Now that Gay Pride is a full month, Paul Varnell says, we should find a way to use it that goes beyond just being one of the installments of the “Let’s Celebrate [Designated Aggrieved Group]” routine:

If you are not impressed by any of these ideas, create your own. The point is to use Gay Pride Month to create circumstances where gays and lesbians get to know a few more people, learn a little more, develop a greater appreciation of the community they are a part of and experience something in common beyond the mere datum of being gay.

Pride is best expressed by viewing our sexuality as a potential good and talent to be cultivated. I understand the impulse toward “liberation,” but when coarsely indulged in, it sends mixed signals: “We’re ordinary folks just like you” + “We’re freaks who run loose on the streets in magenta leather thongs” is not a message that’s easily parsed, though it should be easy to figure out which part of it is likely to stick in the Middle-American memory.

Since I’m not a big organization-joiner, my own modest suggestions are of the pokier, everyday variety:

Gay people have to stop making excuses for each other all the time. Yes, we suffer. Yes, there’s a lot of crap to take. Yes, it’s wrong. But there’s no more “pride” involved in listening sympathetically while our friends explain for the 100th time why they can’t [break it off with that married man / stop drinking to the point that it affects their job / resist the impulse to flee whenever a relationship threatens to get riskily intimate / stand up to their parents] than there is in behaving that way ourselves. I don’t recommend being sententious, but a little more shunning of chronic liars and cheaters would not do most of us any harm. Nor would making it clear to nebbishy friends that they cannot count on an inexhaustible series of bailouts when they get themselves in trouble.

That includes those who complain about society’s attitude toward gays but have a litany of reasons they can’t come out to their families. The only real way to address anti-gay ignorance is to refute it, visibly, in the way we live. If you’re so blasted filial, by all means go the whole way: get married and start giving Mom and Dad grandchildren. Or stay gay and honorably closeted, and quit–as in, COLD TURKEY–generalized bitching about homophobia.

Straight people who support us have a role in this, too. The valuable kind of pride comes from solving problems, overcoming obstacles, and accomplishing things–that’s no less true for us than for you. Considering it natural, even entertaining, for us to live brittle, neurotic, messy lives (while you do everything you can to stabilize your own) does no one any favors.

All of this is stuff that should be happening anyway, of course; but as long as someone has waved a wand over June and declared it All Hail the Queers month, there’s no reason not to make the best of it.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2005 at 11:23 and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.