Ah, June! The joys of summer have arrived and—oh, yes!—it’s the annual month of Gay Pride. Sadly, most heterosexuals living in New York City will be brunching in the Hamptons rather than cheering our extraordinary cultural heritage along Fifth Avenue. After almost 40 years of marches, it’s time to try something new.
Here is our modest gay parents' proposal. Let’s end each school year with a giant "No Culture Left Behind" multi-culti extravaganza presided over by families of gay, straight, African, Indian, Hispanic, Asian and of course Eurotrash heritage. Let the Irish step-dance, the Italians serve pasta, and the African Americans sing the blues. Brand new this year: gay parents will lovingly portray the rich cultural heritage of the closet and those who march out of it.
The closet has been such a priceless incubator and proud legacy. Through the years in this wonderfully free democracy we call the United States, we gay people developed our secret language, best exemplified by our clever use of reverse pronouns to convince people we were really straight and shouldn’t be beaten within an inch of our lives. How about those charming little phrases we coined from our all-time favorite gay movie Wizard of Oz, like "Friends of Dorothy"? These loving expressions allowed us to name names in our secret code and not be fired from our jobs. And the most powerful of all gifts from the closet—gay people moved in droves to find safety in numbers in big cities like New York and San Francisco before the family found out and threw us out anyway.
But there is so much more to gay culture. On June 28, 1969, the most beautiful women in our community began a movement that may eventually border up the closet for good. Our very own New York City drag queens in their highest heels, frilliest dresses and Hollywood makeup barricaded the doors of the Stonewall Inn and fought back the police, who had made great sport of raiding bars and reeling us into jail. From then on, gay people had to choose where they should position themselves relative to the closet.
So, just as we remember the horrors of slavery and the joys of the Black experience, we believe this little fete should celebrate everyone in the proximity of the closet—the ones who are out, still sort of in, hiding behind the door, concealed among the dresses and suits, and of course the few crumpled into a corner with the dust balls and abandoned shoes, whimpering "What’ll I do now? What’ll I do now?"
But we should do it all so gay-ly. What does that mean? It means be jolly, play with stereotypes, laugh at our oppressors, and have as much fun as possible because any day now the closet might come roaring back and take us and the rest of the minorities in this country with it.
That is why we and our children will supply and set up a makeshift closet for all the parents and children in our multi-culti festival. When you walk in, you must pretend not to be gay. No exaggerated mannerisms allowed and never utter the word fabulous or mention a gay icon like Barbra, Cher, Melissa, Rosie or Ellen. When you walk out, be as gay as you want—see what it’s like to release your inner gayness in the comfort of all this support. Later on, we won’t ask and we won’t tell.
We’ll also set up a food booth so you can savor the extraordinary foods of gay oppression as a form of remembrance. There is no gayer (or more kid-pleasing) food than "pigs in a blanket." We’ll have our children create colorful posters noting that the "blanket" is the closet we hide in. The "pig" is our succulent inner spirit alive with flavor. And no lesbian celebration should be without tofu burgers, the ultimate imposter food. We lesbians may step out in bright lipstick, high heels and hooker outfits that pass for corporate attire these days, but it’s all just pretend. We’re still the same old folkie, lefty lesbians inside.
Music and dance have a way of bringing us all together. Who hasn’t been charmed by ethnic belly dancing, tango and classical Indian dance forms? But what about disco? Grab a ladder, put up the silver disco ball, play YMCA from the Village People, and watch everyone’s spirits soar. Next up, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive—a teachable moment for all of us, gay or straight, who have suffered through 30 years of vicious, mindless right-wing Republican attacks and bad government and still managed to summon the inner strength to go on.
No multicultural celebration is complete without crafts. At the gay crafts table children can make their own pink triangle button, the symbol used to separate homosexuals from all the others marked for extermination in German concentration camps. On second thought, maybe that’s too much of a downer. So let’s go with the festive symbol of ethnic and social diversity—the rainbow. Let the kids color rainbow badges and have their faces painted with rainbow symbols. Let every parent understand once and for all that our fine country is going multi-culti by 2050 and we’d all better be ready for it.
So let’s start planning next year’s festival right now. Come next June, you can march if you want to—or you can party with the gay parents. Walk in and out of the closet with us. Wear the rainbow flag. Experience your inner gayness – well maybe that’s going way too far, really.