Today marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, what is commonly referred to as the beginning of the modern LGBT equality movement and the reason that June is Pride month.  If you’re not familiar, here’s what happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFxpQG7nBQ

People ask why we celebrate pride.  NoFo writes it much more eloquently than I ever could, here is an excerpt:

We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes, when entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.
…
We’re proud because—thanks to the incredible bravery shown by gay people who lived their lives openly in the decades before us—we can live our lives more and more openly at home, at work, with our families, on our blogs … and even on national television.
…
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world is starting to notice and respect us and emulate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.

We’re proud because this weekend we’ll celebrate with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, attitude queens and you’d-never-know-they-were-queens queens, and together we can see through the “pride” in our parade and enjoy the underlying Pride in our parade.

Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so much to be proud of.

We can take some time, and even in the face of hatred, bigotry and discrimination, we can carve a place in this world, claim it our own and celebrate.

We can celebrate the community that we have, the radical acceptance that we embody and the fact that we’ve survived.  We have a chance to come together, remind ourselves we belong to a larger community, have some fun and take back our city; just for a little bit, even when it’s still dangerous to be perceived as gay, even in places like The Village:

This is my home. I’ve walked by that corner hundreds of times while holding Tony’s hand. And now, holding his hand again, I felt sick to my stomach. I felt sick because of the injustice. Because of the loss of life. Because my home had been violated. Because I thought we had moved beyond this. Because I felt vulnerable.

We know that hatred will continue, but still we march forward.  We have pride because it helps those coming after us.  In the words of Harvey Milk, it gives the next generation hope:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWo8BKJCxYQ

And this is a chance to celebrate the fact that I’ve survived.  A chance to celebrate the fact that I’m a proud gay man.  And even that act, powerful unto itself, has hopefully made a difference.

The most important and powerful action a person can make is to come out to those around them.  Then the LGBT community isn’t a scary abstract anymore, it has a face.  If you know someone who is openly LGBT, you see their humanity.  You can understand that we’re not asking for anything special, just the same rights everyone else is guaranteed by the constitution.  A chance to be happy.  A chance to live the life we want, surrounded by those we love.

When will we stop talking about coming out?

“Many of us want to, and will: when a gay, lesbian or transgendered kid isn’t at special risk of being brutalized or committing suicide.
…
“When a gay person’s central-casting earnestness and eloquence aren’t noted with excitement and relief, because his or her sexual orientation needn’t be accompanied by a litany of virtues and accomplishments in order for bigotry to be toppled and a negative reaction to be overcome.”

We will stop talking about coming out when it’s not news anymore, when the last barriers have finally been broken down.  We’ll stop screaming for our rights when we’re finally treated as equals by our government.  We’ll only stop telling our stories when they don’t matter.

This is a bit heavy handed (the original that this parodies was also over the top), but Crew Magazine put this together, and it rings true:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCuw-cIoWa0

So we keep fighting for progress, wherever we can.  We celebrate our advances and keep chipping away at our obstacles: and this month we can celebrate both, as well as the individuals that make up our amazing community.

We’re proud of how far we’ve come.  We’re proud to keep fighting.  We’re proud.

All my best,

Mike

I love the phrase “For science!” so I was excited to see a study released about the affects of marriage equality and discrimination:

[P]reventing gay and lesbian couples from getting married leads to negative side effects, including a 37% increase in mood disorders, a 42% increase in alcohol-use disorders, and a 248% increase in generalized anxiety disorders, according to Mark Hatzenbuehler, a psychologist at Columbia University.

And the opposite is true as well:

Hatzenbuehler has also found, in a study conducted in Massachusetts, that gay men experienced fewer stress-related disorders after that state permitted gay marriage.

In a study tracking the health of 1,211 gay men in Massachusetts, Hatzenbuehler found that the men visited doctors less often and had lower health treatment costs after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage.

It’s interesting to see studies showing this, and just the fact that having the rights we fight for are enough to boost public health.  Coupled with the economic benefits of marriage equality and non-discrimination ordinances, it really is a no-brainer.  And that’s science!

You can read more about it here.

All my best,

Mike

The BSA national board meets in fourteen days and on the agenda is the change to membership standards, which would allow openly gay youth, but not adults.  The staggering amount of information from their various surveys has been released, and I think it’s presented in a bit biased way, seeing as all the pro-equality comments are skimmed over at the very end of the information packet, but that may be me nit-picking.

The voting process itself is amazingly intricate (although from what I gather, no more intricate that votes of other large corporations or governing bodies).  The big news of course, is that the largest backer (in terms of sponsoring units), the Mormon Church, is supporting the proposed membership standards.  In fact, only one of the major sponsoring partners is against the change.

And no, the proposed change is not perfect.  But it’s a step towards full equality, and a step in the right direction.  We have to remember that.  Right now, kids are being discriminated against, and that kind of institutionalized discrimination drives young people to suicide.  So even though there are plenty of adults, like me, who would love to go back and volunteer, we have to check our egos at the door and remember that this is a youth organization and we have to support the youth first and foremost.  This isn’t about us.  We have to abide by the campsite rule and make it better for those coming after us.

And yes, the policy basically comes down to this:

But youth are smarter than we give them credit for, that I promise you.  They see the hypocrisy, and understand that it’s a step in the right direction (not to mention that it’s not a viable solution long-term, just in terms of the gray definition of youth when you pull in OA and Venturing).  But this gives them a place to be safe, a place to belong and a place where they can finally be themselves, become better citizens, be exposed to hobbies and vocations and develop skills they’ll carry their whole lives.

And besides, LGBT members have always, always been members of the BSA.  We just lean on those around us, and recognize that there are many fighting for us inside the organization as well.

In the meantime, an equality minded similar organization is showing growth, the UK Scouts (where it all started) is inviting everyone to join them at Pride celebrations this summer and a gay former Scout spends a day with a local troop, giving them the best cinematography merit badge classes ever:

Zach Wahls, founder of Scouts for Equality, mops the floor with an anti-equality activist, and the Good Men Project hits is perfectly with this essay.  A father and son team are cycling across the country to raise awareness for the membership change, while at the same time, conservatives aregoingcrazy making shit up (three separate links there), and the epicenter of all this, the Cradle of Liberty Council in Philadelphia, will be vacating their long-time headquarters because of the national stance (that they tried to work-around).

Also, in the weird side of things, the Family Research Council has nothing else to do besides steal photos, badly doctor them and try to pass them off as from Irving.  I don’t have anything to add to that, but sometimes, you just have to acknowledge the bizarre and keep on moving.

We’ve come a long way since BSA v Dale.  We have further to go, but this is a step towards full equality.  If you haven’t already, contact your local council, or donate to Scouts for Equality.