Why Gay Pride matters. (And why YOU should give a damn.)

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Malcolm X spoke to an audience of well dressed African-Americans and demanded, “Who taught you to hate yourself?”

Right now I’m working with a team on a documentary about homophobia in Black Hollywood. We’re following that clip of Malcolm X’s question with an image of members of Westboro Christian Church holding placards that read ‘God Hates Fags.’

The message is clear: African-Americans have been taught by society (and church) to revile their own blackness—the texture of their hair or skin, whatever cultural affects critics can observe and mock. And gays, along with others throughout history, have been taught the same sad lessons. We are “less than,” deviants, best kept out of view and/or subject to violence.

I won’t detail the history of Stonewall here. In brief, in 1969, drag queens and bar patrons fought back during an police crackdown of a local New York pub and several days of scrappy rioting followed. It’s looked upon as the start of the modern gay rights movement and a turning point in American Civil Rights.

The first Gay Rights parade was held in Los Angeles a year later, near the anniversary of Stonewall. Each June, in cities across America, gays and our families, friends, and supporters gather to celebrate and once again say ‘no’ to those who would repress us, malign us, or wish us harm.

It’s a party for sure—as colorful, outrageous and diverse as our gay communites themselves. We dance, we drink, we let it all hang out, if only for a few ... precious ... hours. There’s a serious purpose to Pride as well. It is the LGBT community standing up beside our families and friends and neighbors, to say no to ongoing societal oppression.

You don’t need a University study to point out that our Great American society leaves its gay and lesbian children depressed, isolated, prone to suicide and chemical abuse, suffering from varieties of post-traumatic disorder, and often shamed into silence.

Gay Pride is the opposite of that shame. Pride is not the cure to the societal oppression of LGBT people, but it’s a useful tonic.

Pride is not just for gay people. It's for gays and the society in which we live, both those who embrace and those who oppose our dignity. It is vital not just that we stand – for once – among people who would not judge us, but that America see we are supported by peers and community and not alone.

I sat and talked recently with Dr. Sylvia Rhue of the National Black Justice Coalition. Dr. Rhue, an out Black lesbian, acknowledges one of the challenges of her work is to get some within the African-American community to acknowledge the struggle for rights and dignities for LGBT people as common to their own.

Dr. Rhue sees the need for an ongoing war for hearts and minds that will not be satisfied until all Americans are treated with respect – Blacks and Whites, Latinos and Asians, Christians and Muslims, gays and straights.

Dr. Rhue finds this broad-tent perspective shared by some of her wiser and older peers, pointing to the support to the LGBT community from organizations like the NAACP. But a gap remains, in Black churches, on the street, and in popular culture.

“We’re not there yet,” Dr. Rhue laments.

We enter the 2010 Gay Pride season under the shadow of Arizona’s SB 1070, which threatens the liberties—and perhaps more insidiously, the dignity—of our Latino and Latina brothers and sisters. Have gays been out en masse, side-by-side protesting and marching? I can’t tell you, as of this writing. But we should be. Shame on us if we’re not. For, as Dr. Rhue reminds us, the larger struggle is common.

Sometimes seeds of pain may grow into flowers of healing. This week, there’s been controversy as plans are made to build a Mosque and cultural center near Ground Zero in New York. Well-intentioned but ignorant Americans, unable or unwilling to distinguish between the violent religious radicals who wrought terror on 9/11 and million-fold adherents of one of the world’s great religions, tried to block the move. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and the mosque will be built.

Buddha said that no man achieves enlightenment but through suffering. I wish a corollary held true—than a man or movement who has suffered is thereby compassionate and enlightened.

Yesterday I was driving down the street in West Hollywood, perhaps one of the gayest places in America, and was surprised to be shouted at by a young man on the sidewalk who apparently felt I’d looked at him the wrong way.

“What you starin’ at, faggot?” was how he began the exchange, and it went downhill from there. “I should fuck you up so you know where not to look.”

A couple of days ago, I asked an African-American voiceover peer if he’d be attending Gay Pride in Los Angeles. This is someone with a number of gay friends, a man who’s at least dallied in same sex affairs himself. His answer wasn’t so much a ‘no’ as a ‘hell no.'

“Pride is for out and proud gays,” he replied dismissively, “not for sexually liberated/limited individuals who just like to exercise and cum. How do I fit into any of that?”

This friend believes he’s socially progressive. Because in his spare time he volunteers for groups that are emotionally comfortable for him (working on a big brother type program in his church's youth ministry) he’s done his part. Meanwhile when he speaks of gays and Gay Pride, he does so from a place of remove tinged with disdain. I don't dismiss his volunteerism. But the degree of selectivity in what he'll stand up for vs. denounce saddens me.

If you have a conscience, if you can see the interconnectedness of people and things within our society, this is not a time to sit silent. If you are able to look beyond your own skin color or heritage or religious embrace, do it now. As a new, intolerant political structure crystallizes on the American right, the need has perhaps never been greater.

Is there a place for you at Gay Pride? You bet there is!

Is there a place for you (and me) to support the new Mosque in New York, to stand with brothers and sisters in opposition to SB 1070, to continue to address the injustices faced by black men in urban America and our criminal justice system? Yes, yes and YES!

And by collectively showing up for Gay Pride, immigration rights rallies, in support of alternate religious expression, and a myriad of basic human dignities others would trample, we help to shape America into a better society for the 21^st century.

Si, se puede.

BPJ will be main stage co-host at Los Angeles Gay Pride on June 12^th and 13^th 2010 in West Hollywood.