Pride Month is more than just a time to wave rainbow flags, show off cute outfits and watch a drag show while eating chicken-on-a-stick. At its heart, pride is an event to gather with people who care.
Listen to Stonewall riot veterans recount the infamous police clash
Veterans of the 1969 riot at The Stonewall Inn reflect on the infamous clash with police and why the fight for equality continues over trans rights.
A couple of years back, I wrote a guest column in the Detroit Free Press about what can feel like insincere corporate support for pride – how it can be a performative act to maximize profit, that at its worst erodes the authentic queer experience, and at its best gives us a surface level of seen-ness, a mainstream support that often feels as thin as a dollar bill.
Since then, things have only gotten more worrisome for queer folks in America and are downright terrifying for our transgender siblings.
Rights and respect for LGBTQ+ people had been moving forward for the past few decades, but now those rights are being peeled away. And the moment the political headwinds changed, support for LGBTQ+ Americans started to feel very flimsy.
Pride has always had a special place in my heart, but this year I’m feeling it so much more.
I’m worried and exhausted. Can you feel it, too?
Growing up, my parents and grandparents taught to me to believe in and to love America – a country, a place, a belief come to life – an idea that in execution is often severely flawed, but ultimately strives toward the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all, be they an immigrant, gay, queer, women, men, trans, fat, thin, old, Black, Asian, disabled or able-bodied.
But it seems our government, and as such, we the American people, are no longer striving – our country is feeling like a scarier, far less hopeful place.
You can feel it, too, can’t you?
The exhausting weariness of trying to get by in a country where the truth, science and so many people matter far less than they did a few years ago; where the future for anyone who isn’t a billionaire – and LBGTQ+ folks especially – grows darker and darker each day.
There are regular attacks on the middle and working classes through the increasing cost of living, cuts to Veterans Affairs, Medicaid and other health services and medical research. Attacks on trans and queer folks, and the executive orders policing the bodies of (mostly) women, transgender and nonbinary people seem to be the steps to a subjugation of queer people and, at some point in the not-so-distant future, of all women.
Queer teen suicide ideation (already twice the rate of their straight-identifying counterparts) is up, along with the feeling that people just don’t care about each other. And the odds of anything changing in the near term are down.
Being an employed, White, gay, cisgender male with stable housing gives me some privilege, a bit of a shield against what’s coming. But watching the erasure of trans folks, queer folks, women, people of color and more, I am very worried – concerned, confused and worn the hell out.
I fluctuate between thinking I, or someone I love, will be disappeared or sent to a gulag, and thinking I’m crazy for worrying about being sent to a gulag. (A gulag, an El Salvadoran prison … without due process under the law, we are all at risk.)
It’s more important than ever to celebrate pride
I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know this … from Patroclus and Achilles to me and that dizzyingly dashing bantamweight MMA fighter, queer love has been with us since before recorded time, and it cannot be erased. It’s not going anywhere. Alas, queer hate, using the smallest minority as a scapegoat to rally against, has been with us for nearly as long.
And that’s why we have pride. Pride Month is more than just a time to wave rainbow flags, show off cute outfits and watch a drag show while eating chicken-on-a-stick.
At its very heart, pride is an event to gather with people who care, with folks who are sharing the same oftentimes lonesome and frightening experience, a place for all who are marginalized to feel accepted, heard and to be surrounded, supported and seen by people just like you. Just like me.
Pride is a home, and you, queer reader, are pride.
I don’t know what we can do to save or reclaim our country, but maybe it’s the same as what we can do to save or reclaim our sense of self: Rally likeminded individuals to support, to vote, to come together, to shout, to celebrate ourselves, our authentic existence, our lives, our liberty, our pursuit of happiness, our very survival and … our pride.
Robert M. Nelson lives in Detroit. This column originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press.
