Pride

Boston's Gay Pride Parade is today. To those of us who grew up in the dark ages before Stonewall, this annual reminder of the progress in gay civil rights in our lifetimes often raises mixed sentiments. As I look at the jaded amusement on many young faces in the crowd, I am reminded of earlier marches which were neither amusing nor jaded in any way.



Gay Pride, Rio de Janiero

The annual celebration of LGBT civil rights has become a realm of corporate-style non-profits with slick merchandising and sponsors from the alcohol industry. It seems more promotional party than community celebration. It reflects the materialistic times we live in.



The advancements in LGBT rights did not come from parades or law suits or legislation. The advancements came from thousands, perhaps millions, of gay men and lesbians standing up and saying "I'm gay and I'm here!" at work and at home. There were many casualties. There were great costs.

I came out as a teen in the mid 1960s. Because my father was a policeman, I never tried to enter a gay bar. They were constantly being busted up, and I dreaded getting arrested in a raid. So, I wandered the streets at night to meet my peers. I consorted with gay sex workers on sidewalks and in a bus station. I walked through dark parks in the wee hours. The risks were considerable, but so was the need to be released from my loneliness.

My motivation to be an out gay man grew from the pain of that loneliness. When I met several older men in a state hospital where I studied as a nursing student in 1975, I was confronted with the dark truth of how heterosexuals had isolated and tortured us. These several men had been incarcerated for their adult lives in the back ward of an institution for being gay. One had been lobotomized. The others had been subjected to insulin shock and electroshock therapies. I became so enraged at my medical colleagues I nearly left nursing school. Then I saw a better way to change things.

Emerging from the imprisonment of homophobia is like being released from any form of isolation. It takes a good deal of work and determination to overcome wariness toward other human beings. Those of us who achieved gay liberation through being vocally out in all areas of our lives were the foot soldiers of change. And, coming together in our early Gay Pride marches was a public and concerted demonstration of that activity of changing the perception of LGBT people. Those marches were not about selling things or having a party or looking fabulous.

It is the lot of those who effect change to pass the results on to the next generations. Unlike human beings who are connected by blood lines, our LGBT generations are connected by our understanding that being different is hard and requires effort to overcome. Gay pride is about self-respect and dignity in the face of rejection and prejudice. No banner or T-shirt can bestow or maintain human rights. It is the individual practice of requiring equal respect by respectfully asserting our place in society that advances our rights.