I used to hate Pride, probably for all the same reasons any conservative scoffs at it — it’s a loud, obnoxious, over-hyped, corporatized, sexualized, awkward “holiday” — but to me it was also personal.
Growing up conservative and proud to be American, I rolled my eyes at the parades and flags. And then, when it occurred to me as I got a bit older that I was gay myself — total dread, total horror — “I have to be associated with that?!” Couldn’t bear it. That display and cultural connotation kept me in the closet for almost ten extra years, being just terrified of people thinking that is who I am. I was offended by “Pride,” it was way too much attention focused on the one thing I saw as an impossible hurdle to the person I longed to be: normal.
But the real reason “Pride” exists is worth honoring, it’s just been destroyed by the “LGBTQQIAAP2S+” political machine, which cheapens the struggle gays faced for civil rights and robs them of achievements worth celebrating.
In the last roughly fifteen years — around the gay marriage Supreme Court ruling and the broad social acceptance of gay people and relationships that set in around the same time — “LGBTQ+” interest groups began to seek new frontiers of activism and fundraising.
In that period, the political movement departed from its original mission of equal civil rights for American citizens who have an immutable trait in being homosexual, and in doing so embarked on a neo-oppression of gays by generating fake grievances and controversy on their behalf. Now, I would even go so far as to say that gay people are losing the ability to enjoy the rights so hard fought by those before them, because the political apparatus now won’t let them, insisting instead on keeping their sexuality as a central focus and a controversial issue.
One of the things I so admired about my wife when I met her was how her values are so aligned with mine. She was also raised traditional, patriotic, she was raised with God, and kept her worldview despite the demanding intellectual exercise of reconciling it with her preferences. She isn’t political, doesn’t have a Twitter account, isn’t concerned with most of my day-to-day antics, and doesn’t bother or engage at all with “culture wars” — she is even more normal.
But the first summer we were together, she wished me “happy pride” on June 1.
My initial reaction was that I thought she was joking.
“What? You’re gay.”
Yes, but also, no. I don’t have any flag other than the American flag; and my proclivity isn’t something I earned, it’s not a point of pride, it wasn’t a wish, it just is what it is, why would I want a parade about that?
I can recall this back-and-forth with as perfect accuracy as memory allows, because it has happened over the course of multiple conversations, over multiple years. It even continues as I discuss the concept for this column with her; “you still have so much shame,” “not really, it’s called humility, it’s decency.”
But she has moved me on the central point of “Pride” — as much as we still debate the details of what a “celebration” of it ought to look like — which is, my ability to just be with her, and otherwise make a point to ignore the topic of my homosexuality, is the result of struggle and sacrifice by those before me, and is a reflection of America’s rapid strides and exceptional achievement on this issue.
In the 1950s, gays and lesbians were being busted at bars and rounded up for arrest, fired from their jobs, kicked out of their rental homes, not able to have relationships, even in private — “sexual deviants” were considered criminals who suffered from a “sociopathic personality disturbance.”
The 50s saw the U.S. federal government secretly investigating employees’ sexual orientations, leading to a Senate report being published called “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government,” which sought to purge the government of “perverts” in its ranks.
“Those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons,” the report said, justifying the expulsion.
In the 60s, civil rights protests gained traction in cities from San Francisco to New York to protest common police raids on bars. Most famous of the protests at that time is the Stonewall Riots in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 1969, where a clash broke out during a 1:00 a.m. raid, leading to a three-day riot of thousands of protesters.
“There were no instructions except: put them out of business. The first police officer that came in with our group said, ‘The place is under arrest. When you exit, have some identification and it’ll be over in a short time.’ This time they said, ‘We’re not going.’ That’s it. ‘We’re not going’,” Seymour Pine, the deputy police inspector who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn, reported after the incident.
The 70s saw the first string of gays elected to public office. Notable among those first few elections was Harvey Milk in 1977, elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he sponsored a bill protecting gays from discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment. The bill passed 11-1.
Before he was assassinated in 1978, Milk said on a tape recording, anticipating getting killed for his activism, “All I ask is for the movement to continue, and if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
Through the 80s, the AIDS crisis ravaged the gay community, killing roughly 100,000 people, 59% of whom were gay men, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
“It was like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode where everyone in town just starts disappearing,” Mark S. King, a Los Angeles man affected by the epidemic, and positive himself, told NBC News. “It was the bank teller at your bank who wasn’t there one day. It was your favorite bartender. It was the guy who did your hair. They just stopped being there.”
