GRAND PLAINS, NE—A tight-knit rural Midwestern farming community commemorated the demonization of homosexuality Sunday with its annual Gay Shame Parade, a three-decade-old tradition that has become a cornerstone of the town's cultural identity.
"Every year, the whole town turns out to enjoy Nebraska's famous summer sunshine, sample foods, browse the craft bazaar, and shame homosexuals for their repulsive, decadent behavior," said Frank Mitchell, mayor of Grand Plains, NE and parade marshal. "This year was our biggest turnout yet. Everybody had so much fun ostracizing the gays."
The second-place float in this year's parade cruises down Grand Plains' picturesque Main Street.
The parade featured the usual assemblage of police cruisers, fire trucks, antique cars, and farm equipment, which local residents had draped in red-white-and-blue banners that read "Burn in the Eternal Flames of Hell!" City Councilman Fred Brandeen, this year's "Jesus," entertained children by making mock finger-wagging gestures of admonishment and passing out buttons bearing the parade's traditional slogan: "NO!" Members of the Grand Plains Area Wives Association followed behind with a 15-foot hand-sewn banner, cosponsored by Jerry's Auto Body, which read: "GPAWA and Jerry's Cringe To Think What You're Putting Your Family Through."
Organized every year by the Grand Plains City Council and a coalition of area churches, the Gay Shame Parade has been an annual event here since 1977, the year that citizens first became aware of gay people's existence.
"To see a whole community rally together like this around a good cause—it's really an inspiration," said Ellen Lundblom, a mother of four enjoying the festivities with her youngest son, first-time reveler Timmy, 3. "If I were a lesbian, this would have really made me feel awful about myself."
From you know where. It's probably worth noting there is no Grand Plains, Ne.
Here's an excerpt from a 2005 post about driving through Nebraska and South Dakota. You decide whether its apropos of anything:
Central Nebraska scared the absolute living shit out of me. A complete sense of dread haunted me that day.
You may ask why. My answer is this: It's rare that I've come across people who seem so defeated by life (to get a glimpse of that life, check out the movie Boys Don't Cry; this was just before the time of the Brandon Teena story on which the film was based. I didn't hear about the case until I read a stunning New Yorker piece about it in 1997, I believe).
Anyway, I simply couldn't drive through there fast enough. The landscape just crawled by (and keep in mind that I generally like driving on the prairies).
Here's part of the route I followed (here's the Google Map link for Grand Island, Ne.; play with it from there to get the view below):
The Brandon Teena story unfolded in Falls City, in the far southeast corner of the state (the map above mostly shows the northwest quadrant of Nebraska), but I suspect the sullen, lumpen white-trash mentality that easily lends itself to anything from simple ostracism to fearsome violence towards those deemed to be different is common throughout the dying and decaying towns of high-plains Nebraska. Believe it or not, there are towns in the emptiness through which my red dots trek. If The Onion's Grand Plains doesn't exist as a place in Nebraska, I'll bet it exists as a state of mind.