MardiGras as an organisation just provides the community a framework for festival events as well as the parade and parties.

I would suggest that your friend organise an event for same-sex attracted celibate people and then put in an application for inclusion in the festival. Or, organise a float for the parade itself.

The recent inclusion of intersex individuals in MardiGras has come about because they as a group got together and started organising and actively engaged with the organisation.

As with the gay experience, it wasn't until people started coming out and living honestly and openly did opinion start to change.

My hat off to Tony.

Sexuality does nor deserve to be a defining factor or made a big deal of.

Thank you Jamie for this beautiful article.

They may have been absent but you haven't clearly explained how they were ingnored.

"However year after year and again in 2014 voices like his were absent, indeed ignored."

Surely, it is "for Tony and perhaps others like himself" to be proactive (and no, that wasn't meant as a bad joke).

"Tony wondered why people like himself who were same-gender attracted, yet wished to remain celibate, were for all intents and purposes invisible..." well, I suspect that for some it is because they prefer it, but Tony is not precluded from becoming involved in MardiGras as you quoted from the booklet, "A chance for all of our communities, our tribes, our colours to converge..."

If he follows Zakalwe's suggestion to organise something, Tony could even call it "Dorothy's Friends Without Benefits".

Maybe he doesn't know, or hasn't made up his mind yet?
Maybe he goes both ways, but not necessarily, simultaneously?
That would have to be very hard?
Perhaps he doesn't know whether he is coming or going?
Maybe instead of coming, he went!?
What would, (forever butching it up) very manly, bear hunting, horse riding, hairy chested Putin do?
Have his own Queer Mardi Gras, starting in say, red square and finishing in Independence Square?
Now that would have to be the mother of a Marathon Mardi Gras?
And everyone could wear masks, dress in military costumes, put socks in their jocks and ride on military vehicles?
He haw, ha, ha.
Rhrosty.

This mockery is utterly disgusting, Rhrosty.

Tony has already made up his mind: he will not allow sexual attraction to rule his life - That's what I call a true hero!

...And you, therefore, a coward. While the vast majority of us are slaves to lust to one extent or another - you cannot even face the idea of freedom, even just the idea or the presence of one who has victoriously conquered his senses.

Yuyutsu "victoriously conquered his senses."

How Victorian!
Chastity belts for everyone!
That comment stinks of the repression encouraged in past eras.
And it sounds like Tony is carrying on that repression, but pretending its an empowering "choice".

People react quizzically because (a) he's a man who never has sex (b) he's a *gay* man who never has sex and (c) he *chooses* to live that way (rather than it being a circumstantial misfortune).

The idea of a straight man never having sex is weird enough, but a gay man?
With straight men, they have to go to often extraordinary lengths to get into bed with a woman.
No such difficulty with gays. Sex is readily available in any major city.
This is why people would scratch their heads.

Sex is enjoyable and available.
Unless there were other mitigating circumstances (disease, ugliness, poverty, etc.) nobody will ever understand this "decision".
Perhaps Tony is AIDS-phobic, but uses other excuses to avoid sex.

The very fact that he rejects all but the most blandly technical of labels shows an inherent aversion or rejection of his sexuality.
No wonder there's little acceptance of his "tribe" in gay circles.