Pride!

 Oh, those Pride rainbow flags!

... They're everywhere this month.  Increasingly as I see them on the lapels of my colleagues, I reflect on the journey to this moment.

Back then was a simpler time -- shut up, stay in the closet and stay alive.

 I'm an old queer: I came out 41 years ago. In some ways, things were so much simpler then; we were just Gay.  That word was our word.  Not the clinical "homosexual," which continued to put the emphasis on "sex."  As I discovered early on, my pining to be with a guy was about a romantic and familial bond.  To reduce everything to a sex act seemed, well, just wrong.  As we all know, there are people with same-gender or multiple-gender attraction who never act on it.  There were people who had same-gender sex, just because it was available, with no romantic bond or attraction.  So homosexual really was the wrong word. Gay is better.

 Speaking of gender - back then, gender was easy, there were just two (rather rigidly defined) genders. 

Oh, and then there were the Lesbians.  But they had their own places and clubs and concerts.  Isn't that just like a man to not pay attention to the women?  That's why they created their own places. 

So much simpler, there were only a few places we could safely go.  Only a few people we could safely tell.  Only a few jobs we could safely work.  Only a few people public about their gayness. 

The last pandemic: 15 years of politics and death before a solution.

AIDS appeared the year I came out.  Remember that pandemic? Millions died worldwide.  Usually, people who got it were the marginalized and hated populations.  And yet, we beat that pandemic, too, in most of the wealthy world.  Now it's just one or two pills daily to control it. 

My partner died of AIDS in 1991.  I was 28, relatively new in Chicago, a widower.  His family sued me for the estate that had been left to me, and truthfully wasn't that big.  It was grief on top of grief, and it was hell. 

Before the Internet, We were the Internet

In 1994,  I took what my late husband left me and founded LesBiGay Radio for Chicago.  That was news making - by the way, calling it LesBiGay was progressive,  we hadn't become LGBT yet!  In 1995, it became the only daily (Monday-Friday) show of its kind in the country.  Before the internet, we reached into the private isolation of tens of thousands of people to bring them everything happening that might matter to them from all over the world.  For seven years, I had a ringside seat to our people all over the world who were winning court cases, demonstrating, changing corporations, running for public office.  I was there when Mathew Shepard was murdered, Ellen came out (with the first LGBT TV ads in Chicago!) and HAART was discovered for HIV.  I talked to RuPaul and Mayor Daley.  We were proudly visible and audible too - I had the first gay billboards in Chicago outside of the gay neighborhood and put the first regular transgender hosts on the air.  LGBT at last!

Finally legal.

In 2001, I was married (well, civil unioned) under the new German law -- one of the first binational couples, and later, one of the first binational divorces.  

Today, I sit back and marvel at it all.  I'm married, yes really married under the law, in Illinois and the United States.  My husband and I walk hand in hand along the lakefront or downtown -- and nobody even notices.  I have had incredible support at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which is to say treated just like everyone else. 

Take a prideful pause.

Look at where we are, how far we’ve come.

Everywhere, people keep finding themselves in new ways.  Now we have "panromantic" and "demisexual" and "asexual."  Gender is more fluid and goes under many presentations.  The tent keeps getting bigger for people just to live their lives the way that matters most to them, in the most intimate parts of their lives. 

And yes: still so much more to do.

The freedom is fragile. Every year hundreds of anti-LGBT bills in state legislatures are introduced by the people who supposedly want government less involved in their families -- but want it involved more in my family and my bedroom - and, by the way, the same people who are interested in less regulation to protect people, but more regulation over women and their bodies.  

This is why we need Pride.  Because the onslaught continues, and can really get you down.  Because the haters are not done, and so we need to see each other and collect a bunch of good energy to nourish us through the year.  Because too many people still live and work where holding hands with your lover can get you killed.  Because too many queer and trans kids still have suicidal ideation. 

Visibility creates change.

Seeing each other through those rainbow flags is affirming, energizing and powerful.  Feeling those affirmations from the society as a whole and from each other in particular is incredibly transformative.  It generates a sense of connection and courageous community. Being surrounded by rainbows everywhere turns the spotlight to how, yet again, small groups of brave people changed the world. 

Celebrate! It’s working. Gather your resources and allies. There’s more to do.

According to Gallup, by 2020, three-quarters of Americans thought relations between same sex adults should be legal, and two thirds thought same sex marriage should be legal.  You and I did that.  Our friends and our families and our allies did that.  Our LGBTQIA+ family standing up everywhere in the world changed history. 

Are you proud?  I am.  Happy Pride Month!