From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: Used Condoms and Kinky Costumes at the YMCA

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Used Condoms and Kinky Costumes at the YMCA

December 25, 2004

A scheduler and executive have lost their jobs, but certain unsavory and essential details are still being left out of most MSM reports of the clash this week between transgendered party-goers and the parents of swim-meet youth at a Chicago YMCA.

The Chicago Tribune's stellar columnist John Kass with the real scoop (free reg. req.):

Parents and children were gathering for a 7 a.m. Sunday morning swim meet. Meanwhile, the participants of an all-night transgender fashion show and ball were still partying at the Y.
...The values clash began as young swimmers arrived to find the locker rooms occupied by leather-clad fashionistas of indeterminate gender. The all-night fashion show--approved by the YMCA--began at 11 p.m. the night before and was to last until 8 a.m. Sunday.

"When I got there with my 7-year-old daughter on Sunday morning, I could sense some bad mojo," said Paul N., a parent of a swimmer...."It might have been the 6-foot-tall gentleman in tight, leather pants and the leather bustier and the handcuffs, or the other men in leather skirts," he said. "But I think it was the used condoms and cigarettes in the women's locker room that got the parents upset."

...And, uh, who cleaned up the used prophylactics? "Not me," he said. The swim-meet parents feel they were unfairly depicted by the media as intolerant bigots.

"It was like they didn't want to see the gay people at all," trans-fashion show security official Kashma Avery was quoted in the Sun-Times as saying. "... The guests started hearing sexist slurs. And an altercation ensued."

..."The comments made us look as if we were anti-gay," Paul N. said. "That's not the case. They can do what they want. Who cares? But to leave what they left in the locker room--a locker room to be used by kids?"

YMCA officials confirmed Tuesday that discarded condoms were found in the women's locker room. "Three were found by our people as they were cleaning up," YMCA spokesman Luis Diaz-Perez told me. "One was unused. The other two were soiled."

Remarkably, in this Chicago Sun-Times story, a Y official says the real issue was the scheduling conflict, not the use of the facility itself for a transgender event. Apparently, the Y's mission of moral and spiritual uplift for young men includes tacit endorsement of transgenderism, transvestitism and overnight parties.

Without condemning transgenderism, I guess I'd urge the Y to forgo institutional affirmation of such, ah, cutting-edge identity politics, especially given the impact on the Y's core constituency. And the organizers of this event should pause to reflect that they do not advance the cause of acceptance - if that is something they really want - with such conduct, particularly in a family setting.

So Blue America's moral values continue their slide into the tiolet. Meanwhile, mystified Democrats championing "diversity" and battling "conservative phobias" are left scratching their heads about their national party's march to oblivion.