A pride button for Pride Month? Well done, FB.
Something you don’t know about me: No, I’m not gay. But when I was in 7th and 8th grade, I was “mistaken for gay” and bullied just about every day. Shoved into lockers. Taunted. No one would take the chance on even standing near me, much less being my friend. One particular girl (who lived down my street) took it upon herself to punch me routinely on the way home from school (always in the arm or stomach, where it wouldn’t show). At the time, I barely even understood what being gay meant, but that was irrelevant – the Jr. High mob had decided I was the target, and that was all that mattered.
It was a formative time for me – the fierce commitment I have to standing up for and protecting vulnerable people of all stripes was forged in those years. I vowed to never treat another human being the way I was being treated, and I realized that people – ordinary, clean-cut, ostensibly “nice” suburban kids – could be monsters. That mob mentality, the desire to ostracize and out-group someone so that they could feel in-group, overrode any basic human decency they had. I didn’t think of it in those terms back then, but I understood the lesson.
I’d like to think things are better today – still, I held my breath as my own kids went through the Jr. High years. In some ways, things are undeniably better, especially among my kids’ generation. The transgender bathroom issue that raged through my community schools? All the parents. The kids just shrugged and said, “What’s the big deal?” A gay teen was elected local homecoming king. A gay alumnus spoke at the convocation. There’s an acceptance now that couldn’t have been dreamed of when I was in school.
So… much progress has been made, yet at the same time, hatred is once again on the rise. A backlash that denies the very humanity of large swaths of people is in vogue – and empowered by a president who rode to power on that wave of hate and whose callous disregard for social norms of any kind is obvious and far-reaching. Now, more than ever, we have to reaffirm our commitment to the values that make us *civilized*… or watch the civil society we take for granted crumble away, rotting from the inside.
So… a Pride Month, originally meant to commemorate the Stonewall riots which sparked the gay liberation movement? Yes. A month that will also be remembered for the Orlando shooting just last year, targeting the gay community in a place that was supposed to be a sanctuary? Yes.
I’ll be wielding that PRIDE BUTTON often.