Today is the last day of Pride month, and I’m just finally getting around to saying what I’ve been wanting to say. It’s probably fitting that I’m late to the party — I have a bit of a fraught relationship with pride. As a common noun, I was taught that it was an attribute that good Christians like me should fight against. As a proper noun — that June every year — it was something to be avoided at all costs. In my younger years, the pride of rainbow-flag-waving queer people at Pride struck me as a compound horror: not only were these people unquestionably proud, but they reveled in traits that I believed should be hidden away. Their explicit disavowal of shame made no sense to me, a closeted gay Christian. In the world I inhabited, shame was a plentiful resource.
If Pride comes every June, April is probably Self-Loathing and May some sort of Uneasy Tolerance. For many queer folks raised in religious environments, the simplest way that we could understand our difference was through a lens of fear, especially for those of us who saw our queerness as a one-way ticket to eternal damnation. This was a particularly toxic kind of fear, as it was directed inwards, towards a belief in our fundamental inferiority that kept us from belonging anywhere. We weren’t ourselves in the pews, where our sexuality was anathema, but we also didn’t belong at the Pride parades, where people felt free to celebrate the thing that brought us the most shame. Ask any Christian who grew up in the evangelical church — it was tough. But even for queer people not burdened by this kind of exclusionary theology, there have always been other ways to foster self-hatred: the playground insults, the odd looks, the insulting comments about other queer people, made in the confidence that you could never be one of them.
In recent years, I’ve had space to process my past. I have been in a loving relationship for years, and I have long made peace with my faith and my sexual orientation, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to actually take pride in who I am. I’m finally making that leap from tolerance to Pride. The disadvantages of being gay are easy to see — the awkward coming-out conversations, the fear of showing public affection, the difficulty of finding safe spaces (both real and metaphorical) — but there is good, too. I have found incredible community with other LGBTQ people. The years I spent dissecting my innermost feelings, suppressing my experiences of love, and fracturing myself into palatable parts were difficult, but they made me more empathetic and open to the struggles of others. As with so many closeted teens, I spent years terrified that my deepest, darkest secret would be revealed. When this secret was exposed and I learned that I could still be loved, the world opened to me in incredible new ways. It has been a messy, beautiful journey.
And now, I can finally say it: I wouldn’t change who I am.
There are those who think that Pride has gotten out of hand, who wish that people would just shut up about their sexual orientation. Honestly, I’m sympathetic — in a world where corporations use Pride as a branding exercise, it’s easy to lose sight of what Pride is for. But those who think that Pride month is “too much” have clearly never been relegated to the cultural and societal sidelines. Pride’s detractors don’t realize what it’s like to crave representation, respect, and freedom, likely because those things have never been kept from them. Ultimately, you can’t know the pain of not being yourself until you’ve had to live as someone else. Pride is for those of us who had to claw our truest selves back from the brink, who rebuilt ourselves from the pieces that remained after years of self-denial.
For queer people like me who tend to avoid conflict — yes, I know, ironic for a lawyer — it always feels easier to accommodate others, water down our lives, and constantly try to mitigate any awkwardness. But no one wins when we stay in hiding. In that way, I’ve learned that Pride is costly; it is difficult; it requires discipline. It’s not an indulgence or an exercise in extravagance, despite how many may perceive it. It remains an act of rebellion, a reclamation of our dignity from those who have tried and tried to take it away.
Pride is a protest and a celebration, both as it exists culturally and within each person who has lived their life with shame. It’s become a cliché, but there truly is nothing better than living freely as yourself. And I guess this is pride, too: sharing this post with my small circle of influence is a statement that my story is worth sharing, my life is worth sharing, and my love is worth celebrating. It’s taken years for me to believe that, but now I really do. And it’s my hope that this resonates with someone else on their own journey of self-understanding, walking that difficult road from self-denial to Pride. If that’s you, I’d love to talk some time. Hopefully one day you can say this, too: I am proud of who I am.