the flip side of pride
David on Jun 16th 2007
We’re thrilled to bring another guest post by our friend Stacy LaPoint. Stacy is a single parent and founder and President of Companion Natural Pet Food of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
It was a beautiful weekend for Milwaukee’s 20th Year Anniversary Pride Fest. The sky was a brilliant blue over Lake Michigan all three days and the fest grounds buzzed with the vibrant energy and talents of the Wisconsin LGBTQ community and their allies.
I spent some time volunteering for the Lesbian Alliance sponsored wine booth Friday night and the Milwaukee Rainbow Families booth Saturday. The matter-of-fact confidence, love and self respect among the people I met, was inspiring to say the least.
Milwaukee Rainbow Families shared booth space with the Milwaukee PFLAG chapter. Watching the moms and dads talk to others about their support and dedication for their gay children seemed like the truest kind of love imaginable to me. Their effort to protect their children from discrimination and cultivate awareness and fairness for their kid’s lives was so heart-warming to watch. They took turns counter protesting outside the front gate and staffing the PFLAG booth, speaking out to everyone that walked past, making sure anyone who needed information would receive it.
Another amazing group of people I met was with the Alliance for LGBTQ Youth in Foster Care, an arm of Children’s Service Society of Wisconsin. These dedicated people offer support, mentoring and counseling to the segment of our LGBTQ community most in need—kids in the foster care system (many times ending up there because their families abandon them due to their orientation), who in some way are grappling with coming out, being out or questioning their orientation. The whole concept made me think fostering LGBTQ youth may be in my future, if not some kind of work to help this especially vulnerable segment of our community.
Having spent time with many of the hardest working members and allies of the LGBTQ community, I felt motivated and energized as I left the fest grounds Saturday. But something happened while I passed a group of protesters that reminded me of a book I just finished, simply called Pride, by Michael Eric Dyson. It’s one in a series of books categorized under Religion/Philosophy by Oxford University Press & The New York Public Library.
This particular book points out that pride is the only one of the seven deadly sins with a virtuous side. Its author, Dyson, considered one of the nation’s foremost intellectuals, shares many musings about the different ways pride can be healthy, yet so quickly spiral into something harmful and even deadly. In the final chapter called “My Country Right or Wrong? National Pride,” Dyson looks broadly at the many examples of religious pride fueling violence against minorities in our society, culture and history. He suggests the religious bigotry that encouraged the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center is one and the same as that, that fuels social stigma and violence experienced by victims of racism, sexism and homophobia in our society.
As I stood waiting for a friend to pick me up, I listened to the back and forth, sometimes hostile words between religious protesters and Pride Fest attendees. As the young, Right Wing, Bible quoting zealots spewed verses and preached about our eventual atonement for our sins, a young girl sporting a frizzy rainbow wig stepped forward and spit in the face of a female protester. People on both sides gasped with horror as it was obvious she had crossed a line. Another young man yelled out “you just got spit on by a 15 year old.” It was then that I realized the flip side of pride. That bigotry has many victims, on all sides. That one’s pride is only as virtuous as their ability to keep it from victimizing someone else. That LGBTQ youth need role models, within the LGBTQ community, to learn how to stand up for their equality without creating the same kind of hate and bigotry that they are so desperate to end.
I still left the fest feeling a sense of hope, belonging and strength in numbers. A record attendance was made this year. I saw many demonstrations of truly virtuous pride over the entire three days. Ultimately, though, it seems to me that this annual celebration of Pride, itself, is a benchmark for the work that lies ahead for us all.
Filed in general |
