Every June, Pride Month sparks controversy. But the truth about gay pride doesn’t fit into either side’s narrative.
On the Left, Pride Month is no longer viewed as merely a celebration of individuality and freedom. It has become infected with woke nonsense and an openly partisan progressive agenda. Meanwhile, on the Right, Pride Month is viewed as an entirely excessive expression of identity politics. Many conservatives believe that sexuality is nothing to be proud of and feel that people should keep their private lives to themselves — not take to the streets clad in rainbow colors.
Both approaches are wrong.
First, the liberal perspective on Pride Month has become startlingly intolerant in its own right. Just a few decades ago, gay rights activists were the ones silenced and banned from marches and events. Now, woke activists have taken over the pride movement — and made progressivism a litmus test for participation.
Here are just a few examples.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, a pro-Trump gay group was banned from pride events because members were deemed by organizers to have the wrong “values.” A Washington, D.C., “Dyke March” event banned some lesbians from marching with a Jewish-themed pride flag because organizers said they thought it represented “violence against Palestinians.” (Antisemitic, much?) This year, the group that runs New York City’s Pride Month events banned gay, lesbian, and transgender police officers from participating in uniform because their occupation runs afoul of the far-left’s hate for law enforcement.
You get the idea. If you simply spent 10 minutes walking around any major city’s pride events in the last few years, you likely saw anti-gun signs, heard anti-Trump chants, or otherwise encountered unrelated liberal activism interwoven through the events’ very fabric.
Thus, the liberal pride movement strips gays of individuality. It denies them the very agency that the gay rights movement was founded to fight for. It wrongly conflates the essence of gay identity with progressive politics and a left-wing worldview that many gay people, myself included, do not share.
In this, the intolerant liberal approach to pride not only does a tremendous disservice to those of us deemed the wrong kind of gay person, it also sabotages the acceptance of gay people, rapidly on the rise among Republicans, by making holdouts incorrectly if understandably believe that gay acceptance and a conservative political worldview are incompatible.
So, the mainstream gay pride movement, dominated by the Left, has become worse than useless. But conservatives go too far when they dismiss the notion of gay pride entirely.
I am proud to be gay.
Not because there’s anything special or worth celebrating about it inherently. In theory, conservatives are right about that. But in the real world, being gay still usually means years of tearing yourself up inside, perpetual self-consciousness, and, often, serious familial issues. While thankfully it is increasingly rare, thousands of young gay Americans are still exposed to pseudoscientific, tortuous, anti-gay “conversion therapy.”
It’s not identity politics or woke nonsense to acknowledge that coming through all the challenges still associated with being gay and learning to accept yourself and live your authentic life are things to be proud of.
Conservatives certainly shouldn’t embrace the woke progressive vision of gay pride month. But we also don’t have to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that sexual orientation is a nonfactor in modern American life. The right answer is somewhere in between the extremes.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a Washington Examiner contributor and host of the Breaking Boundaries podcast.
