The main thing is that you are obviously judging gay pride parades and you are judging them most often by media portrayals. The media as in television wants viewers so they sensationalize everything when it comes to the gay community. The media when in print such as a newspaper to boost circulation unfortunately does the same thing.
I was involved with Palm Springs Gay Pride some years ago. In the parade in which I personally was involved there were gay veterans riding in restored military vehicles. There were classic convertibles furnished for City Officials restored by gay men and women to what is called concours condition.
In order to put their money where their mouth is historically the gay community and all it's sub categories tries to be completely inclusive of all of its members.
The aspects you criticize are a distinct minority within the gay community and are not the community, nor do they represent the whole community.
Sadly, under freedom of the press we are constantly misrepresented and this will not stop any time soon. You could have 200 entries in a gay pride parade and the ONLY ones that will appear on ths front page of a newspaper will be those that are provocative. If there is one single "drag act" out of 100 entries that is the one that will be shown and featured heavily.
The community is far more than a bunch of parades, and because I know where your judgments are coming from, you are being sucked in to a situation where you are judging in the same manner as a homophobic ultra conservaitve individual not taking into consideration what is being done here.
I am old enough to remember the March on Washington many years ago. This was heavily covered by the broadcast media. In the beginning it was receiving reasonable coverage showing all facits of the gay community. There was great coverage of this event by the Religious Right and that coverage was brough and flaunted as if it were dynamite on Trinity Broadcasting which is a major religious network. While PBS was showing thousands of average gay men and women Trinity was showing ONLY drag queens, lesbian females wearing minimal clothing and coverd in tattoos and they only went for the most scantily dressed leathermen. They were in fact so selective that they also deliberately looked for leathermen who were dealing with the wasting syndrome associated with HIV,
If you looked carefully at all the news reports coming from Trinity Broadcasting it was about the same 20 people out of thousands that had descended on Washington. Trinity obviously followed these people around and placed them on "candid camera" without their knowledge.
I am also a Past President of a Gay Rodeo Chapter. I served on the Board of that Chapter in more than once capacity. The press would come to those rodeos and historically the Gay cowboys and participants did not have great affection for the drag acts. Again, when the gay rodeo was going at the grounds they worked hard to find the five drag queens that were there and advertise the whole event as if it were these people that populated the event. There was non public entertainment at these events at private hotels and stages. There were drag acts at those events (again not greatly loved by the cowboys) but these were not open to the public in any manner. They were not photographed.
Back in the 1970's the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center appointed a man by the name of Steve Schulte to be their spokesperson. He was by appearance what would be classified for his time as having the look of a model from Rip Colt. He was masculine in every mannerism and he was a good speaker and well educated. Previously to that the speaker had been a man by the name of Morris Kight. Morris was a great man, but he was very much a stereotype in that he was about 70 years old, very effeminate, had long painted fingernails and the voice patterns and hand gestures to match. The news media in Los Angeles acted as if Steve Schulte did not exist after about three interviews. They went around him and would corner poor Morris Kight in his private life to get his opinion on the issues of the time.
They wanted ratings and they wanted stereotypes and they went as a media group of organizations way out of their way to portray the community by a set of standards that they developed and were in no manner accurate.
I was at one time a community activist myself. I simply became burned out trying to do this and I wanted escape from what had morphed from a good gay community into a less than good one.
If you feel that you want change you yourself need to get organized in the committees regulating gay pride parades in your area. You need to see the who, the what and the why, and most importantly you need to see the entire community and how you would be overruled every single time.
Put your money where your mouth is and if you feel that you yourself can make a positive change within the community you need to do so.
The fact that I left Palm Springs California and now live on a very large and very rural horse ranch in the middle of the New Mexico desert should tell you something!
Good Luck Pal.........