Pride Month feels different this year.
Perhaps it’s just a little bit of history repeating. What started as a literal riot has over time become a celebration of unity, as well as of remembrance. We come together in ways our queer ancestors could have only ever dreamed of, in full technicolor communities, sharing space and our love and most likely dance our asses off to a sick beat.
Even corporations have gotten involved, at least to a degree. When they are not actively sending money to those who would have us killed, they are busy uploading rainbow versions of their logos to celebrate the queer dollar. At least for the thirty days of Pride Month. It’s a double-edged sword, giving us a little bit more visibility but often stopping short of more definite efforts to secure our equality. Baby steps, perhaps.
A closeup of bitcoins on an LGBT Pride flag (Image credit: DepositPhotos)
There are the normal events planned, of course: Parades. Parties. Maybe a little debauchery here and there, but while all of this has always been under a specter of disapproval, oppression, and potential violence, that fact seems especially palpable this year, as violence and hateful rhetoric have been noticeably on the rise.
It’s been building for some time. More and more acts of violence are being visited upon our people and more and more anti-LGBTQ laws are being legislated. After many years of making significant strides in the queer community, (the abolition of anti-sodomy laws and the establishment of marriage equality) we are now experiencing a horrifying backlash which threatens to take all of that away. When the word leaked that the US Supreme Court was on the verge of abolishing the right to legal abortion via overturning Roe v. Wade, it became clear that the road was clearing for the abolition of other rights, secured under those same precedents and understandings of a right to privacy, which include the aforementioned rights that queer folk celebrate today.
Sadly, what many of us have been saying for years is bearing some terrible fruit: words matter. And whether those words are in the form of legal directives or those given in sermons or social media posts, they influence the collective psyche. When people have a platform and they use that platform to spew hatred, then the direct result is violence.
When a Christian preacher in Texas recently spoke to his flock about homosexual people, and says that we should be killed, it’s not difficult to see that the result will be more queer deaths.
“These people should be put to death. Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with a crime. The abomination of homosexuality that they have, they should be convicted in a lawful trial. They should be sentenced with death. They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head.”
– Pastor Dillon Awes of Stedfast Baptist Church in Watauga
There can be no confusion as to where his values lie, and presumably those of his parishioners, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as “an anti-LGBT hate group”.
These words are certainly shocking even as they come as little surprise. And while the idea of inciting hatred against a minority group may repulse and sicken the majority of us, it is all perfectly legal, protected under the First Amendment.
Perhaps it’s speech like this that inspired a group of 31 masked members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front to attempt to riot at the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Pride event earlier this month. If not for the quick thinking of a hotel worker who happened to see the group of them wearing riot gear and piling into the back of a U-Haul truck, we would likely have seen blood in the streets yet again. It’s a chilling reminder that we are never truly safe from the hatred that surrounds us. More recently, the Coeur d’Alene police have been receiving death threats for making the arrests and have had some of their officers publicly doxxed on social media as a result, an action that perhaps brings up that towns’ prior history of once being home to a neo-Nazi compound. White supremacy and hatred are all around us.
It’s not just a problem for queer people. Hate crimes are on the rise, across the board. 2020 saw a huge spike in hate crimes, the largest in 12 years, building in part from the rhetoric of the former President and his party who seem to revel in feeding the violence and placating the offenders. It’s been nearly five years since the events in Charleston and we have seen the hatred only grow. While white supremacists there chanted “Jews will not replace us!” we see such fringe beliefs such as “Replacement Theory” gain more ground in the general public, further fueled by Fox “news” anchors, like Tucker Carlson, who has regularly stoked the fears of struggling mid-western white people, convincing them that their problems stem from Black, queer, and immigrant people, rather than the billionaires that control much of the world.
It’s hardly a new problem. There has always been violence perpetrated against minorities. But it does feel as if it’s been coming to a head. When will there be a breaking point? What will that look like? Another riot? Another mass shooting? Another set of laws designed to strip away our basic humanity and make us into the thing of childhood nightmares? (I’m looking at you, “Don’t Say Gay!”) We collectively sit under the shadow of an actual insurrection that threatened to topple our government in favor of those forces of racism and bigotry. The stakes have literally never been higher.
It’s enough to make us want to turn away from the world and hide away. After so much struggle, to find ourselves here yet again, the target of so much hatred, so much violence. It’s exhausting.
But there is also hope.
We must remember our history. When once it was illegal to simply exist as we are, when police regularly raided our “safe spaces” and arrested us for wearing the “wrong” clothing or dancing with the “wrong” partners. It was not all that long ago, actually. For some it is still in living memory. Most of us now live in a world much better than the one our queer ancestors lived in. Many of us can be open about who we are, even if not all of us are afforded that privilege. Little by little, it does get better.
Rainbow pride! (Image credit: DepositPhotos)
We may be living under a dark cloud that threatens to rain on our parade, but our symbol is the rainbow. Though it will be hard work, will endure as we have always done. And when the clouds part we will shine in all of our colors, bigots be damned. We will never go away. We will only get louder, and more colorful, and more blessedly weird. For in truth, we have already won the culture war. They just don’t know it yet.
So let’s enjoy our Pride celebrations. Take commonsense precautions, certainly, but don’t let the terrorists win. They want to extinguish our light, but they can’t get us all. We will remember, and mourn those whom we have lost, but we will still celebrate what it means to be alive, and to love. And that is how we win. That is how we live.
After the rainstorm comes the rainbow. Let that knowledge fill us all as we carry this multi-colored light through the darkest of times. Blessed be.
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