The History of Pride
This is the last week of June, which in turn means this is the last week of official Pride month. I decided to take this last post on Pride to give a little insight and history as to why we have Pride month in this country and why straight Pride is not a thing and certainly does not need to be a thing. Especially since this man in Boston is still running around trying to plan a straight Pride parade.
For starters, homosexuality was not officially decriminalized until 1961. And even then, it happened slowly one state a time, Illinois was the first to decriminalize this and then several other blue states followed suit, but it was still being prosecuted all over the country (TheSkimm). June 28th, 1969, the Stonewall riots happen. The policed raided the popular gay bar, “Stonewall Inn”, in New York City for no reason other than it was a gay bar. This lead to extreme riots in the neighborhood of those who were harassed in the bar and the surrounding neighbors who were also gay and of course outraged at this raid. The riots lasted for six days and eventually lead to the Pride parades we see today. One year later the first Pride parade happened in NYC as a way to show they were not going back to the way things had been. Upsetting side note; there was a gender-appropriate clothing statute in the state at the time, so if anyone was suspected of not dressing as their biological sex, they were taken into a bathroom and made to undress so that the officer could see the biological sex of the person. Yes, all of this was legal in 1969 (History). This year was the 50th anniversary of the riots.
It wasn’t until December 15, 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association took being homosexual off of its list of mental disorders. Up until this point, a parent or legal guardian (and even a husband if her suspected his wife was with women) could commit people to mental institutions to receive treatment for their “homosexual ways”. Conversion camps were also still extremely popular and teens suspected of homosexual activity were sent to these camps and often endured terrible abuse and mistreatment, all because they were gay (The Skimm). From here things begin to mellow slightly in the sense that legally there is no more laws or medical orders being sent out that gay people are somehow illegal or sick. But the stigma remains and unfortunately the AIDS epidemic did nothing to stop this.
June 5th, 1981 the CDC published a report on an odd run condition in five gay men, and this report is soon picked up by major news outlets, like the New York Times, and smaller publications start reporting on their own cases of this weird lung disease popping up everywhere. This was the start of the AIDS epidemic and was eventually so severe it lead to the condemnation of all gay men in the country. It wasn’t explained until almost a decade later that AIDS and HIV were transmitted through bodily fluids, not just sex, and that if you were an intravenous drug user, or anyone else who may come into contact with the infected bodily fluids, you could contract it. There was also nothing put out to explain how to stay safe from contracting HIV/AIDS or the medical treatment to ask for if you did contract it (History).
1993 the Clinton administration implements the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy so that members of the LGBTQ community could serve in the military, but don’t flaunt it that you are gay. 1996 the same administration passes the “Defense of Marriage Act” say how the sanctity of marriage would be forever ruined if gay people were allowed to marry. The government would only recognize marriage between a man and a woman (The Skimm).
October 12, 1998 a young man named Mathew Shepard was murdered when a group of men beat him to death simper for being gay. President Obama would later pass a bill named after him in 2009 to criminalize hate cries against the LGBTQ community. But that wasn’t until 2009 and many of those crimes are still not accurately prosecuted today. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” wasn’t repealed until 2010. It wasn’t until 2015 that SCOTUS struck down the Clinton era “Defense of Marriage Act” and legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.
June 12th, 2016 a man opens fire at a gay night club, “Pulse” killing 49 people which makes it the worst mass shooting in US History. The gunman said his reasons were because they were gay and committing crimes against nature.
The Obama administration lifted the ban on transgender people serving in the military as well as passing laws that made it so people couldn’t refuse service to LGBTQ people based on religious rights. The Obama administration made it so there were very little laws left in place to criminalize the LGBTQ community. Then the Trump administration came in and effectively made it illegal for transgender people to serve in the military.
No matter how many laws are passed to keep LGBTQ people safe, there is still a societal stigma around them. And then the administration does things like this, and speaks the way they do about this community, it does not make it easier for people to be themselves and feel safe. This is why there is no straight pride: we have nothin to fear when it comes to who we love. We are not targeted on a daily basis because we held hands with a member of the same sex. We are not bared the rights to marry someone. We are not told that we are going against nature in some way simply because of who we love. When you sit down and think about it, it’s pretty crazy to hate an entire group of people based on something that is supposed to be pure and amazing like love. And that is what it really comes down t0o: hate based on who someone loves. How can that ever be justified as right in any way?
Madey
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