I slowly felt that our community was safer than it had been when I was young and questioning. It took several years before I understood what it meant to “be” me. Even then, it felt risky to be seen in public by the straight community or to be a lesbian openly at work. I didn’t come out to my family until I was 30 years old. It reminded me that when I was growing up it wasn’t safe to be out of the closet. As, I am sure, it made MANY people feel horrible. It was a reflection on how that horrible event made me feel. Recently, I had a discussion with my son and his girlfriend about the events that took place in Orlando, FL. But, honestly, Pride is so much more than that. What does Pride mean to me? The short answer is that is a period of time once a year when I can gather with the people of my “tribe” and spend a weekend living out loud. If he was happy, I was happy.Įvery year I ask myself this same question. My brother being gay did not matter to me. I was relieved, happy, and extremely angry. As he spoke I felt an intense mixture of emotions. He then told me he was gay and asked me not to disown him. Was he seriously ill? Did he do something? Did he hurt someone? Was he going to jail? A million thoughts ran through my mind. He said he needed to tell me something and I could see he was upset and afraid. He and I were driving somewhere and he pulled over the car. To me, it was so normal that when I went to my first Pride event I felt that it was just another place to spend time with family and friends. There was never a real moment of exposure. I grew up in a family where being gay was completely normal. Satisfied with her answer, I went back to playing. She responded by telling me that just like her and dad shared a bed, Uncle Jeff and Uncle Bill shared a bed too. A bit skeptical, I informed her that there was only one bed in there. She told me that Uncle Bill slept in the same bedroom as Uncle Jeff. My cousins had their bedrooms and my Uncle Jeff had his bedroom, but where did Uncle Bill sleep? Curious, I went to go ask my mom. That’s when I noticed something different. After playing with my cousins and siblings for a while, I began to wander around the house hoping we would be opening presents soon. Like most kids that age, I was excited to play with my cousins and open presents. We had arrived at my uncle’s house late in the afternoon, as we usually did. When we learn those lessons, we come back time and time to the same realization, that without each other we will never move civilization forward. It is only by embracing that struggle, daring to stand in that storm of disruption, where we can learn our deepest lessons. Without the intervention of struggle, we do not change course and we do not change ourselves. Only where things meet and collide can we struggle and come to a resolution to make change.
Johnson at Stonewall who launched a fight against government oppression that lasted for three consecutive days. the principles of non-violence and black queer woman Marsha P. I always remind myself that it was a black gay man, Bayard Rustin, who taught the Rev. Whole meaning, the public embrace that affirms no person is a single piece, but a mosaic-many different pieces, each worthy of love, respect and human decency. The answer at the core of it is not just the rejection of being invisible but the demand to be seen as a whole. The question of pride for many LGBTQIS people of color is a complicated question. Involuntary procedures ranging from aversion therapies, castration, electro-shock treatments, and even lobotomies. They varied from incarceration, compulsory commitment to mental institutions. Little understood at the time the treatments were painful and cruel by our standards today. Many disagreed and thought that it was a mental disorder.
Freud’s wasn’t the only opinion of the subject. But he was firm on that he didn’t believe it could be cured and that all people are born bisexual. However, because society did not see it that way at the time he amended his view to say that having these sexual impulses did create other divergent concerns in the mental landscape.
A founding father of psychology, Sigmund Freud thought it was a natural variation in human sexuality and did not see a need for the condition to be treated in itself. However, it was one of the first scientific disciplines to study homosexuality as a distinct phenomenon. Psychology was still being established as a science in late the 1800s and as such still in it’s infancy.