Culture

Brad Pitt threatens to sue ‘Straight Pride’ for using him as their mascot

By Sam Damshenas

7th June 2019

Brad Pitt has reportedly threatened to sue the organisers of ‘Straight Pride’ for using his image without consent.

The organisation, ridiculously titled Super Happy Fun America, had the Oscar-winning actor and director as a mascot on their website. The caption read: “Congratulations to Mr Pitt for being the face of this important civil rights movement.”

The group of activists in Boston, Massachusetts – which consists of Mark Sahady of right-wing group Resist Marxism, and pro-Trump supporters John Hugo and Chris Bartley – have applied for a permit to hold the city’s first ‘Straight Pride’ parade at the end of August.

“Straight people are an oppressed majority,” their website claims. “We will fight for the right of straights everywhere to express pride in themselves without fear of judgement and hate.”

They have also demanded “the same parade route as the Boston Pride Parade [and] the same accommodations given for the LGBTQ+ parade.” This includes street closures and permission to have parade floats.

According to TMZ, Pitt has condemned the event because he doesn’t agree with their beliefs. His picture has now been removed from the website and any mention of him has now been redacted.

The ‘Straight Pride’ event has been widely criticised and mocked on social media. Captain America himself, Chris Evans, blasted its organisers with a scathing attack on his personal Twitter account.

“Just a thought, instead of ‘Straight Pride’ parade, how about this: The ‘desperately trying to bury our own gay thoughts by being homophobic because no one taught us how to access our emotions as children’ parade? Whatta ya think? Too on the nose??”

In a later tweet, Evans criticised the “disappointing” false equivalencies being made between LGBTQ Pride parades and ‘Straight Pride’ parades, calling on people who don’t understand the difference to “search for empathy” instead of getting angry.

“Instead of going immediately to anger (which is actually just fear of what you don’t understand) take a moment to search for empathy and growth,” he added.

Read his tweets below.