What Does "Gay Pride" Mean?Is It Who I Am Or Who I Screw?I. A Little Background For Your Entertainment PleasureThe first time I "came out" as a homosexual, I was told that I was "too masculine" to be gay. The next time was by a co-religionist who told me she didn't think I was gay either. The last time I told anyone about me for many years was to my soon-to-be-wife. Christine and I formed a supportive partnership, guaranteeing me the foundation I would need for my chosen role: husband and father. Well, in spite of all of the volatile rhetoric that gay activists use ("We choose our orientation: we choose to be straight!" I have said things like this myself on occasion) I was doing the right thing, fulfilling my own expectations at the same time I was fulfilling those of my family and the society in which I live. I had a beautiful woman; I had God. What else could any man need? Truth? Time went by as it does. The marriage failed. Christine moved out and took my child with her. We were both in Nebraska, though 40 miles apart. I rearranged the furniture and my life continued. Eight months later I met Dave. Two weeks later he moved in. Remember that we were in Nebraska. Dave had some "big city" experience because he was from Lincoln. He even made it as far as Omaha a couple of times. But we were in a town of 22,000. We had a two-bedroom apartment on a dead end street on the south side of the railroad tracks that bisected the town. But it was a closet. Just after our first anniversary, I got promoted and relocated to Minneapolis. I grew up in Denver so it was a return to a big city for me and after only a few weeks, I realized I would never slip into rurality again. Dave and I now lived in a one bedroom apartment in a "third tier" suburb, but it was a closet too. I began becoming acquainted with coworkers, even socializing with some of them. Dave and I had explored a few of the bars, and with our new friends, we explored them a bit more. This was my first experience with "gay life" and "gay lifestyle" (a volatile catchphrase to which I will return shortly). Time continued on. My daughter moved in and Dave moved out. Eleven months later I had a date. Five months later, after dating nearly everyone in a social sphere, I started to fall in love with the clique's outcast. He was everything that my wife and my lover had never been, except in love with me. John was (and still is) the quintessential socialite. He just informed me Wednesday, in fact, that his weekends are booked through October. He dragged me along everywhere when we were a couple. We went to the theater. We went to movies. We went to bars. We went to restaurants I would never, ever have gone into on purpose. And he wanted to hold my hand when we went to these places and did these things. In public. In broad daylight even. I was terrified to my core the first time. It got easier, until I even looked forward to it. John took me to Gay Pride for the first time. Jessica, my charming and beautiful daughter, was out of town visiting her mother. It was a phenomenal experience for me. I was surrounded my many thousands of people who were gay like me. I had no idea there were so many and so many shapes and sizes! Who'd have thought that all the gay men in the world were not "floppy-haired twinks," as I once heard it put. It was an amazing experience. But I won't be going this year. I have had a lot of time as an "out" gay man to consider the role of my sexuality in my life and how it affects the person I am. I have had my share of one-nighters and relationships. But there is something wrong with the way gay people look at all of this and I've arrived at some conclusions. I am sure that many who might stop to read this will consider me homophobic (a gay homophobe!), self-loathing, or just plain crazy. That I can't help. I'm just building my case for why "Gay Pride" is a good idea gone hopelessly wrong. II. Getting To The Point, At LastWhat We're Proud Of. When one reduces Gay Pride to its constituent element, gay people are celebrating the simple fact that they have sex with people of the same gender. Everything else is an affectation. I have sex with men. They have sex with me. Is this something of which I am "proud?" No. Is this something I should celebrate? Maybe, but I certainly would not do it in public. Frankly, neither should anyone else. It's in bad taste and it offends people, even gay people like me. It becomes easy to understand what the Christian Right finds so offensive about us. You shouldn't misconstrue what I'm saying. Sex is a wonderful thing, especially when shared with someone loved. But are we proud of whom we sleep with or something else? The Gay Pride Fair. How often do we drive by cheesy suburban strip malls where a carnival has sprung up in the parking lot like celebratory weeds or a craft show displays the latest fashions in hand-painted or homespun dreck? Imagine going to a carnival and seeing all of the neighbors in their "wifebeater" undershirts and Bermuda shorts, eating cotton candy and cheese curds, shouting at their misbehaving brats and being pandered to by every local business in the city. From there, imagine wandering into the craft show to shop for some new object for the kitchen and having choices with figures involved in coitus, or these lovely hand woven restraints. Most of us (yes, even us) would be appalled if this turned up at the mall near us. Why, we couldn't even take our children until it was gone! I saw someone on TV after last year's fair say that they thought it was wonderful how all of these businesses had turned out to support Gay Pride! How ignorant was this person? These businesses are turning out to make money. The banks will get interest from their credit cards. The cheese curd people rake it in hand over fist! The craft peddlers have worked hard all year to make that perfect stained glass artifact for our windows. They know we will buy anything and we do! I have. It's true! I bought the useless hat with the word "GAY" on it that first year. Blissfully, it has vanished. I bought the obligatory Rainbow Flag decal for my car, too. It is still in my "treasure" box. This is not to denounce the legitimate organizations and