Pride 101: Pride Month begins

Before the 1969 Stonewall riots, virtually every aspect of the lives of gay people was illegal to varying degrees in America: being openly gay, showing public affection, having sex, marriage, adoption, assembly in public, assembly in private, going to gay bars … even owning bars with any form of gay designation.

The only gay bars that existed were owned by crime syndicates, who definitely weren’t at the vanguard of fighting for gay liberation; they saw in the gay population a steady and highly dependent form of revenue that the mobs could protect via their considerable influence over law enforcement. Gay people were exploited for our desperate need to find each other and for the money we were willing to pay to feel like we weren’t alone. We paid exorbitant prices for watered-down, bottom-shelf liquor. We gathered in buildings that were unclean, unsafe and unimportant to society. We entered those bars carrying cash for bail with the clear expectation that we might need it.

The subtexts were shame, risk, secrecy, and arrest and public humiliation—and the very likely loss of our families, jobs and homes—if we were caught entering or exiting these bars.

But in the gathering momentum of our achievements in equality over the last half century, our forebears demanded—and slowly, surely got—our growing equality and our freedom to live our lives openly and safely and without imposed shame and exploitation.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.