they are going to party anyway. They're going to have their parades even if they have to step over the bodies in the streets to do so. "Everyone's drinking. We're all happy," says one person. You'd never know there was any devistation going on by the way some people talk. It's all about parties, parades, and getting drunk to some. Meanwhile the rest of the city is trying to put their lives back together.

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