What a Difference a Year Makes
There are a number of things in life which I avoid at all costs: Fundamentalist Christians. Dane Cook. Paper cuts. Sour cream. Prop comedy. Sex with women. Dane Cook. Provo. Success of any kind. The annual Pride festivities. Dane Cook.
I’m attending Pride this year, for the first time since 2006. During the past few years, I’ve had a family event in California during the same weekend as Pride, and put up as big of a struggle to attend Pride as I would for, oh let’s say, the Spanish Inquisition.
Say what you will about the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, but at least it didn’t offer the potential of waking up on Monday morning with herpes and a hangover.
I’ve written in past columns about my belief that Pride, despite its best intentions, has become an over commercialized, alcohol-fueled sex romp, existing for the sole purpose of getting your drink on and your rocks off. Gay men complain that the lesbian-organized festival doesn’t meet their entertainment needs, and lesbians complain that gay men don’t take Pride seriously. At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t really matter, because as long as I have an overpriced beer in my hand and a dick in my ass, I’ll know I’ve done my part for the gay community. You’re welcome, Matthew Shepherd!
This year though, my cynicism towards Pride has softened. While I still believe Pride will be filled with dicks, dykes, douchebags and debauchery, I also believe that we genuinely have a reason this year to unite and celebrate who we are as a community. Individually, we may not be different people from who we were last year (with the exception of those who made the transition from pre-op to post-op). Nevertheless, we have evolved as a community and have many reasons to come together. A lot has happened to our community during the past 12 months, including the passage of Proposition 8, the Oscars won for a film based on Harvey Milk’s life, the legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa, Vermont and Maine, and gay contestant Adam Lambert winning American Idol.
You live in your reality, I’ll live in mine.
During the past year, for every two steps we’ve taken forward we’ve taken one drunken step backwards. We gained a sympathetic and liberal president, but discovered he’s afraid to take a stand for gay rights. We can get married in the more conservative Iowa, but cannot in the more liberal California. We gained RuPaul’s Drag Race, featuring some of the nation’s more talented drag queens, but we also gained Carrie Prejean, one of the nation’s most homophobic beauty queens. We’ve taken two Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg steps forward, but one Elizabeth Hasselbeck step backwards.
Thus, the symbolism and importance of Pride means more than ever. We can no longer allow Pride to remain simply a booty call at the bar, as it has been in the past. We should not think of Homosexual Headquarters as only a place to collect free condoms and to drink away brain cells. We should think of Pride as a place to share battle plans in the war for gay rights. We may have a lot to celebrate this year at Pride, but we can still be fired from our jobs, cannot get married in most states, and continue to have a higher suicide rate than that of our straight peers.
Like that one book says (The Bible? He’s Just Not That Into You?), there is a season for all things. We’ve had a lot of time to be riotous, but now it is time for us to be mature. The gay community wishes to be taken seriously by the American people, but sometimes that seems as likely as the odds that Carrot Top will be taken seriously as a comedian. Or as a person who should be allowed in public.
I may not always like Pride, but I recognize its ability to bring the gay community together as nothing else can (with the exception of a Britney Spears concert). Maybe this year we can recognize Pride as a tool to organize politically, so that we might demonstrate to America that the gay agenda should be taken seriously, and that the gay community is a force to be reckoned with.
If anyone invites Dane Cook, I’m staying home.
