#Pride101

Before the 1969 Stonewall riots, virtually every aspect of being gay was illegal to varying degrees in America: being openly gay, showing public affection, having any kind of sex, marriage, adoption, assembly in public, assembly in private, going to gay bars … even owning bars with any form of gay designation. The only gay bars that existed were owned by crime syndicates, who definitely weren’t at the vanguard of fighting for gay liberation; they saw in the gay population a steady and highly dependent form of revenue that the mobs could protect via their considerable influence over law enforcement. We were exploited for our desperate need to find each other and for the money we were willing to pay to feel like we weren’t alone. We paid exorbitant prices for watered-down, bottom-shelf liquor. We gathered in buildings that were unclean, unsafe and unimportant to society. The subtexts were shame, risk, secrecy, and arrest and public humiliation if we were caught entering or exiting these bars. But in the gathering momentum of our achievements in equality over the last half century, our forebears demanded--and slowly, surely got--our growing equality and our freedom to live our lives openly and safely and without imposed shame and exploitation. THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

#Pride101

It's 2019--a literal half century after the Stonewall riots and the dawn of our demands for equality, justice and our right to exist in peace--and "religious" leaders like Tennessee pastor--and sheriff's detective Grayson Fritts--just today today are angrily demanding "the death penalty for someone being a homosexual" from their pulpits and on their wide-reaching media "ministries" and inciting continued harassment and violence against us from their morally bankrupt followers. And we continue to resist and survive and love and support each other and live the open, brave lives that our forebears fought so hard to pass down to us. THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

We’re here.

For all the irrational hatred and the isolationist hypocrisy and the manipulative demagoguery Trump and his vile, desperate, defiantly hypocritical sycophants are using to tear this country apart morally, socially and intellectually ... for all the ignorance they've perpetuated and the lies they've parroted to shore up their base ... for all the ugliness and hostility and racism and sexism and phobias they've unleashed from the dungeons and the shadows and the basest instincts of humankind ... they've ironically and unintentionally and no doubt regrettably inspired something quite beautiful: a mass uprising of love and support for every person they vilify and every minority they oppress and every demographic they scapegoat in their bloodthirsty quest to dehumanize and destroy us all for their own gain.

And if you're a trans person—especially if you're a trans kid—we want you to know we're here.

There are legions of us who have been and who currently are and who will continue to be your friends and allies and champions with no judgments, no condemnations and no barriers. We may not have been as visible to you as we'd have liked in the past out of consideration for your privacy or lack of a forum to communicate to you or even out of concern that we might inadvertently say or do something awkward or uncomfortable or insensitive around you. But we're here. And it is now our moral and social and just simply human imperative to make sure you know who we are.

Whether you're just coming to terms with your need to transition, beginning to comprehend the emotional and physical and social journey ahead of you, taking the first tentative steps in changing your persona and your presentation and your name, or standing bravely and confidently and proudly at any point on the transition continuum ... our primary interest in your trans identity is that you are safe and healthy and happy.

We may never fully comprehend the extent of what your personal or collective journey has entailed -- and we may ask a lot of questions both out of curiosity and a sincere need to better understand where you've been and where you're going.

But we're here. And we stand with you both in person and at the dawn of a new sense of community. And we want you to know we love and respect you just as you are. Or just as you need to be

We're here.

#TransDayOfVisibility

What the hell do gay people have to be so proud of?

We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes, when entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, 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 systemic bigotry and the ugliest sides of organized religion work so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay.

We’re proud because—thanks to the incredible bravery shown by gay people who lived their lives openly sometimes to the point of being defiantly in the decades before us—we can live our lives more and more openly at home, at work, with our families, on social media … and even on national television.

We're proud because we've worked tirelessly to achieve legal equality in marriage, adoption, parental rights and many other ways that make our families recognized as Families in our states and across our country. And though we have more to accomplish—and though bigotry disguised as morality and religion and the supposed mandates of constituents works and sometimes succeeds at eroding our newfound equalities—we have the momentum and intelligence and drive and humanity and ability to keep driving back the hate as we continue to drive forward with both our newfound and future equalities.

We’re proud because through our tireless work and the prevailing powers of common sense and compassion, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Proposition Hate and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act have collapsed in on their illogical, immoral, meritless foundations—and new legislative attempts to dehumanize us gain little to no traction or visibility and soon die on the trash heap as well.

We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our 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 money and relationships and the way we live our lives -- and by using our lives as examples of success and humanity and love that other gay people can respect and emulate and achieve more and more easily.

We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world increasingly continues to notice and respect us and enthusiastically appropriate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.

We’re proud because especially this month and always all year we’re celebrating with parties and street fairs and parades overflowing with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, dad-bod queens, glitter queens, you’d-never-even-know-they-were queens queens and even straight-but honorary-queens-for-a-day queens, and together we can see beyond the pride in the parades of our lives and together celebrate the underlying Pride in the parades of our lives.

Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so incredibly much to be proud of.