Did you enjoy pride month? Was it fun? Did you feel proud to be queer? Did you celebrate your queerness? I only ask because even though we seem to be “out of the pandemic,” many cities, while acknowledging gay pride month, did not fully celebrated the same way they used to before the pandemic.
Where I live, everything was done online. And frankly, I was not into online celebrations, so I did not participate on anything this year, just like I didn’t participate last year. Because of the pandemic, of course, not because I’m not proud to be who I am. If you celebrated, I’m hoping that you had fun, did it in a safe way, and that you were able to gain even more confidence about being part of the community.
One thing I did this year, even though it was not my intention, was to get actively involved in a debate about the issue of “celebrating gay pride.” It happened to be that some friend, who will no longer be a friend, by the way, decided to challenge “gay pride celebrations” because he thought by celebrating this particular group of people, we were discriminating against all the other groups that exists, mainly straight people.
This is not the first time this type of comments or incidents have occurred. There are straight people who have thrown themselves a “straight pride celebration” in order to show the world that it is okay to be straight. But mainly they are simply pissed off that the queer community has been gaining ground as “members of society.” So, to undermine the advances and acceptance of the LGBTQA+ community, these straight folks throw “straight pride celebrations.” These efforts only show that these people are so insecure and so afraid of “the other,” that they will do anything to stop the advances of queer folks in the country.
Anyway, back to my involuntary participation in the debate. Through social media, I was asked by a friend to give my opinion on “gay pride month and its importance.” I did. And little did I know that one of the many friends I have (had), would actually challenge my opinion, or rather would challenge the existence of celebrating pride month. And so, we had a conversation about that and what I thought was going to be a productive rapport turned out to be a very illuminating (to me at least) way to find out how homophobic and fragile such a “friend” is. And even though I gave him examples about how we celebrate different cultures (Hispanic Heritage Month, Black Heritage Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month), he would not accept the idea of celebrating Pride because it wasn’t a culture but a sexuality. “And if we are going to celebrate the fact that you take it up the ass, then we must celebrate the fact that I like to screw women.” Yes, queeridos, those were his exact words.
Of course, he’s wrong because Pride refers to our queer lives and we are in fact a culture, or subculture if you want to be more specific, but a culture, nonetheless.
Needless to say, we won’t be having coffee any time soon. I can’t be friends with someone who is so closed-minded and so homophobic that he’s not able to see beyond his own damn nose.
The point of this story is that every time we celebrate our queer pride, we have to be aware that someone, somewhere will always be against our celebrations, and will fight us tooth and nail to push us back into oblivion. Of course, we won’t budge, and we will continue to celebrate while ignoring those people. It is important to be aware of such people because they can sneak into our lives and then work from the inside to destroy us. Yes, I’m being melodramatic—that’s what I’m good at and that’s what I live for.
We need to be aware of such people because these people, somehow, will end up in positions of power and will try, one way or another, to stop the progress we have gained. Look at those politicians, who, in the name of their gods, try to take away the basic human rights we all deserved. They don’t think we should have any rights just because we are members of the LGBTQA+ community. Is that fair? Of course not. But in their eyes, they’re right, and they will fight us. So, we, as queer people, need to fight back at all costs. Not because we deserved better but because… no, wait. We deserved better. For a long time we have been abused and erased by these hateful people, so we deserved better.
Okay, I think I’ve said enough. Hasta la next time, queeridos. Let us hope we are all doing good and that we don’t have to go back into our homes because people’s idiocy, or back into the closet because of people’s hate. Stay queeridos and see you next time!