"Gay Pride" was created as a response to the fact that being gay was a stigmatized identity. But nearly 40 years after Stonewall is it OK to abandon the notion of gay pride? Is it all right if I just feel OK about being gay and not make a big fuss-an over-compensatory fuss, frankly-about how proud I am?
If you are young and/or newly out of the closet, you might take pride in your psychological achievement of confronting the remaining stigma and your courage in coming out. And for a few years you might need the encouragement that the notion of "gay pride" can provide. But after five or 10 years, I hope you'd find something else or something more to be proud of.
To be sure, for a long time there will be areas of hostility to gays, primarily religious or ethnic. So where those have considerable influence, "gay pride" is still a valuable (if over-simplified) message to send to young and closeted gays within those communities.
For the rest of us, it is possible to take a kind of derivative pride in the achievements of gays and lesbians in the past-and they are considerable-but it is best to feel pride in something you personally achieved in your life. If that achievement is somehow related to being gay, so much the better.
For instance, you might take pride in being a volunteer for some gay community or AIDS service organization. Or, and I am anticipating a future column here, you could be part of a gay group that provides services to the broader community; not everything has to be directed inward. I am thinking of the "Toys for Tots" projects that leather clubs used to undertake. But, no doubt, there is still plenty of work to do in our community.
The annual Pride Parade is useful, despite its occasional silliness, as the largest and most visible representation of our community to closeted gays and to the general public. It shows our range of religious and social service organizations, the range and vibrancy of gay businesses, and the level of support that large corporations increasingly provide for us. All this helps legitimize us and demonstrates that the gay community is a bustling, thriving community.
It also serves as a kind of psychological boost (however brief) for not-very-active gays. It is not unknown for some parade observer on the spur of the moment to step off the sidelines and join a marching contingent.
For those wary of the television cameras, I will share a personal anecdote. I used to live in a small university town. One year, maybe 30 years ago, during the week after the pride parade, a student I hardly knew came up to me and asked diffidently, "Were you in Chicago last weekend?" "Yes, I was." "Were you in some sort of parade?" "Yes, I was in the Gay Pride Parade." "Cool," he said. "I saw you on television." So the cachet of being on television outweighs any other response.
A few suggestions. The service organizations that depend on volunteers should strongly encourage their volunteers to march in the parade. For instance, the local community center claims "hundreds" of volunteers. If so, show us. And show the general public our level of community spirit. That might encourage others to volunteer as well.
A generation ago, it was difficult to get any politicians except the most liberal from the safest districts to participate in the parade. Not any longer. The number has now grown quite large as every office holder and political aspirant wants the publicity of being in the parade. So now, in order to qualify for admission to the parade, politicians should have to sign a statement saying they support domestic partner benefits in their office and civil unions or gay marriage. If they don't, what are they doing in OUR parade?
The large corporations that enter floats should have to disclose whether they have a non-discrimination clause, whether they offer domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian employees, whether they have and support a gay employees organization. And they should be encouraged to indicate any corporate support they have given to gay organizations. That information could be noted in the program booklet for the parade.
And finally, I wish there would be groups advocating sexual freedom in opposition to the puritanism of conservative religious sects and the present administration, a group advocating gun ownership and martial arts training for gays as means of self-defense, a gay teachers and professors group, and an artists group advocating community support for the arts. Maybe next year.
10 Comments for “Gay Pride—Again? (Sigh)”
posted by Richard on
Question) How many people who claim about this or that thing about a particular pride parade or festival have offered to help out planning the events or provide some needed services?
posted by Ashpenaz on
I recently started going to a new church. In my first meeting with the pastor, I explained that I was working to integrate my Christianity with my sexuality. He said that there were several committed gay couples in the congregation. He explained that there were a wide variety of opinions, some supportive, some not. He explained some of his own understanding of the problem–he doesn’t think Scripture describes sexual orientation the way we think of it today. He thinks relationships are about committment. He suggested that I meet people by helping out with the Sunday School.
