On Pride: Honoring the past and striving for a better future

Pride is a funny thing. I’m proud enough of myself, yes, for at least making it to 35 years old without completely unraveling, not even once. I’m proud of who I’ve become at this point in my life, a much better feminist and fully queer person than I was at 22. I’m proud of my handsome, charming, and wonderful boyfriend and the love that we share, the home that we’ve made. I’m proud of the city that I live in and their fully-affirming perspective on naming and supporting queer people of color and non-binary folks, for introducing a now-national phenomenon of black and brown stripes added to the Pride flag.

And I’m deeply proud of some of my LGBTQ historical heroes: Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, Kay Lahusen, Clark Polak, Edmund White, James Baldwin, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Keith Haring, Harvey Milk, hell in 2015 I tracked down a living legend who marched on Independence Hall years before Stonewall – Marj McCann lives in Kennett Square with her partner.

But there’s a lot that I’m not proud of. I’m particularly ashamed at white gay men who push people of color, non-binary, and trans people out of the so-called “community” they often say they cherish. I’m disappointed in brand new baby gays that sometimes seem wholly uninterested in learning about their ancestors and history. I lament the corporatization of Pride, a move that reflects late capitalism’s realization that gay people spend money well. And I fear that gay marriage has slowed the march toward complete equality, namely for our trans brothers and sisters and for non-white members of our community, who suffer the harshest effects of an economy that increasingly polarizes the rich and the very poor.

So for Philadelphia Pride this year, I didn’t go the parade or block parties or even gay bars (technically), and not out of protest or spite. Just because it’s not for me this time around. And I cannot take anything away from LGBTQIA folks who get what they want out of Pride – maybe just some straight-up euphoria, maybe a date, maybe a new friend, maybe a weekend to feel affirmed and not attacked. To be in a perceived safe space, surrounded by like-minded people who understand that sometimes it’s a struggle. Sometimes it’s more than a struggle.

Instead: I saw HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH on Friday followed by a little dancing at Ulana's to support my similarly-minded queer friend DJ Sharyn Stone; on Saturday I went for a sip of beer and to show love to my girlfriends Laura and Tiff, who run a way-cool real estate business called Love Your Block (they’re also married to each other), and had a real blast at the Big Gay Boat Party on the Moshulu. There’s something about being on a boat, being surrounded by water even if it’s a shallow and murky stretch of the Delaware River, that feels celebratory and carefree. I let those joys in and they were great.

But my big day was Sunday and I thought of it as an act of communion with the things I would like Pride to be about – never forgetting our past, focusing energies, and projecting towards the future. I did this by reading and seeing movies. I finished the third book of the three-book graphic novel series MARCH, co-written by the legendary John Lewis and Andrew Aydin with Nate Powell’s art. It’s an incredible and captivating telling of the highlights of the Civil Rights movement from the Georgia lawmaker’s perspective as a leader in SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. What a powerful reminder to bring into our Pride moments, that a generation of our brothers and sisters marched for the rights of African Americans in the face of abject violence and unbridaled racism, enduring countless beatings and arrests while myriad others were murdered by white men who strolled out of courtrooms free. Lynchings, explosions, cross burnings, rape. This was happening just as the gay rights movement was bubbling up, less than 55 years ago.

I also read another Alexander Chee essay from his collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. There are vivid and powerful ruminations on the AIDS crisis in this work, and his involvement in ACT UP in San Francisco in 1989, when riots erupted and gays got arrested (after a good beating) to bring attention to the fact that thousands of queer people were dying and no one seemed to care. Certainly not Ronald Reagan. Chee’s voice is very welcome in my hopes for a “community” in the future – a self-proclaimed Amerasian with a firm grip on gender dynamics and queerness in all of its complexities.

Then I saw films. I saw Ocean’s 8 because I want to give my dollars to even the Hollywood industrial complex, specifically when it gives a platform to eight actresses, several of them non-white. It’s not a very serious movie but it is fantastic, a movie with heaps of charisma. Next I saw The Gospel According to Andre, a surprisingly-complex biographical sketch of Andre Leon Talley, the legendary Interview/Women's Wear Daily/Vogue magazine giant (literally and figuratively). Oh, what a story, and one that’s uniquely American and uniquely queer! His grandmother raised him and she was a sharecropper’s daughter. Talley was just extremely bright and earned himself a scholarship to Brown, where he continued to thrive studying French Literature (and by extension, French language and culture). He became the toast of New York City in the ‘70s and the It Girl of Paris in the ‘80s. And there are two moments in TGATA that broke me down: a painful moment where Talley recounts word getting around that, at one magazine, he was referred to as "Queen Kong"; and another in which we watch his face as Donald Trump is sworn into office and his visage is ripe with utter astonishment, disappointment, and a keen sense of ‘This racist sh*t just won’t stop and I’m exhausted.’

Talley’s story is uniquely powerful in another two ways, too: he misses out on love, essentially, never partnering up and admitting to have never fallen in love – he is clearly sad about it but it doesn’t eat him up because his career was a tour de force of fierceness – but it’s a testament to the power and rarity of big loves; and, honestly, Talley never really speaks any same-sex desires other than calling gorgeous men gorgeous. And it’s okay for LGBTQIA people to never marry, to never have kids, to never have a family.

Finally, I saw RBG, the heartwarming documentary about Ruth Bader-Ginsburg’s unimpeachable legacy of fighting for the equal protection of women and women’s interests under the law. This is a woman who was arguing cases to the Supreme Court in the 1970s when it was legal to rape your wife in 12 states, it was legal to terminate a woman if she was pregnant, and legal to discriminate against women in hiring. This was also less than 50 years ago. Now combine RBG and MARCH – our country and its laws have terrorized women of color the most and this history isn’t even beyond a current generation of LGBT people. It seems obvious that race and gender should be at the forefront of Pride but, sadly, they don’t feel that way on a large scale. But maybe we’ll get there soon enough. I can only hope and try to do my own little part.