WaPo Celebrates Gay Pride Festival on Front of 'Weekend' Section

Social liberalism is on the march at The Washington Post. On Friday, the Post took a bold new step in celebrating homosexuality and the oncoming push against the "hateful" influence of traditional religion by putting the Capital Pride Festival on the front page of its Friday "Weekend" section, which I've never seen happen before. It carried the promotional headline "PRIDE...brings 200,000 people to the District’s gay and lesbian festival. Hear their voices, Page 25." The illustration is two different colored hands holding with a rainbow of different fingernail colors. Inside, Post writer Ellen McCarthy highlighted the liberal politics:

In an election year, though, and at a time when gay marriage and lawsuits contesting it are front-page news, Capital Pride isn't concerned only with celebration.

"Despite our gains, it is a political statement -- to be right there on Pennsylvania Avenue with the Capitol in the background," Mallory says.

McCarthy’s article was headlined simply "PROUD CROWD" in large, bold capital letters and and was illustrated by a large photo of topless men in jeans called the DC Cowboys performing at last year’s Capital Pride festival. The next two and a half pages were devoted to individual profiles of "Proud Voices" explaining how they love the Pride festival and what it has meant to them, including female impersonator Destiny B. Childs (a.k.a Richard Legg) and male impersonator Angel McWilliams (a.k.a. Xavier Bottoms).

McCarthy boldly estimated "there will be 200,000 or more" attendees this weekend, without actually waiting for the weekend’s events to begin for a real estimate. Obviously, nowhere in these three and a half pages was there anyone raining on the "pride" parade. It looked like the Washington Blade, DC’s gay newspaper, was just awarded three and a half pages of free advertising space.

Apparently, the Post isn’t the only local medium trying hard to be gay pride-friendly. Their listing of Sunday’s special guests at the Pride festival included Wendy Rieger, an anchorwoman at WRC-4, the local NBC affiliate. She was apparently the grand marshal of the pride parade. (Rieger also emceed a fall brunch for the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League.)

Last week, a panel discussion at the festival was moderated by Itay Hod of CBS News on Logo.