As the sun rises on Pride Day, I look back at the Pride Days of years past.
I remember the march in 1977, when people walked down the streets wearing boxes over their upper bodies with the word CLOSET painted on them, because they were worried that their employers would see them, and they would be fired.
I remember that woman with the loudspeaker saying "didn't it feel good? Walking down the streets holding hands? Knowing that *today*, surrounded by 12,000 people, you weren't gonna get beaten up? (pause) WE WERE WALKING DOWN THE STREETS OF OUR OWN FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD."
Times have changed.
In Blue States, or in Blue Cities, or in Blue Neighborhoods, we can walk down our own streets holding hands, and not be worried that we would be beaten up. Probably.
Id like to say that, since Anthony Kennedy singlehandedly made life immeasurably better for queers in these United States, that it would be everywhere.
But it isnt.
It Red States, and in Red Towns, and in Red Neighborhoods, it isnt safe to be queer.
It isnt safe to exist in your humanity if you are queer. In far too many places.
And the backlash against all of our strides since Stonewall is mighty, and it is increasing. And we are in for worse times ahead. Our safeharbors are diminishing as Red States claw back our civil rights from their own Blue Cities.
Libraries in Red localities are erasing our stories. Erasing our history. Erasing our families. Erasing our lives.
We are a community which owes our rights to street riots. To plague. To our thousands of fallen brothers, husbands, and sons who died terrible deaths that our media laughed at. Our politicians. Schoolchildren. Everything that was bad was "gay". The F word wasnt "fuck"; it was "fag". And people would boycott the funerals of our brothers shouting it so that our last memories of them lowered into the ground was some stranger yelling "fag".
We had to come out. All of us. Silence equaled death. We didnt have the luxury of the closet. Of keeping our mouths shut. Of saying "none of your business".
Because when we are invisible, the people who want us dead get to control our narrative. If we do not proclaim who we are, our enemies will tell everyone what we are. And their lies will go unanswered. And we wind up beaten and bloody and dead.
And now our enemies are defining us again at every bathroom stall they can get their evil hands on. If they dont let you pee in public, they take you out of the public sphere. They make you invisible.
But we know this play: Silence=Death.
Those empty libraries in Florida are a precursor to terrible things.
Once again, my brothers and sisters, we must come out, we must be visible, and we must embrace Pride, because the other side wants us to live in shame.
Shame of existing in our own lives.
And we cannot live that way.
And no one should.
We are the community in the vanguard against hate. We are where the fascists will attack first.
We are the canaries in the mine: we die before the rest of society knows that it is in trouble. And we are dying.
But while we live, we will not wear their shame.
On this day, we will walk down the streets of our own fucking neighborhoods.
And we will hold the hands of the people we love.
And our existence will spawn hate and violence
But today, surrounded by hundreds of thousands, in city after city,
Today
We are safe.
Happy Pride.
