Why we all need Pride Month
Happy Pride! If you’re a longtime reader of the Harbor blog, you may remember that we’ve written about Pride before: Dawn from a queer perspective about talking with anti-Pride people (“Why do they need a parade?”), and Dottie about her love of Pride as an ally who has been shaped by queer people (“Why I celebrate Pride Month as a straight pastor”).
If you missed either of those, check them out! This week I’ll just be adding my own small echo to a lot of what they’ve expressed.
I think Pride Month, and to be specific the amplification and celebration of LGBTQ folks, is simply a good thing. Not just good for queer folks, but good for our world, our culture, our society. For straight people, for me. There are probably a bunch of reasons why; here are two of them.
Pride Month’s emphasis on equality and rights helps me learn more accurate history and current areas of need for my queer siblings. In the absence of dedicated centering and amplification, we are subjected to versions of historical storytelling that whitewash our traditions, laws, and institutions. We are fed myths like “Now that marriage equality is legal, LGBTQ people live in safety and equality.” But the voices of beloved queer people can alert all of us—and this is especially helpful for straight allies like me who live a different and more privileged life—to how much work still needs to be done.
Pride Month’s celebration of LGBTQ joy, culture, and community both brings me joy and enables me to know and love people better. This may come as a shock, but almost everyone on the planet is very different from you, in terms of age, race, religion, gender, language, ability, sexuality, and/or a host of other identity components. I’ve found that when I make connections with people, it is often our differences that spark the most joy. I love being friends with people in their 20s and with people in their 80s. And I love being friends with queer people—not only because they feel and live differently, but because they tend to build beautiful and hospitable community.
I guess this short list was really “Why straight allies need Pride Month,” or perhaps just “Why I, Jon, need Pride Month.” But the title promised more. Why do we all need Pride Month? I won’t speak to the many reasons why queer folks generally love and want and need Pride (see Dawn’s blog post).
So if queer people benefit from Pride and straight allies benefit from Pride, that just leaves… straight anti-LGBTQ people. And I would say that they, too—whether they know it or not—ultimately need Pride Month. They need to see the joy, a joy that is cultivated outside their worldviews, outside their church walls, outside their rigid moral frameworks. They need to see that it is real joy and love (and often faith), to feel the cognitive dissonance of real goodness outside their box of what can be called good.
It will probably take much more than a parade to dislodge such people’s deep-seated convictions. It might take, I don’t know, their sister coming out as the gayest woman alive.
But a month of truth, joy, and pride is a good start.
