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June is Pride Month, commemorating
the violent police raid on the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, when
GLBTQ activists fought abusive police officers who beat gay men,
lesbians, and those who cross-dressed. So-called law enforcement
also participated in blackmail and extortion against those who were
closeted. It took fifty years, until June 2019, for the New York
City police commissioner to apologize for the raid. While the
GLBTQIA community has increased visibility and acceptance, there is
also the putrid and hateful resistance to the very existence of this
community.
In
a tiny Texas town, a bakery that offered Rainbow cookies in honor of
Pride Month faced a detestable backlash when a patron who ordered
five dozen cookies, a sizeable order for a small family-run bakery,
canceled their order (having not paid for it) because they felt that
a Facebook recognition of Pride month was "gay
propaganda."
In
Jacksonville, Florida, a planned bridge lighting in honor of Pride
Month was threatened, some say over intergovernmental jurisdictional
issues, while others say it was simple homophobia. In a Washington,
DC suburb, a teacher says he violates his religion to refer to young
people by their preferred pronouns. He was fired, and he sues to say
that it violates his faith for him to be courteous and compassionate
to others. The court agrees with him, and he is headed back to the
classroom, intolerant as ever. These are incidents that have bubbled
into the national consciousness, but others go unreported. The
bottom line is that hate – racism, homophobia, and more –
thrives in our nation, and few are prepared to stop it.
Police
violence is at the root of Pride Month, just as it is at the
foundation of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The Movement for
Black Lives has been firmly and fiercely supportive of GLBTQIA
rights, especially sensitive to the rights of trans people, focusing
on the trans women who are exponentially more likely to be murdered
than others. But with police violence as the common root of two
vital movements, why is there so little visible collaboration between
those communities). Gay pride is Black pride, too. Let's call the
roll of Black GBLTQIA leaders and thinkers –Bayard Rustin,
Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, so many others. And let’s
look at hate and hate crime from an intersectional perspective and
solutions from that same place.
Pride
Month has to be about Black Pride, too, about embracing all LGBTQIA
identities. After all, as we experience major demographic shifts,
the population, and the electorate, are increasingly diverse. We
need to see the intersectional in our commemorations, celebration,
and more. And we need to be vocal about our opposition to hate and
hateful behavior no matter how it is directed. For example, in an
ideal world, the NAACP would have bought some Juneteenth cookies
(and maybe they still will) from the Confections bakery in Lufkin,
Texas.
Our
task is not to respond to each hateful incident but to build a
movement that rejects hate. And our mission is to do it "at a
time such as this" when the haters empower many who are fearful
of inevitable change. Now is a time for a mass movement against
racism, homophobia, sexism, and hate. It begins when we know our
histories and share them. It starts when we acknowledge that Gay
Pride Month is about Black Pride, too, that Women's History is not
White Women's History, Native American History is not a footnote, and
hatred is contemptuous.
The
carte blanche that so-called "officers of the law" have to
terrorize communities they don't like is especially contemptuous.
The same way they bullied gay folks in the 1950s and 60s is the same
way they terrorize Blak communities today. Building on Stonewall's
history, the GLBTQIA communities should be some of the most vital
voices supporting the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Dr.
Dorothy Irene Height was fond of speaking of collective strength.
She would say, if I tap you with my finger, you may never feel it,
but if my fingers turn into a fist and I tap you then, you'll feel
it. If Black folks and LGBTQIA folks join with others, perhaps we
can stop the hate. The folks who patronized Celebrations Bakery in
the face of hate put a firewall between ugly and love. They are the
fist Dr. Height referenced. Are we part of the fist?
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