Weren't collaborators once shot...?

SF Pride capitulates, drops Manning 

It might have been legitimate to not honour him, since there are some troubling aspects to his actions (though I judge him to have done far more good than harm, whatever the nuances of his motivations).  However, the leadership of SF Pride has also become like the leadership of Amnesty: co-opted by the 9% to serve the 1%.

The bio for [SF Pride president, Lisa] Williams on SF Pride shows she works for a “political consulting and community advocacy” that serves Democratic Party politics. She “organized satellite offices for the Obama campaign.” She also is the PAC chair of the Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition.

On first glance it's pretty damned clever to get your people in place to knock the teeth out of what few organizations could once 'afflict the powerful'; on a historical reading, it is suicidal.  Suicide can take a while to come about: when you take away any effectiveness of the democratic and non-violent means of protest, well... what are people left with?

Greenwald's just posted, with better bon mots than mine:

...the very high-minded ethical standards of Lisa L Williams and the SF Pride Board apply only to young and powerless Army Privates who engage in an act of conscience against the US war machine, but instantly disappear for large corporations and banks that hand over cash. What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture.

...Equating illegal behavior with ignominious behavior is the defining mentality of an authoritarian - and is particularly notable coming from what was once viewed as a bastion of liberal dissent.

...when I wrote several weeks ago about the remarkable shift in public opinion on gay equality, I noted that this development is less significant than it seems because the cause of gay equality poses no real threat to elite factions or to how political and economic power in the US are distributed. If anything, it bolsters those power structures because it completely and harmlessly assimilates a previously excluded group into existing institutions and thus incentivizes them to accommodate those institutions and adopt their mindset. This event illustrates exactly what I meant.

...the fact that such lock-step, heel-clicking, military-mimicking behavior is now coming from the SF Gay Pride Parade of all places is indeed noteworthy: it reflects just how pervasive this authoritarian rot has become.