The CDC noticed the disease in the early part of the decade. However, it took several years for the government to address it, which was widely attributed to the fact that it was a “gay disease.”
But as the epidemic came into focus in the American consciousness, by extension, gays in America all of a sudden became visible — not only visible, but visibly vulnerable. All of a sudden, sons, brothers, uncles, friends, all became identifiable because they were sick, often terminal. And that inspired a moment of empathy and embrace among the American public for gays not previously seen.
“[Despite] an early, culpable fumble, you can see now that … AIDS compelled a form of social integration that might never have taken place without its onslaught. Forced to choose between complete abandonment of the homosexual subculture and an awkward first encounter, America, for the most part, chose the latter. A small step, perhaps, but an enormous catalyst in the continuing renegotiation of the gay-straight social contract,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in his 1999 book, Love Undetectable.
“The humanity slowly trumped the difference. Death, it turned out, was a powerfully universalizing experience. Suddenly, acquiescence in gay baiting and gay bashing became, even in its strongholds, something inappropriate at a moment of tragedy. The victimization of gay men by a disease ironically undercut their victimization by a culture.”
By the 90s and early aughts, there were a series of rapid succession changes in the laws — and popular attitudes — surrounding homosexuality and equal civil rights for American citizens.
“[Politics of homosexuality’s] goal … is simply to ensure that the liberal state live up to its promises for all its citizens. It would seek full public equality for those who, through no fault of their own, happen to be homosexual,” Sullivan writes in another of his books, Virtually Normal, published in 1995.
In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, and ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional in 2003.
In 2015 — just only twelve years after homosexuality was decriminalized — the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, declaring same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
The gay rights movement of the twentieth century was so effective, and so commendable, because it appealed to American ideals. It merely asked American society to just please treat gays like everyone else — which the American public agreed to in remarkable time.
That is all “Pride” was ever about — from the first parade a year after Stonewall — and all it should ever be about: the struggle, the sacrifice, and the fight of patriotic Americans for the promise of freedom.
Now, the “LGBTQQIAAP2S+” (I put in scare quotes, because I do not see or understand why all these letters are smashed together to form a “community” of people with nothing really in common) political apparatus is doing everything to undermine that message, and creating a maximum cringe situation for regular gay Americans, pretending we’re about being in everyone’s face when that is not at all what the original activism ever sought.
Now, corporations are pandering by making “Pride collections” — sometimes for children! — and enlisting cartoon characters like Dylan Mulvaney as brand ambassadors.
Now, the government is waving gay flags at the White House in place of the American flag, and having branches of the military and intelligence agencies (even Lockheed Martin!) producing pro-gay content.
Now, schools are putting on events discussing homosexuality and “gender” for students, sometimes in grade three, grade two, Pre-K! Children’s shows, too, are raising the rainbow flag — including shows like Peppa Pig and Sesame Street, beloved by toddlers.
Then you have the annoying, dumb drama being ginned up more directly by “rights” groups for no apparent reason other than fundraising and pestering the general public, like the Human Rights Campaign declaring a “state of emergency” for LGBTQ people in the United States — that would be the most free, and tolerant, and safe nation for gays on earth, of course.
And all any of this nonsense now does is patronize gays and create an unnecessarily difficult situation.
In some cases, like mine for a time, it is actually preventing people from coming out who do not want to be drafted for esoteric political battles that have nothing to do with equality, or anything about daily life for that matter, or don’t want to call attention to their sexuality as a defining characteristic.
In other cases, it is isolating gays again in the backlash, as the general public is seeing gay politics as a never ending conquest for more and more privileges, or an affront on children and the nuclear family.
But all that still shouldn’t mean “Pride” should be surrendered.
I’ll never hang up a rainbow flag, I’ll never wear tie-dye, or stripes, or set foot within 100 yards of any parades. I also definitely think a month is a lot. But I have grown to appreciate “Pride.” If not just as a time to honor those who were rejected, evicted, arrested, beat up, assassinated, all for my ability to live authentically, be out, legally married to a woman, simultaneously have every opportunity America has to offer, and to be… as good as normal.
Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.