Pride, Protest, and Peace

Happy Pride!

Today I was reflecting on what pride means to me. I spent an amazing evening with my girlfriend and at the end of the night we played Cranium together, with my family. At the end of the night my mother said goodbye to her since she won’t see her before she leaves for college. The ways my mother became emotional, her heartfelt words to her and her sadness at her leaving for college made me think, how lucky I am to have a family that loves her. They love her as part of the family, they think of her as a part of us. How lucky I am.

My pride is cultivated by the moments I spend with my girlfriend and being a normal couple, young and in love, awkward and sentimental. My pride is cultivated by the moments I spend with my friends, making jokes, making fun, sharing stories. My pride is cultivated by the moments I spend with my family, making jokes, teaching them, feeling normal.

I know it is normal. Being gay. Being queer. It is just a part of being human. We are all different and this is just something that makes certain people unique. There is no problem. And I know that deep in my soul. I am so privileged to never have been around people who make me feel like an other, like I would have to hide who I was in order to live a “normal” life. Their support gives me peace, and it is with that peace that I can feel my pride.

Pride is a euphoric feeling. I say that I am lucky, so very lucky, because I know that so many factors have contributed to the queer and accepting places I have been around my entire life. I live in an area that is considered very progressive and liberal, the schools I went to reflected many of those values, I live in what is considered a “blue” state.

I am privileged to be able to express my pride and my life as openly as I can. So many cannot. And so many could not. And it’s wasn’t as long ago as you think.

Obergefell vs. Hodges. I watched an episode of a Netflix docuseries about it recently. There was something unnerving about seeing the date on many of the anecdotes be after 2010. The supreme court legalized gay marriage in 2015 for all 50 states. My sister is 13 and is older than the right to marry who you love.

Stonewall. The riots that sparked the queer rights movement. A protest that would change the face of the LGBTQ+ movement in the United States forever. Our history is full of revolutionary acts, we were banned by law, and anytime the law bans basic rights, the people will revolt. There is no pride without politics. Us being alive, being a movement, is political. The fight has been catapulting forward since 1969. My aunt is 60, she is older than the Stonewall Riots.

HIV/AIDS. A major epidemic that left a devastating impact on a whole generation of gay and bisexual men and the trans community. We wonder why it is such a spectacle seeing older gay people, because so many of them lost their lives to a disease that was left to ravage their bodies because of prejudice and fear. Our bodies were politicized our health was politicized. There is no pride without mourning, without remembering. Now HIV/AIDS has become a condition that can be managed, but the impact still shows in men who lost their partners and communities that were fractured by the disease. That was 1981 to the early 1990s. My cousin was born 1980. She’s only 44. She is older than the period of time where AIDS took the lives of so many from our community.

All these landmark events seem so close now, we have made so much progress yet so many still live in fear. When will we stop politicizing peoples bodies, peoples lives? How naïve I must be, thinking that we could simply just leave people alone, leave children alone. Trans children fight for their lives in the United States. Acknowledgement is harm reduction, acceptance is life saving.

Progress was recent, real acceptance is yet to come, but the queer community has always existed. When will everyone be able to pride peacefully? When will peace come to us? All of us, not just some.

I yearn for the day that trans children won’t feel as though their existence is a crime, as though their life is not theirs to decide. I yearn for the day that queer communities of color won’t feel the ache of loss, so frequently, so disproportionately. I yearn for the day that the peace, the serenity of pride that we all deserve can be felt.

Pride is sacred. Pride is protest. We are fighting to be seen, to be heard, to live. To live for the peace, the peace in our pride.