It’s pride month, an annual affair that never fails to produce a lot of awkward but entirely superficial corporate gestures, and also a conservative backlash against said gestures.
One of the most profound evolutions of your and my lifetimes has been that of LGBTQ acceptance, particularly by younger generations - but even by folks like my 78-year-old father. I remember arguing with him and my grandfather in the early 90s about Bill Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" - they were very much against it - and now my Dad couldn't care less if someone is gay, in the military or not. He even took my mom and sister to Gay Pride in the early 2000s in San Francisco - maybe partially to watch "the freakshow", but I think also out of a sense that, this is where we live, this is part of our community etc.
Now "gay rights" have moved so far into blase acceptance that I'm completely uninterested in Gay Pride, the Folsom St Fair etc. You do you - I'm fine with it, and always have been. But the strange corporate over-celebration of rainbow "Pride" - even in professional sports - is just one of those weird markers of our time where Identity trumps all, and we can't just be individuals any longer - we MUST be defined by our differences, or in the case of myself, a straight white guy, my lack thereof. If a handful of Tampa Bay Rays I've never heard of don't want to wear the rainbow, that's fine with me - whether they invoke Jesus or not to justify it. Maybe it's time we - "we" who accept gay rights and treat gays and straights as individuals and not part of some monolithic group - embrace this victory, and be done with trying to force every last marker of identity down everyone's proverbial throat.
I think that part of "live and let live" is happily accepting (or maybe even begrudgingly tolerating) it when people of a given identity decide to conspicuously celebrate it. Celebrate pride. Celebrate blackness. Celebrate Jewishness. Celebrate being Greek or Chinese or German. If you feel like something is being shoved down your throat, then that's on you. But you're free to feel that way too! Live and let live my friend.
I personally wouldn't mind of the corporate embrace of pride receded into history, but I also recognize that even today, LGBTQ people are targets of violence and threats of violence for merely existing. So I'm not sure it's yet time to embrace victory as you say.
One of the most profound evolutions of your and my lifetimes has been that of LGBTQ acceptance, particularly by younger generations - but even by folks like my 78-year-old father. I remember arguing with him and my grandfather in the early 90s about Bill Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" - they were very much against it - and now my Dad couldn't care less if someone is gay, in the military or not. He even took my mom and sister to Gay Pride in the early 2000s in San Francisco - maybe partially to watch "the freakshow", but I think also out of a sense that, this is where we live, this is part of our community etc.
Now "gay rights" have moved so far into blase acceptance that I'm completely uninterested in Gay Pride, the Folsom St Fair etc. You do you - I'm fine with it, and always have been. But the strange corporate over-celebration of rainbow "Pride" - even in professional sports - is just one of those weird markers of our time where Identity trumps all, and we can't just be individuals any longer - we MUST be defined by our differences, or in the case of myself, a straight white guy, my lack thereof. If a handful of Tampa Bay Rays I've never heard of don't want to wear the rainbow, that's fine with me - whether they invoke Jesus or not to justify it. Maybe it's time we - "we" who accept gay rights and treat gays and straights as individuals and not part of some monolithic group - embrace this victory, and be done with trying to force every last marker of identity down everyone's proverbial throat.
I think that part of "live and let live" is happily accepting (or maybe even begrudgingly tolerating) it when people of a given identity decide to conspicuously celebrate it. Celebrate pride. Celebrate blackness. Celebrate Jewishness. Celebrate being Greek or Chinese or German. If you feel like something is being shoved down your throat, then that's on you. But you're free to feel that way too! Live and let live my friend.
I personally wouldn't mind of the corporate embrace of pride receded into history, but I also recognize that even today, LGBTQ people are targets of violence and threats of violence for merely existing. So I'm not sure it's yet time to embrace victory as you say.
I love this, Shawn. So great to hear your voice here and your wisdom. You rock socks:)