Look at These Photos: Do You Want Your Tax $$s Spent on 'Gay' Events Like This?
8/11/2005 12:05:00 PM
By Peter LaBarbera, Illinois Family Institute
A Letter from the Executive Director:
WARNING: Offensive photos and descriptions follow
Dear IFI Supporter,
CHICAGO--Illinois Bureau of Tourism Director Jan Kostner thinks using your tax dollars to promote homosexual events like "Market Days," a street fair in Chicago's ("gay") Boystown neighborhood, is a great idea. You might disagree after looking at our photos and reading our firsthand report on this event, which was a tad more--shall we say lustful--than the average tourist destination.
Among the booths at this year's Market Days were: Steamworks, a 24/7 "gay" bathhouse (see photo at right); a seller of hard-core pornographic videos; those hawking lewd anti-Bush paraphernalia; a booth for a radical group that seeks to overturn Catholic teachings on sex and marriage; and another that told teens that being "queer" is "special."
Promoting genuine ethnic festivals is wholesome and good for the state of Illinois. But the State of Illinois should NOT be spending your tax dollars on events like "Market Days" and the "Gay Games" that celebrate homosexuality and its related pathologies. When the government does that, it puts YOU in the position of subsidizing the excesses and perversions depicted in these photos.
It also makes our great state a mecca for deviancy rather than family values.
TAKE ACTION: Call or write Jan Kostner, the state Tourism Director--and tell her she is WRONG to promote homosexual celebrations in our state. (Read IFI's article about Kostner's advocacy of using the Bureau of Tourism to market to "gay" tourist events HERE.)
E-mail Kostner at: jkostner@ildceo.net or jkostner@commerce.state.il.us. Phone her at: 312-814-4733 or 312-814-4735.
Should taxpayer dollars help promote this?
In a recent letter, Kostner happily noted that the State of Illinois has just sponsored its first "media familiarization trip focusing on the gay and lesbian market." The August 5-7 trip included a visit to "Market Days," an annual street festival in Chicago's homosexual neighborhood known as "Boystown."
Kostner wrote (emphasis added):Also, coinciding with the fam [media familiarization] trip and on the agenda is the Northalsted Market Days. This annual two-day festival is the largest of its kind in the Midwest and showcases the Lakeview neighborhood, a traditional gay destination. The festival features 40 acts on three music stages, as well as crafts, food and merchandise tents. Northalsted Market Days is all about summer fun and we're pleased to be able to show it off. I had seen "Market Days" as a critical observer and know it is about a bit more than "summer fun," so I ventured to the event Sunday afternoon to see what sort of events our government wants to promote using our tax dollars.
To be sure, Market Days did include a bunch of innocent vendors' booths selling assorted foods and crafts--the sort you would find at any street fair. But it was the other, sex-oriented booths, which you would only find at a "gay" festival, that showed why our state government should NOT be promoting this event.
One of the Market Days booths (see adjacent photo) sat in front of Steamworks, a 24/7 "gay bathhouse" that operates right there on Halsted Street in Boystown (which, by the way, is marked off by rainbow-colored pillars symbolic of "gay pride"). People were lining up to play "Skeeball" at the Steamworks booth, as children occasionally strolled by with their parents on the crowded street.
Steamworks is a place where men with a homosexual problem go for anonymous, easy sex--that is its main selling point, although it also fronts as a gym. The City of San Francisco closed down bathhouses like Steamworks as public health hazards because they served as breeding grounds for the AIDS epidemic. (Homosexual writer Randy Shilts, author of "And the Band Played On," crusaded for their closure.)
Today, "gay" leaders justify bathhouses as condom distribution centers, but wouldn't it make more sense for the city just to shut them down? Passing out condoms at a homosexual bathhouse is like passing out Nicorette at a smokers' convention--yet this is the folly that comes from pandering to Chicago's powerful "gay rights" movement.
Let me ask you: have you ever attended a street festival or town fair that has a booth hosted by a perversion center where men engage in despicable and dangerous acts with other men?
Only in Chicago, and YOU are apparently already paying to promote it!
