Subscribe to Breaking NewsGay Pride Musings
Around this time last year, I was waiting by the phone for fame and fortune to call. Genre’s pride issue was out and I was in it (not on the cover silly!). My long essay against the term “LGBT” had made the middle pages and I was convinced everyone would want to talk to this new voice in gay political writing (let a brother dream people; let a brother dream). The gist of the article was this: 1) the term LGBT is ugly. It doesn’t roll of the tongue and it’s hard to imagine any poet of substance using it artfully, and 2) LGBT washes out our differences.
“Granted, LGBT is more ‘big tent’–friendly, but it’s never going win pretty points. Its lack of beauty (can you imagine Auden using it in a poem?) has everything to do with what it does. It corrals us all—from the white lesbian couple living in the outback of Montana to the Asian bisexual kid walking down Christopher Street—into the same corner. Outside of sexuality, there is nothing that connects the distinct worlds found under the LGBT sign.”
My solution? Instead of yammering about some mythical LGBT community or marching in a gay pride parade let’s admit we are queers but also members of other tribes that are just as important in our person-hood. This doesn’t mean we leave aside the push for gay rights, but an acceptance that sexuality, such as it is, is not necessarily a place to start a political movement.
The issue came and went with nary a peep. No party invites. No book deals. Nothing. Oh well. That’s okay. I’m not good at parties anyway.
This week-end is Gay Pride and while the article fell flat I still think it says something important. However, there is one thing I would add. While it’s easy for guys like me to talk about how gay pride parades and clunky terms have outgrown us, there are folks behind me, youngsters, who take those terms very seriously. If I could, I would add this story to that Genre article : the Monday after Pride last year, I’m in my local bakery paying for coffee. The guy behind the counter knows me because I’m a regular. His skin glows a dull red and he looks like it’s been a few days since he had a good night sleep.
“So James did you do Pride yesterday,” he asks as he hands me coffee.
I reply no. Make some lame joke about not liking parades.
“I went. It was my first New York City Pride parade. I marched with a religious group.”
The way he’s telling the story, its clear he’s excited. Yes he’ serving coffee to some bitter queen on a Monday morning, sure he should have used a bit more sun screen, but for one day who he was, a gay young man with a religious background, did not have to be explained. His identity didn’t have to be fought or argued over and he could walk with others just like him. There is something refreshing in that and that came through in his telling of his march.
Gay pride, like LGBT, is not perfect and I’ll spend the week-end listening to my Billy Strayhorn albums instead of doing anything prideful. Yet when I think of that young man, my criticisms seem silly and old. Happy Gay Pride peoples.
