Straight Pride took place in Boston over the weekend, but it didn’t exactly go to plan.
Boston’s Straight Pride was organized by Super Happy Fun America, a group with ties to far-right and white nationalist organizations. Boston’s mayor, Martin J. Walsh, publicly condemned the parade, but organizers successfully got a city permit to hold it as planned. Up to 2000 people were expected to attend.
Instead, only a few hundred parade-goers showed up. Many of them carried pro-military and pro-Trump signs and gear. They marched under the motto, “It’s great to be straight.”
The Straight Pride crowd was dwarfed by over 1000 LGBTQ advocates, anti-fascists and other protesters who gathered along the parade route and drowned out the marchers.
“I feel like they capitalized on Boston Pride, which is our LGBTQ celebration. They used it as their next thing to hate on,” Monica Cannon-Grant of Black Lives Matter Cambridge told CNN. “We chanted against hatred and we won.”
There was a heavy police presence at the event. BuzzFeed reports that as the parade approached City Hall Plaza, it began to dissolve, and fights broke out. The police used pepper spray and batons on counter-protesters. Thirty-six people were arrested.
A previous Straight Pride event was held in Modesto, California on August 24. It also drew protesters, but no arrests were made.
