PRIDE has become a catch-all for our culture’s outcasts and losers. If I were an L, a G, or a B, I would be downright resentful of my movement’s colonization by those who are weird and/or unattractive, sometimes because of their own choices.

[...]

I saw evidence of furry culture in this PRIDE event—just a glimpse, but I think a highly revealing one. I went into a restaurant in downtown Portland for an early supper. When I entered, there was a table for two just leaving—it appeared to be a young girl (late teens) and her mother. The teenager was wearing a furry costume, and as she left the restaurant, she popped on the tail, furry paw-spats and gloves, and the doghead. Her mother was wearing a t-shirt that said something like “furry mom/free hugs.”

(Aside: here’s a question for other Generation X-parents of generation Z-kids out there: can you imagine going to a PRIDE event or an ACT-UP demonstration in the 1980s or early 1990s with your mommies? I was so embarrassed for this woman and her daughter, who is probably autistic or has some other emotional or developmental delays. Perhaps the mother has autism too—who knows? Whatever happened to privacy and boundaries within families? Do parents now really want to know so much about their children’s sexual fetishes and porn-influenced tastes?)