Who cares? Watching the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth 2 in Sydney Harbour, and the flotilla of yachts endlessly admiring this spectacle, was the great visual spectacle of the year.

A few boats have upstaged the Queens of Oxford Street.

Mardi Gras demeans itself when costumes get more tired by the year, the cliches get worse, and the meaning is overshadowed by commercialism. The Crystal Meth that it attracts makes it lose its celebration of life. The dance parties became mindless escape venues where Crystal Meth helps you not celebrate or liberate yourselves; it merely helps you escape life for a period of time. Some return mostly unharmed. Some return with brain damage and develop psychosis. Some do not return to life at all. The new drug: GHB, or Grievous Bodily Harm is even worse. People literally plop unconsciously on the dance-floor, and the medical team are never sure if this leads to another casualty, or if this is yet another unconscious victim needing medical attention urgently.

The body counts from these events are some of Sydney's best kept secrets. I think the staff at the city hospitals have had enough of the silence. Every year gets worse.

Yeah, Mardi Gras. As the Moulin Rouge raves on "Spectacular Spectacular, the show must go on". A coughing and sputtering in the background: another performer in this spectacle is carried away.

Next!.

Oh and Proverbs, to answer your question, the inflated figures are a ploy to attract sponsorship and advertisers to fund the thing. It has nothing to do with sexual insecurity.

There was a joke once of renaming it "the Testra Qantas Mardi Gras".

It looks great on an adversiting brief or on a tourist brochure.

proverbs, I think I can help.

>>For years I have accepted these figures...<<

Right there, that's where your problem is.

You probably believe that if you catapult some hops, two barmaids and a stag into a cloud, you get beer. That teenagers are under attack from six-foot Twisties bags. That eating a chocolate bar will have you running a marathon with a heavy pack on your back.

These are called "advertisements".

You may have heard the expression "truth in advertising", which possibly leads you to believe that whatever they display on your screen actually has to be true.

Heads up. They exaggerate.

They have a product to sell, and accuracy is not required. In the same way that beer manufacturers are allowed to fantasize the production process, event promoters are allowed to fantasize their attendance figures.

Once you have absorbed this information, you might be able to work out that it is not the event promotion that worries you - after all, no-one forces you to eat Twisties either - but the event itself that you have problems with.

And if the sight of a bunch of people having fun upsets you, then you might like to seek some help.

The whole show is a sad exhibit.
Rather pathetic actually. I had seen the TV reports of the numbers and
just shaken my head that real people could be so gullible.
However I am now pleased that I had been mislead and the figures are so
much less.
That anyone could believe that playing around in the poo is
a real alternative life style is beyond me.
If you were a public servant responsible for approving adoptions, would
you approve a couple of queers adopting a young boy ?
It could really come back to haunt you in 20 years when the boy takes
the involved public servants to the cleaners for being so stupid.

Bazz
You raise an interesting point:
Where do you stop/draw the line?

Once you start down a slippery slope it is difficult to call a stop.
Someone or some group, always wants to go one step further

During a previous discussion re gay marriages.
I questioned/challenged some of the gay rights advocates commitments to principles of “Peoples right to choose” & other high sounding slogans, by using an analogy of a man choosing to have sex with his dog

The screams of ridicule & outrage I received ( some from one of the previous posters) would have made any right wing religious moralist blush…
I was told it would never happen
It was a red herring etc etc …
And I wasn’t fit to talk to …

I read recently however that Denmark is proposing to decriminalise acts between humans & animals!

The figures are supplied by the NSW Police and verified through media reports, neither of whom are known to be gay friendly. There are also about 10,000 people in the parade itself.
However regardless of the figures, and I reckon you'd challenge them if they said the official figure was 1 man and his dog, the only reason you want to challenge them is your own hatred of gays and lesbians, nothing more and nothing less.
Christians exaggerate their figures every xmas and easter by telling us millions of Australians turned up for church services... the truth be known, most churches are empty and at best they would get 100,000 to these meaningless events nationwide.
I feel very sorry for you. Hatred of people's freedom seems to be the only value christians have these days, no wonder they are doomed for extinction.
Oh and to the idiot who mentioned marrying animals.
Think about it, an animal cannot enter into a legal contract.
Personally I reckon marriage should remain a church based or private ceremony.
We should do away with all state sanctioned entitlements and priveleges for all married couples.
Let people marry each other regardless of gender, but don't force me or anyone else to pay for it over and over again.