OK–here’s my Pride. This is a mainline church in the middle of Nebraska. I really don’t need to dress up in a Gwen Stefani wig and swing a dildo–I can just do what I do, be who I am, and live where I live and I’ll find support and acceptance. I hope the parades and rallies are dying out and gays no longer feel the need for “special things for special people.”
posted by avee on
In Richard-think(sic), you can’t criticize something that you’re not involved in planning. No matter that the image of all gay people is impacted by pride events!
Richard, since you’re not involved in creating a blog, how DARE YOU criticize someone’s blog!
posted by D/\'UMP on
Actually Avee, by posting his comment in this forum Richard IS helping in creating a blog. But, please, don’t let that fact stop you from being an intolerable douche.
posted by kidontheball on
I agree that gay pride is increasingly obsolete, both as a notion and as an event. But tons of people are coming out every day, which means a constant infusion of totally freaked out and emotionally vulnerable people into the general population. In my mind, pride exists for the newly out. I’m not proud to be gay, in other words, but I was proud I came out when I did.
Pride is also effective for its global effects. Lots of countries where gay people are stigmatized and violently oppressed are allowing pride parades on legal grounds. And these countries will ultimately be better for it. Maybe it’s time, though, for our relatively gay-friendly country to give it a rest?
posted by LeBain on
Richard, I volunteered to help plan, manage and raise funds for a Pride parade. When the other organizers found out I was a Republican, they quickly made my participation as painful as possible until I decided it was easier to let them have their way than continue to try to help. Sad all around.
posted by Pepe Johnson on
This is something I’ve thought about before. I just don’t feel I have to be “proud” of my sexual orientation. And don’t interpret that to mean I am ashamed to be gay, either. I usually tell people that being gay is like being right-handed or brown-eyed. It’s normal even if it’s different. It shouldn’t be a stigma, but it’s nothing to get overly excited about either. My gayness was built-in to my biology. I had nothing to do with it.
When it comes to being proud, I like to look at the things I have done – both by myself and with others, such as my family. Whether it’s completing my college educating, serving in the military or planting new hedges.
Some pride events have turned into commercial enterprises usually selling alcohol and that has turned me off more than anything. For LGBT folks who are recovering alcoholics, they avoid pride in order to avoid alcohol. And when some people are drunk and amongst other gay people, they think they can behave inappropriately.
I think pride needs to move away from being an event, and become more of the attitude it was originally meant to be. Gay people should take pride in themselves and – to borrow the old Army recruitment line – be all they can be.
posted by Edward Mills on
I’m sorry, but saying things such as “OUR parade” and generally just segregating yourself does nothing to help the gay community. Gay pride parades go one further as to present us all as a bunch of queens who do nothing useful in society – we just seem to turn up once a year and prance down the road for the sake of “pride”. The entire notion of gay pride is flawed in that it just solidifies the idea that gay people are different in some way, when, in fact, we are exactly the same as everyone else. Sexual orientation shouldn’t define who you are and so it makes me incredibly sad to see gay pride perpetuating the idea that it does.
posted by Richard on
I am sorry that some people have had a bad experience in helping to plan pride events. However, at least these people, like myself, have actually made an attempt to get involved.
Sooo often I hear people complain from the sidelines. They do not like what some gay interest group does or does not do…from the sidelines. They feel that the pride parade excluded this or that issue or group…from the sidelines.
posted by Sean S. on
I find most of the comments on here amazingly depressing, if for no other reason than getting so overtly critical about what is essentially a holiday like celebration of a specific community, not unlike numerous other ethnic festivals, holidays, and memorial events. Most of the above commentary has been full of delightfully snide remarks insinuating that by not going to pride, they’re essentially better, above, or too mature for such a ridiculous event.
For whatever reason, in recent years, its been the “Cool” thing to be a downer on all those “ridiculous” facets of gay culture, to piss on drag queens, whine about “promiscuity”, bemoan “Sex, drugs, and alcohol”, and generally attempt to parse oneself out from other folks for fear of being tarred with the same brush. The constant refrain that “I don’t want to be forced to be like that” doesn’t ring true; no one’s forcing anyone to be a frequent user of the baths. Someones “Waving a dildo” while sashaying down the street is only as embarrassing as someone lets it be.
Real maturity will be achieved when everyone learns to just let these sorts of things go, even the goofy, offensive, and ridiculous.