CRAIG CHESTER
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| illustration: Joe Fournier |
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My first experience with a Gay Pride parade was on television. It was 1975 and
I was lying on the floor watching the news with my father when, suddenly, colorful
homosexuals burst into our beige living room in Texas. Prancing around on our
Zenith TV, a middle-aged man with a mustache twirled a baton with unbridled joy.
“Why do they have to flaunt it?” someone on TV asked the reporter.
As the mustached man marched proudly down the street, I blushed. I felt embarrassed
that my father was seeing this swishy character because, even at age 9, I knew
there might be a baton in my future someday.
Ten years later, I was there, marching down the street in the same parade I
had seen on TV as a boy. My first Gay Pride parade did the thing its title suggests—it
gave me pride. It was also the height of AIDS activism. Bubbling just beneath
the surface of the frivolity was a community of people united by their own mortality.
I was shocked by the sheer numbers of other gays of all shapes and sizes. There
was such a feeling of acceptance of one another. I took off my t-shirt for the
first time in public that year.
Around 1995, I started putting my shirt back on.
Over the years, I began to take the Gay Pride parade for granted. The more
I became integrated in the world, the less I felt I needed parades—which seemed
to become less like political marches and more like circuit parties on wheels.
Then, George W. Bush got elected.
Then, he got re-elected!
The false sense of security we were given during the Clinton years has ended.
It’s over. I know we thought we had “arrived.” We had Will & Grace, Queer as
Folk, Ellen, gay movies in our theaters, gay books on the bestseller list. I
thought we’d won! I took it for granted, just like the Pride parade.
After last year’s election, when so much of the country seemed to come out
of its own closet, happily proclaiming, “Hi! We hate gays!” I was enormously
disappointed. Did none of it matter? All these years of activism, of marches?
I was tired. Can we please just get on with our lives and not have to keep fighting
for basic stuff? But then I accepted reality. We have to keep marching. No matter
how entertaining we are to the masses, we will never “arrive” until we receive
equal rights under the law. The law.
To me, the ultimate civil-rights issue lays in marriage equality. Once you
fall in love, that’s when you realize how your relationship, how your very heart
is politicized. Scott Peterson has the right to marry a total stranger from
prison, yet you cannot marry the man you live with and love. When you have fewer
civil rights than a convicted killer, you are barely human, and that’s a pretty
good reason to take to the streets, don’tcha think?
This year I will be marching because I realized that I should ask not what
Gay Pride can do for me, but what I can do for Gay Pride. The Gay Pride parade
is about celebration, but it’s also a huge act of political activism. The more
people there are raising hell and marching, the more we are seen as strong and
unified. Stonewall started as an act of rebellion. It was fueled by righteous
indignation and anger. You don’t become a hero until you put your own personal
security on the line, until you leave your comfort zone. Taking to the streets
is the only thing that has worked historically because visibility counts. Raising
your voice counts. The American people and their politicians respond to passion.
If we are passionate about our own lives, we will eventually prevail. We’ve
worked very hard getting “them” to like “us.” We’ve been the best little boys
in the world. Now we need to become strong men and women.
So look for this man at the parade. I’ll be the one twirling the baton.
is appearing on a Gay Pride
float near you, promoting his gay romantic comedy, Adam & Steve, which stars
himself, and openly gay actor Malcolm Gets, Parker Posey and Chris Kattan.
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