The Real ‘Pride’ that endangers our children

I want to experience your vulnerability but I don’t want to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me.

I’m drawn by your vulnerability but repelled by mine.

—Brene’ Brown

There is real definite pushback on the LGBTQ community right now that we are a dangerous indoctrinating message to children–part of the “woke” movement or a similar twin. I get an image of the Shining twins for the extreme conservatives with the ‘woke’ community and then us the gays. From the banning of books to limitations on Pride Events and Drag Queens to schools becoming more brazen about removing LGBTQ support clubs and teachers, I hear that old White Snake song playing but with a re-write for our community ‘Here we go again on our own! Down the only path we’ve ever known!”

People who hold these concerns and want these bans suggesting children should be free of us from somehow “indoctrinating” them need to consider their history–but they won’t because history and science take too many brain cells. Homosexuality has been around before even ancient Greece had older men training younger men as boy toys to teach them about the birds and the bees. Good news! Today, no one is being taught like that so you can release that anal squeeze. Bad news: Being Gay just is. It isn’t taught.

When I was young and in school, there wasn’t a sliver of LGBTQ. Nothing. Being gay was the absolute worse thing you could be at home and at school. Not even a rainbow flag pin in sight. This was what we were indoctrinated with. All the youth around me were indoctrinated in something for sure. To hate kids like me who weren’t “athletic” and not “manly”. I even had a teacher bully me daily for looking like a bird and a “fag”. Anyone into music in my school was a “fag”. Athletics was the biggest deal. Who taught those kids that? Where was the parental outrage? Can you imagine parents being upset about an emphasis on athletics? Not likely. Why did kids have to lose their life in suicide as a result? Was the danger the gays in that scenario? No, the danger was to me and others like me.

I am a teacher. I’ve been in the field of education now for 14 years and never once did I see any school teachers instruct kids on critical race theory or persuade kids to be gay or even mention gays. Heck, you could be fired for being gay and that is still in place for many districts. The most I’ve seen is a support group for lgbtq kids. I’m very serious. I wouldn’t tell you otherwise because I never wanted to be gay in the first place. I didn’t wake up one day, yawn and say “Oh glorious ME! I’m going to be gay. Horray!”

What I have seen in schools instead is a lot of hate indoctrinated into kids by their parents. I had one student who totally loved the funny outfits I wear to make kids laugh come to me upset that her parent told her I was a “fucking faggot” for wearing it. It was just a silly costume not intended to be reflecting anything gay but because it had multiple colors in it the parent assumed it was “rainbow” colors and thus I deserved this derogatory comment for it. Who is indoctrinating who? And on hate or acceptance? Are these kids going to be able to get along with each other when parents who say they are against “woke” teach such hate?

Unlike many youths today, who honestly have it easier than I did in the eighties, I never wanted to be gay. I convinced myself I was a victim of a slow growth spurt that I prayed daily would speed the hell up. When that didn’t change, I went from school to school with this terrible cloud of shame as I was bullied for my looks and for who I was though I was still hoping it wasn’t who I was. Peers and adults bullied me. This wasn’t “woke” culture doing this to me. This wasn’t “woke” culture indoctrination. This was the culture that is now trying to take us back to those days very kind of days and say we gays are a danger to society. That somehow we can convince or would ever want to convince someone to become gay and suffer the hardships in this society we go through? Plah-ese.

Oh let me tell you, it is a hard life. Sure, you can look at social media or look at a Pride Event and see the twinks and think it’s all roses and partying. For most of us, it isn’t. For me, I hid from myself for years. Then I came out and surely that would be a grand, Disney thrill ride of parties, sex, and rock and roll, right? Unless you are born with Rob Lowe looks, that isn’t happening for you. There was that initial excitement but in all due honesty, you enter the bastion of a community of wounded people. People who have suffered in a world who, as Cher would sing about, want to ‘Turn Back Time” and stone us to death. Wounded people then go and wound people. So I’ve been through gay clubs and organizations, one after the other, finding myself eventually kicked in the balls or stabbed in the back, mocked or looked down upon because my fellow gays are afraid to be vulnerable. It’s made it terribly difficult to be vulnerable and keep trying. But I also try to remember that many gays are fortunate if they grew up with an intact family that didn’t despise them at all, so how to do relationships isn’t ingrained often. They aren’t allowed to have many mentor roles out there unless they pay for therapy which isn’t always affordable.