Hard-core porn for sale
Perhaps Jan Kostner and the Illinois Bureau of Tourism think its important to promote easy access to hard-core pornography at street fairs like Market Days. One booth (see photo) touted its "Annual Market Days Sale" of videotapes. Under the tent were dozens upon dozens of homosexual porn videos, the sale of which is surely illegal on Chicago city streets. (I should say technically illegal because Mayor Daley and Dick Divine, Cook County State's Attorney, do not strongly enforce decency laws.)
The sale of porn videos is no big deal in Boystown. Sadly, porn is very mainstream among "gay" men. I overheard one conversation in which a guy pointed out the 50-plus pornographic videos to another guy, who responded: "I already have all these."
But what is mainstream in the homosexual world is shocking to the rest of us, so why are we allowing Market Days to be promoted, proudly, through our Tourism Bureau with our tax dollars?
'Sex Pig' at leather booth
As I strode down Halsted street at Market Days, I came upon a man who was "MC" for the Cell Block stand. "Cell Block" is a Chicago "leather bar" catering to sadomasochists. The man had the words "Sex Pig" tattooed on his back (see photo above), signaling his "sexual orientation" toward the most extreme homosexual acts, which are way too gross to describe here.
Yes, the real-life world of homosexuality is a bit less glamorous than "Will & Grace," but I can guarantee you that the "Sex Pig" guy won't end up in next year's official State of Illinois marketing pitch for "Market Days."
Advocating for homosexuality ("gays and lesbians") has become a key part of the liberal creed, but liberals will not tell you the truth about the lifestyle they are promoting, just like they don't want you to know the real facts about abortion (what they call "choice").
Miller Lite goes heavy in reaching gay men
Like credit card companies sending hordes of new offers to those already mired in debt, beer companies market heavily to "gays"--even though homosexuals as a group of people struggle disproportionately with alcohol and drug addiction compared to the rest of the culture.
There was lots of beer being consumed at Market Days, which only exacerbated the danger of the sodomitic activity that in many cases surely followed. One ominous flier from Steamworks (slogan: "Play Hard, Play Safe") urged attendees to stop by the bathhouse after spending the day at Market Days.
A little reckless, life-endangering sex to top off a night of drinking.
If sex between men is so risky that they have to call it "safer"--as opposed to "safe"--in promoting condom use, how much more so is it after the men are plied with alcohol?
Message to teens: being "queer" is SPECIAL
Everywhere at Market Days there was evidence of the risky lifestyle of homosexuality, yet "gay" activists aggressively espouse their behavior to impressionable teens.
At the table for the Howard Brown Health Center, I picked up a flier titled "A Men's Guide to Safer Leather Sex." The same group distributed a card for TYRA, the Transgender Youth Resource and Advocacy Group, "a support group for transgender and questioning youth."
Gee, I wonder what kind of answers the pro-transsexual folks at TYRA and Howard Brown give to the "questioning" youth that enter their doors.
Howard Brown also distributed a little green booklet telling teenagers that being "gay" is OK and, in fact, cool. Here is the "final word" in that booklet (emphasis theirs):BEING QUEER is something SPECIAL. Something to CELEBRATE. Your SEXUALITY isn't everything, but it makes you WONDERFULLY DIFFERENT. Now go find some GAY, BI, TRANS teens and other COOL PEOPLE to CELEBRATE YOURSELF! SPREAD THE WORD, STOP THE VIRUS, and SHARE THE PRIDE! Do you trust homosexual and transsexual activists to represent the best interests of children?
"Gay" advocacy and anti-Bush merchandise
Market Days also featured plenty of homosexual political advocacy--another reason not to promote this event at taxpayer's expense. Among the booths present were: Equality Illinois, the state's leading "gay" lobby group; ACLU of Illinois; GLSEN-Chicago (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network)); groups advocating open homosexuality in the military; and the Gay Liberation Network, a very radical leftist organization that hates IFI almost as much as it despises the U.S. liberation of Iraq.
There was also some anti-Bush items for sale, including a tee-shirt with the message "Buck Fush."
I hope you agree with me that the State of Illinois' Tourism Bureau has no business promoting events like "Market Days" and the "Gay Games" in Chicago. Some things are more important than money. Call Tourism Director Jan Kostner and respectfully request that she get out of the homosexuality promotion business and stop spending your tax dollars on immoral and harmful activity.
God bless you.
Sincerely in Chirst,
Peter LaBarbera
Executive Director
Illinois Family Institute
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