Excerpted from City Council Shames Itself Over Pride, by Nicholas Owen, published Aug 2006, in San Diego News Notes:

By Nicholas Owen

…The July 29 parade lasted over three hours and included 185 contingents. Many entries featured scantily clad participants, mostly men, gyrating suggestively to loud, throbbing music. Float titles included “In Dmood for Decadence.” Simulated sex acts were performed in several entries, and many advertised gay bars, pornography vendors, and male prostitution businesses. A rider in the Rentboy.com convertible flashed the devil sign with his hand. Handouts to parade spectators included condoms, sexual lubricant samples, and literature promoting a pornographic web site. Numerous trash receptacles bearing the slogan “Got lube?” (advertising an anal sex lubricant) were placed along the parade route and in the festival venue inside Balboa Park.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag queen group in outlandish outfits parodying Catholic women religious, carried an “Asylum of the Tortured Heart” banner, mocking Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At the Gay Pride festival, they provided crowd control and received an award for the “most outrageous contingent.”

A woman who was topless except for pasties walked alongside the parade. A man wearing a body thong covering only his genitals roller-skated by parade watchers in defiance of municipal code which prohibits nudity on public lands and defines it as being “devoid of an opaque covering which covers the genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, perineum, anus or anal region of any person, or any portion of the breast at or below the areola thereof of any female person.”

…Several law enforcement and government agencies participated in the parade or had a booth at the festival, including San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne, San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender, the San Diego Fire Department, the Chula Vista Police Department, the Oceanside Police Department, the Harbor Police, and the San Diego Regional Airport Authority.

…[S]ponsors included Hewlett-Packard, Wells Fargo Bank, Cox Communications, Viejas Casino, Sparkletts Water, Starbucks Coffee, Verizon, Sirius Satellite Radio Sempra Energy, iSOLD It, Great American Credit Union, Kaiser Permanente, Travelocity, Yahoo, Smirnoff, Bud Light, Avis Car Rentals, Glaceau Vitamin Water, and the Old Globe Theatre.

…Participating churches and synagogues included All Saints Parish and Saint John the Beloved Cathedral of the Catholic Church of America (not affiliated with the true Catholic Church); Dignity, another group using the Catholic label but not sanctioned by the Catholic Church; Christ Chapel of North Park; Saint Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral; Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad; Temple Emanu-El and the Metropolitan Community Church, founded by a homosexual “leatherman.” Participating schools included San Diego State University, UCSD, Cal State University San Marcos, and the San Diego Cooperative Charter School.

Continue reading in San Diego News Notes…

Excerpted from Tragedy Hits Another Party Hosted by Flamboyant Count, by Ben Taylor and Olinka Koster, published Aug 24, 2006, in Daily Mail:

A man has plunged to his death from a riotous gay party in the penthouse flat of a German aristocrat.

The victim, in his 30s, fell 60ft from the roof garden of the Chelsea home of openly homosexual Count Gottfried Alexander von Bismarck.

Twenty years ago, the count was at the centre of a scandal over the squalid death of a Cabinet member’s daughter.

He was the ringleader of a ‘poor little rich set’ and hosted the notorious Oxford party at which Olivia Channon – daughter of Trade Secretary Paul Channon – died of a heroin overdose.

Tragedy returned to haunt 43-year- old von Bismarck after he hosted another hedonistic party – described by police sources as a “riotous all-night gay bash.”

Continue reading at Daily Mail…

UPDATE

Excerpted from Man Dies After Gay Sex Party At Aristocrat’s Home, published Oct 5, 2006, by Associated Press:

Anthony Casey, 38, fell 18 metres from a roof terrace at Count Gottfried von Bismarck’s London apartment Aug. 23 London police concluded that the death was an accident and four people at the party, including Bismarck, have been told they will not face charges.

Dr. Paul Knapman, presiding in Westminster Coroner’s Court, said one room of the apartment contained a “bizarre” assortment of items including a large rubber tarpaulin on the floor, towels, lubricants, bottles of vodka, buckets of sex toys and a TV set up to show pornography.

“In common parlance, in the early hours of the morning, there was a gay orgy going on,” Knapman said.

Continue reading at 365Gay…

Excerpted from Gay Week Suprises Croatian Tourists, published Aug 22, 2006, by UPI:

Tourists in Croatia’s central Adriatic Hvar Island were startled by naked men in a main square and striptease in the streets during “Gay Week,” reports said.