June is Pride month, a month to celebrate the LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community. That means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

For some, it’s one big occasion to drink as heavily as possible, à la St. Patrick’s day. A tech at my doctor’s office was just telling me about how much fun she had a couple weekends ago at Kansas City pride. She and her friends partied the night away at gay bars, drinking and dancing and staying out late. This is certainly a quintessential part of the gay experience. The gays know how to party, and Pride is just as much about having fun as it is about anything else. Whether or not it’s until the wee hours of the night, the feeling of freedom and joy is part of the purpose.

There are some who think of Pride as a celebration of the societal progress that the LGBT+ movement has made over the past few decades, and a cheer in solidarity as we move forward even further to a place of respect and equality. The earliest Pride parades happened at a time when being LGBT was absolutely taboo–something that would get you arrested, committed, fired, evicted. In most states, these are still legal possibilities, but they’re much rarer now. We’re safer now than we ever have been before, even if we’re not as safe as we could be. Pride is the time of year where we can think back to those changes and look forward into a future knowing that things will continue to evolve for us. Pride has always been, and will always be, a political activity, a kind of protest or rally, to seek meaningful change.

For others, Pride is a flamboyant and immoral display of the inevitable decline of American society. Sure, fundamentalist christians and the far right come to mind here, but homophobia still exists in many manifestations in our society. I’ve talked to adult gay men, out ones, even, who disparage Pride because they feel that playing up the “gay stuff” is hypersexualizing. Perverse. They feel like LGBT+ identities should be completely private, something hidden away in back rooms while LGBT+ people conform to the gender and sexual norms that make up the mainstream. To these people, I say that one of the ways to make societal progress, real societal progress that betters everyone’s lives, is to find a combination of open-mindedness and visibility. Curiousity, not judgement, will help you understand. The trajectory matters, the history matters, the change matters.

Of course, some people are just bigots. Those people have ugly hair and bad nail beds.

There are others who watch Pride out of the corner of their eyes, who feel alienated or unwelcome or afraid. These are some of the most important people, I think. They are an enormous part of why Pride exists in the first place; we celebrate who we are so that others can find the strength to do the same. Having role models who show you that it’s okay to express yourself is irreplaceable. I’m reminded of a Tweet from the amazing John Paul Brammer:

remember what it felt like when you saw a queer person owning it, and it gave you permission to be yourself? You’re that person to someone.

— JuanPa (@jpbrammer) June 4, 2017

Pride can always be more inclusive, and one of the central ideas is that everyone there should feel welcome and safe. That said, coming out is a journey for everyone. If you’re closeted and hiding a secret, I want to stand by you and create a welcoming enviromment until you’re ready. Then, when it’s time for you to be yourself, we can all celebrate together. That’s what Pride’s about.

Pride takes place in various cities in the US over the month of June, which is (shockingly) Pride Month. For a bit of queer history: June is Pride Month because the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots is in June. The Stonewall Riots happened in 1969, when the Stonewall Inn (a tiny gay bar that was run by the mob), hosted a police raid. The mob was a main patron of gay bars at this time, because it was steady underground income that was relatively low-risk.

The mob also had a crucial relationship with the police, one in which they could arrange for periodic raids in gay bars. This made the police look like they were cracking down on homosexual depravity, and the mob could coordinate to reopen the bars and resume business because they knew when the raids were coming. Everybody won. Raid, reopen, raid, reopen. The Stonewall Inn even had secrect compartments to hide liquor so that they could immediately reopen once the police left. It was mutually beneficial for the mob and the police, but not for LGBT+ people.

In 1969, there had been a lot of very well-publicized action against segregation; there was a general atmosphere of civil unrest against institutional injustice. The people at Stonewall that night were approximately one-third black, one-third latino, and one-third white, so it wasn’t an accident that racial unrest was a point of some inspiration. The police raided, lining up drag queens and trans women and other people who were not dressed “appropriately” for the time, and someone threw a brick. That started a riot that went down in history, and got the attention of America. That attention started a movement that gained momentum all the way to today.

It’s amazing how the movement survived through the intervening decades. People were abused, fired, evicted, killed, put in conversion therapy, and cast out of their homes. When the AIDS crisis came, the US government did next to nothing to stop the virus, leaving thousands to die – in the end, more than the number of soldiers who died in Vietnam. And still, we endured.

Thousands of LGBT people gave up more than you can even imagine for my boyfriend and me to hold hands in public.

So yeah, I’m fucking stoked that it’s Pride season, and pretty bummed that it’s ending so soon.

Happy June, everyone. Be proud of yourself.

 

*For the record, there are dozens of extended versions of the LGBT acronym, one of the more forgiving being LGBTQIA, which includes “Queer,” “Intersex,” and “Asexual,” but I tend to stick with the more historical LGBT, sometimes adding a + to show that there are more people who fit under the umbrella and should feel welcome. For you AP students, you can also say “GSM,” which stands for “Gender and Sexual Minorities,” but the vast majority of people don’t recognize this as readily as LGBT+.

**Also for the record, this post is tagged “Queers FHTB,” and is the first on this blog to explore LGBT topics in society. Queer was reclaimed from its pejorative roots in the 1980s, and is now used as an umbrella term for many LGBT+ identities. Don’t worry. I’m not being offensive.