We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of “morality,” when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes, when entire states vote us into second-class status, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what the Christian hate industry works so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay.
We’re proud because more and more, we are able to live our lives openly and joyfully without fear of losing our jobs, losing our housing, losing our families and losing our lives.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our increasingly venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and religion and money and relationships and the way we live our lives.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world is starting to notice and respect us and emulate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We (and from this point on, I really mean “I” when I say “we”) are proud because we got up on Saturday and ran the Big Gay 10K in perfect weather and then relaxed at Crew with our running peeps for a few hours and then went and bought paint and actually got the untiled walls of the kitchen painted. We’re also proud because we stayed in the lines and it ended up looking really awesome.
We’re proud because we went to a heterosexual wedding instead of going to the pride parade and everyone asked about our boyfriend who unfortunately couldn’t be there because of work and when we mentioned that he and we were talking about maybe having a wedding of our own, everyone treated us as though our relationship and our love and our commitment and our future were just as valid as the bride’s and groom’s, even though people who position themselves as our moral leaders are working overtime to convince the world that our love couldn’t possibly be valid because it’s gay.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so much to be proud of.
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