Taking Pride: by Eric Marcus

June 10, 2007

Days after I came out to my uncle, he asked a couple of questions about the upcoming Gay Pride March that really challenged me. This was years before I wrote my first book on gay issues, so I wasn’t instantly ready with an illuminating and disarming answer. I had to think about it.His questions were: “Why do gay people need a pride parade? Straight people don’t have a pride parade.” The second question was more a judgment than a question: “With all those drag queens and half-naked men and women, you don’t do yourselves any favors—it hurts your cause.”

I answered the second comment first. “Uncle,” I said, in the most patient and polite way possible for a teenager, “the parade isn’t for you. And it’s not about public relations. It’s for us—for gay people. It’s the one time of year we get to be in the majority, get to be ourselves, whether that means dressing up, undressing, carrying a political banner, or marching with an organization of like-minded people.”

And I mostly believed what I told my uncle. What I didn’t tell him was that I also had some of my own concerns about the message that the more extreme behavior sent to the people watching the parade and to the media, who invariably focused their cameras on the more celebratory and outrageous aspects of the parade rather than the political message and the majority of marchers who were (and are) unexceptional. But I kept that to myself, not wanting to muddy my response.

The second answer required a fair amount of restraint, because what I wanted to say was that after getting called “faggot” by his son for years, I had to work very hard to feel a sense of pride about myself. But of course it wasn’t just my cousin who went after me for being gay. By the time I was in my late teens, I had plenty of repair work to do to my sense of pride because of the anti-gay world in which I grew up.

My actual answer was more measured than that, but the point was basically the same. Because of our past experiences and the negative attitudes in society towards gay people, we need to rebuild our pride and the parade offers us an opportunity to do that by being out, loud, and proud—for at least one day a year.

As Gay Pride Day 2007 approaches I’m reminded of that conversation with my uncle. Not because of the questions he asked, but because of the relevance of my responses to his queries and comments—relevance to my own questions about the meaning of gay pride to an almost fifty-year-old man who has been out for more than thirty years. And the relevance of pride to young lesbian and gay people who have grown up in a world with 3,000+ high school Gay-Straight Alliances, with a hit show like “Will & Grace” on TV, and steady, if not smooth, progress toward equal rights.

In my next column I’ll talk about what I take pride in now, why (or whether) I think the Gay Pride March and festival have relevance, and whether I think gay pride has any meaning for today’s gay young people. In the mean time, I’d like to know what you think. So e-mail me at eric@NYCupandOUT.com, and I’ll post some of your comments on the Our Community Calendar web site: www.NYCupandOUT.com.

Eric Marcus is the co-author of Breaking the Surface, the #1 NY Times bestselling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis. He is also the author of several books on gay issues, including Is It A Choice?, Making Gay History, and a soon to be re-released book for kids and teens, What If Someone I Know Is Gay? Answers to Questions About What it Means to be Gay and Lesbian. www.ericmarcus.com