Let me tell you, it was so hard and such a journey and a lifelong process coming out. It isn’t a one time event. A one-time announcement and you are done. It is a process of acceptance as it is for any of you to wrap your minds around it. If you think it’s off-putting just imagine how it feels for us embracing a body and system counter-culture to everything this culture teaches. We are the ones living it in our bodies, not you. It’s ungodly difficult. The gay community itself doesn’t make it any easier. Just because their banners all around that say “We Be Gay”, many gays don’t want to be vulnerable because they have been hurt before. Most of their real selves have checked out of the building or been kicked out and they may not even be aware of it. What you get is “Pride” of a different sort. A ‘look at me’, aren’t I special.” “Please, give me the applause I deserve it NOW.’ ” I need and want your sex. Now that we’re done, NEXT!’

We’re entertaining, we can make you laugh or raz-dazzle with talent or song, or we will rage on and make you cry. Oh please, will you cry with me dear? The cheating man I knew for 5 months broke up with me! Tissue? But it is rare you will find true, true vulnerability and authentic relationships. It’s rarer at my age, coming out later in life. But, have you seen the latest Broadway show? Everyone will be posting that on Facebook, you can bet your life on it. This is why gay men are ranked as the number one highest social group to experience loneliness for a good degree of their lives. A gay man I know recently committed suicide and while many want to wave a hanky, they weren’t all paying attention when he was alive. He belonged to 2 very popular local gay organizations and knew a lot of gay people. The connections weren’t there even though he took a lot of selfies with people from them. You could hear the heartache in these posts that would bubble up on his social media now and again. No one took them seriously, not even myself, till more near the end. I tried to get him to meet with me near the end but he didn’t and took his life.

The darker side of Pride affects us all. We aren’t the only social group dealing with loneliness on a large scale. The Surgeon General called loneliness a nationwide epidemic and I think it’s because all of this darker side of Pride keeping us from real connection and the vulnerability that will bring us there. Can we learn our lessons from our darker side? I’m not sure I will see it in my lifetime.

It’s a darker side of pride to be straight and say that a gay person being themself in a public setting is too dangerous for kids when that very same kid who is gay must also go to public settings and be called “fag” and other hateful terms for being themselves. It’s a darker side of pride that says we all must conform to a certain set of “straight” heterosexual norms or otherwise our schools are unsafe for our children when science has shown us, people in our lives have shown us, not all people are born straight.

It is also a darker side of Pride when we as a gay community put up these walls instead of being vulnerable. It’s all about the show, look at me! I can make you gush over me, laugh, look at what I can do! I can act, sing and dance! What is it you want to see? I’ll do it for your applause. Heck, I’ll do it for peanuts, just love me! That’s not vulnerability. An organization isn’t vulnerable when twinks in organizations are favored over other age groups, or there is any favoritism of any kind. Our youth aren’t learning how to value age but instead learning to despise and fear it. Our gay culture is still ripe with that. A darker side of Pride is when you yourself pretend your friend groups are “family” but you know down deep it’s all shallow and you need to risk more authentic relationships. A darker side of pride is the one-up ship, the backstabbing, and all of the hyper-sexualizing yet getting insulted when others outside the community point it out. This all has got to stop for true healing and true vulnerability to happen for us. Otherwise, no one is ever going to take us seriously. We will continue to look like a bunch of little girls and boys who are partying, playing make-believe, and dress-up demanding to be treated as adults. A group of people who really are in love with one person alone. Themselves.

To me, these darker sides of Pride are the real dangers our children face both straight and gay, and it really all boils down to being true to ourselves and letting others be true to themselves. It’s the fear of being vulnerable that Brene’ Brown talks about. We admire it in others but when it’s our turn it can become a whole different story. Don’t let it become a different story, a dark story, a non-story. You admire it others and now do it for yourself and heal the world around you. The course of our future depends on us riding the wave between courage and fear. That wave and that place is called vulnerability. If you exist, then I must be allowed to exist too or our world will fall apart. Now gurl, who wants that? 🙂