artists and businesses that participate in these events. PFLAG must be there. AIDS projects and other support organizations should be there. Any year round bookstore specializing in our interests should be there. The gay bars, social groups, and numerous others I have neglected should be there. These people support us year round. Should Crankybank be at the Gay Pride Fair? Should Yankmey Insurance be there? As entities in themselves, I say they should not. But Crankybank and Yankmey both have Gay Employee Associations that are, at least in part, supported by company money. Now what do I think? Well, I think the Employee Association and its members should be there, wearing the Association's logo, not their companies'. These people are working hard to make their respective work environments tolerant, diverse places, but until the company offers domestic partner benefits, the employees owe them nothing. I will never take my daughter to the Gay Pride Fair because so many gay people use this time to let their hair down and demonstrate their fetishes for all the world to witness. Even businesses which cater to our annual needs and whims, social organizations, and the AIDS projects, pull out the stops and put things up for public view that anyone should have to have their ID checked to see. My eyes have beheld greeting cards with full frontal nudity and coitus merchandised by retailers, posters that would be perfectly at home in the centerfold of Honcho or Advocate Men put up by the AIDS projects, and scrapbooks from social organizations that one needs a cigarette after viewing. I'm not a prude. I've done everything most people have and several things only a few have. But with displays like this, how are we representing ourselves to the others? The thing that galls me the most is this: at every other time of year we are trying to get the public to accept us. "We're just like you! We live in the suburbs and send our children to school and work hard at our jobs. We have pets and wear neckties. See, we're just like you!" And then every June, some psychotic episode hits us all and we leave our homes wearing the harness on the outside, or the wife's evening dress. Let's be proud of who we are: deviants and fetishists all. That's what the world sees, because no one will see us on the six o'clock news going to work. They will see us in the taffeta and leather and so will our straight peers. Is that what makes us proud? The Parade. There isn't much to add here that I haven't said before except that the entire reason that the parade exists in my opinion is so that people (straight and gay) can be reminded that PFLAG and a few other groups are out there working every day for us. I had the good fortune, my first Pride Parade, to walk with PFLAG. I didn't deserve to be there. My friend, whose parents are in PFLAG up to the eyeballs, said to come along so I did. For over an hour these people received an ovation from everyone they passed. I've never seen the like. As for everything else, I've taken to calling this the "Flaunt Your Fetish Parade." Two years ago, there was a flogging on one of the floats. In the same parade some nitwit danced on the fender of a semi truck in boots and an athletic supporter. This is not what I am proud of. How can they be? The Nightlife. This is probably the whole point of Gay Pride in our modern world. All of the bars have special events. A few of them in Minneapolis have a huge block party. People are social. People laugh and have fun. And it's private. It's out of the public eye (except for the block party, maybe). Like it or not, the bars are the center of our social life. Largely, they are the only "safe" public places for us to behave as we will, whether it's coarse or romantic. Hell, the key historical event for the modern Gay Rights Movement happened in a bar. Do the bars belong there? Absolutely! III. Making up My MindThis article is sounding schizophrenic. The whole point of writing something like this for me is to find out how I feel about an issue. This subject has been boiling for quite a long time. It began to take focus several months after John and I broke up. Now that time has gone by, many discussions have been had, and I have settled into a new calm, these thoughts are finding expression. The remarks I made about the nightlife above surprised me. I have historically had the same contempt for the bars that many of us do, but I have tried to remember that, other than our homes, they are the only real "safe" places for gay people to gather. No, I won't go to them. I don't like them much. But I will have a little more restraint when they are being denounced from now on. Gay people (always remember: I am speaking as a homosexual man about a homosexual man's experiences. I know nothing of gay women's experiences or issues and would never put on that pretense) do have a certain way of living, or lifestyle. I was made to bear witness to it when John and I were dating. There are bars and theater, Gay Day at Camp Snoopy in the Mall of America (shudder), brunches (we're awful big on brunches, aren't we?), shopping and sex. When someone says there is no "gay lifestyle" they are rejecting almost everything that they would call culture. Colored hankies and leather are part of the lifestyle. Meticulously maintained dwellings and flamboyant gestures are part of the lifestyle. These are the perceptual aspects of the way we live. There's more, much more, but this is what the others see. Which ties it all back to Gay Pride. Gay Pride is a celebration of what we do, not who we are. We're so busy telling our counterparts to accept us as like them with our words and showing them that we're freaks with our actions that we get nowhere. Year after year, we get nowhere. It should be quite the other way around. If others of us want to hang out in the park in a dress, fine. If they want to be flagellated on a float in the parade, great. But they can expect me to roll my eyes and wash my hands till they're bloody to be clean of them. I am proud of who and what I am. Who I screw is a small measure of me. It should be a small measure of all of us. St Paul, Minnesota
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