Why Pride Matters

Pride month has come to mean a wide spectrum of things for people, both personal and political. Although political battles are still being fought over LGBTQIA2S+ rights across the country, Pride also serves as a celebration and marker of the progress we’ve made. In my lifetime as a gay man, I’ve seen firsthand the ways that these changes have come about and how far we still must go.

I don’t want to give you an exhaustive history of this movement, but if you’re interested there are plenty of stellar books that cover the wide spectrum of queer history. Instead, I’d like to zoom in on a few seismic moments from our recent American history and share some personal reflections from those times. This isn’t meant to speak for all members of the queer community but to show that, while these debates play out on the public stage, personal struggles unfold along a shared path.

We’re in the middle of Pride month, a time filled with events highlighting and celebrating different parts of the LGBTQIA2S+ community. While it’s impossible to funnel all these lived experiences into a single description, I believe that one of the unified experiences in the queer community is shame. Shame over loving who you love, shame over looking how you look, shame over being yourself. I feel that Pride, both the sensation and the month, is a doubling down against shame that’s been put upon us.

If you’re not a member of the queer community yourself, it might be difficult to relate to this kind of pressure. It can be hard to picture a family that doesn’t take pride in you because of who you are. It’s one of the reasons that the coming out process is so different for everyone; the level of tension over how you’ll be received can vary drastically from situation to situation. Still, Pride serves as a vocal reminder that those differences are meant to be celebrated.

I think back fondly on my first Pride march, but the most transformative moment of Pride for me was performing with the Gay Men’s Chorus for a Pride event in the 90s. Singing with 100 gay men, my family in the audience, I was filled with an unbelievable feeling of pride. I couldn’t believe such a day would come, and even now I’m in awe of how the fight continues on.

The Stonewall Rebellion and Pride

The history of queer rights goes back well before Stonewall, but it’s hard to argue how impactful the night of June 27, 1969 was on contemporary LGBTQIA2S+ rights. That night at The Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village, police performed a raid to try and round up homosexual patrons for arrest. The patrons and neighbors of the bar resisted, and a days-long battle ensued later known as The Stonewall Rebellion. The bravery of the transgender women, drag artists, gay men, and lesbians during that time ignited activists to demand changes to discriminatory legislation and an expansion of rights, which is why we commemorate the event by celebrating Pride during the month of June.

As the Stonewall Rebellion was unfolding in Manhattan, I was only a few miles away in Staten Island. At eight years old, I wasn’t thinking about my sexuality identity or gender expression. I was, however, holding tea parties in my parents’ basement for the neighborhood girls. My mom would often ask me, “Where are the boys?” I would come up with an excuse, but the reason was that I didn’t invite any. I wanted to hang out with the girls more. It wasn’t until a few years later, watching The Chapman Report and relating to Glynis Johns pursuing the hunky football player, that I knew something about me was different. I felt in my gut that it was unacceptable because it was counter to what I saw around me, and it would be a few years still before I would end up asking the question, “Am I gay?”

The 1970s brought a further expansion of rights, thanks to the awareness raised by activist groups like S.T.A.R. and Lavender Menace. The sudden outburst of attention and debate spurred by this continued pressure had a ripple effect throughout the greater queer community, and I felt it reverberate through my coming out as gay. It started with my sister, whom I trusted because of her gay friends that I met. The relief I felt when she took it well gave me the confidence to come out to some close high school friends (mainly those whose parents didn’t know mine). When I told my best friend from childhood, someone who attended my tea parties growing up, told me that she couldn’t accept who I was. We didn’t speak for 35 years. It was an absolute gut punch that hit the tender spot of shame I felt deep down, and a fear that many queer people share of losing people we thought were close to us over our identity.

