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I think that the Fourth of July largely is, as it goes, a celebration of what makes us different and, by proxy, why we might prefer the United States over other countries. It doesn't mean we are threatening the others necessarily, but when you listen to the rhetoric that comes with celebrating being an American, it is always saying stuff America is like "A free country." and all that with the implication that this is a unique quality. And I do think it would be healthy if we toned down our rhetoric in general because I think nationalism leads to delusional thinking. Mind that I'm not saying the fourth should be banned, because when you strip away the rhetoric you still get a summer holiday where you blow shit up and eat barbecue with friends and family, and I'd have to be a sad fuck to poopoo those things. But if you look at patriotism and extend the same practices and assumptions to a pro-heterosexuality movement, you can see how it could get awkward.
On the subject of the rhetoric, I suppose if you want to *change* it or approach the American identity in a certain way if you feel the current means is too nationalistic then you could change up some of the rituals. Not saying get rid of the fire-works but also adapt something like a ritual bible burning. Not something organized to destroy an object out of malice but a ritual established to force an individual to not regard a thing as a physical thing, and that its qualities as a physical object is unimportant. Thereby forcing the individual to acknowledge the philosophical identity behind it when its physical existence is destroyed and rendered meaningless.
I think I talked about this once with you over Steam but re-iterate here for the lay folk.
A ritual burning of something - in the above case the bible - isn't to be organized as an annihilation in its entirety a physical manifestation of something considered bad, but a calculated endeavor to destroy what many might regard as the sole purpose of something as purely a symbol and turn that over into having to contemplate or approach the philosophical meaning that's actually inside what is being destroyed. It comes down to a weakly translated Buddhist approach to "Kill the Buddha", where you don't actually kill a Buddha for the sake of destroying it, but metaphorically destroy the concept and idol of this idea of perfection so it's not distracting so you can get to the meaning behind it.
Burning the bible in ritual is not destroying the book for the sake of destroying it, but destroying it to get attachment for the symbol out of the way to approach the meaning behind the book and perhaps leave a more "Christian" life in the same way a Buddhist may supposedly live a more Buddhist life, free of attachment and ego.
To round this back to the selected portion of Vilage's post and perhaps to the point on hand: you could theoretically adapt the same principle in addressing the philosophy of a nation by ritually destroying the symbols of the nation so as to learn to give up these physical symbols and attachment over these strictly and to force yourself to then face the philosophy behind what it is your burning as the only thing left from it. I joked to Vilage once that we should ritually burn copies of the Constitution to remove the idea of the Constitution itself so as to leave behind only the meaning of the document instead (then carried on in effect that people might get carried away and assault the National Library to burn the real one and all of that because we took it far too out of hand into straight-up Iconoclasm).
Coming back to X-Pride movements, I suppose the same principle could be executed as a re-direct if the movements, or should the movements lose touch with what the fuck is really going on. It'd just have to come down to how do you do it in such a way, and at such a time that everyone reaches the same conclusion and all things are good.
I don't know about that, but maybe we can start on the Fourth of July. Maybe burn if effigy the Deceleration of Independence while chanting, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men (or persons (if you want to go that far)) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".