The AIDS Crisis

In the beginning of the 1980s, it felt like huge domestic advancements were happening. The burgeoning gay civil rights movement (granted, that mainly focused on gay and lesbian rights) saw organizations like the Human Rights Coalition form. But suddenly, people started to get sick. It happened in NYC, then San Francisco, and soon the dominant narrative of the 80s would become the AIDS Crisis. The epidemic largely hit the gay community, starting with white gay men in urban centers before permeating other communities, and created the need for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis that was founded in 1982 by Larry Kramer. Since the beginning of the epidemic, 79.3 million people have been infected with HIV and 26.3 million people have died.

While the 70s for queer people was about joy and openness, the 80s was about a plague. People even used to derisively refer to HIV as the Gay Plague and evangelicals considered it a punishment from God. A stigma was immediately attached to the queer community that are still seen to this day. The feeling was magnified under President Ronald Reagan, who didn’t even publicly mention AIDS until 1985, a full four years into the crisis.

In my own life, 1985 marked the year that I came out to my parents. The tragedy had touched my own life, with over thirty of my friends passing away in three years. As I was entering the workforce against this backdrop of hate, I realized I could no longer live a lie. First, I came out as bisexual to my mom and dad because I feared using the word “gay” around them. It felt like a softer landing to say I was bisexual, one that could be smoothed over in either direction depending how they reacted. It didn’t work, and it felt like my mother cried for two years in-between questions like, “What did I do to make you gay?”, which would later evolve into everything from curiosity over “is so-and-so gay” to fear that my “life would be harder” because I was gay.

LGBTQIA2S+ Rights in the 1990’s / 2000’s

Advancements in science and medicine around HIV/AIDS meant that it was no longer the death sentence it was in the 80s. While the perspective shifted from “Dying of AIDS” to “Living With AIDS,” the original stigma remained. President Bill Clinton’s infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a sterling example of the continued danger living publicly as a queer person. It carries the lineage of shame around being queer, because implicit in both sides of asking and telling is an unspoken heteronormative judgement.

While this othering was still very prevalent, progress was being made. Celebrity figures like Ellen DeGeneres were coming out and beloved gay characters were starting to appear on major television, like Jack on Will & Grace. That character in particular is a broad and sometimes offensive caricature, but it remains a notable step (despite actor Sean Hayes not having come out at the time). I was dealing with a similar difficulty in my professional life, where I struggled to find safe space to fully be myself. For every time I found allyship in a supervisor sharing about her long-term lesbian partner, I can remember a situation like the Office Manager calling to inform me that “it’s not professional” for me to wear an earring into a meeting with a client. I was unable to disclose my sexual identity, I couldn’t discuss my association with the Gay Men’s Chorus, and it wasn’t until I worked for a larger PR firm in NYC that I could speak about the long-term committed relationship I was in—largely because the CEO was an out gay man.

The 2000s brought a turning point for a fight against sodomy laws that had started back in the 50s and 60s with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of recognition of same-sex marriage. The case, Lawrence v. Texas, invalidated sodomy laws in fourteen states and would lead to further cases that validated and protected the rights of same-sex couples. I married my partner Barry 2011, surrounded by fifty of our closest friends and my 80-year-old parents. The same mother who cried for two years learning I wasn’t straight instead cried tears of joy witnessing the celebration of her son and his beloved.

It's my mother’s change that speaks the most to why Pride matters for me. I’m reminded that shame wasn’t at the root of my mom’s reaction, but love for me. Her fear that my life would be tougher wasn’t unfounded, as even today LGBTQIA2S+ rights are under attack again, but she came to accept that I didn’t have a choice. That denying who I was would be imprisoning myself, and the risk of being ostracized and excluded was worth it to live authentically. Pride month is about honoring the progress made by our forebears so that we can live fully in the present and build a better future for the next generations.

Inclusive work environments take effort, which is why I’m happy to come to your organization and speak about Pride and beyond. Reach out now to learn more, and join me next week when I discuss the current struggles for transgender and gender non-conforming rights and how my own evolution shaped my hopes for the future. Alan would be happy to come speak to your organization about Pride and creating a more inclusive work culture.

Why Pride Matters - Part 1