June is Pride Month, meaning that like any other period of the calendar year devoted to awareness, time is taken for 30 days to recognize the existence of those human beings we see every day who are part of a more diverse (and before present day, unacknowledged) population.
These are people who take public transit, or a bike or motorized scooter, to a job every day, or they drive a vehicle on our roads. They work several hours providing their talents and services, whether it’s in the labor, retail, executive or medical fields. They then collect a paycheck, and return to wherever they call home.
Some of them walk through the door to a partner of the same gender as they, and get a kiss and hug and a “How was your day?”
No different, really. Don’t we all deserve somebody to go home to, and what difference should it make to anybody else?
But even among the many religious groups in the world who stress honoring each human being for who they are individually, there are those who would rather wag their fingers and invoke shameful words to members of the LGBTQ+ group.
Our town held a parade this past week, and a group of Christian adherents with an extreme conservative lean were there to make their voices heard. Words about committing sin were sent into the air over a private microphone as parade participants marched down the main street and celebrated just being alive.
There was, however, another noise being heard. Several musicians provided a counterpoint of equal volume or louder to take some of the negativity out of the protestors’ hi-fi rhetoric. Large Pride rainbow flags were hoisted nearby. Nobody got angry and told the protestors to take a hike. They were allowed to remain, though it’s doubtful anybody was truly paying attention to anything but the music from the small instrumental group and the applause from the appreciative crowd at the fun being displayed in the center of town on an early pre-Summer night. It was an evening for inclusion, and include they did.
The definition of “pride” is twofold. There is being arrogant about who you are, or there is being humble and self-respecting. Many faiths stress that one should not be boastful, and that we should regard each person by their individual worth while also honoring that within us.
If we were to remove every person who was LGBTQ+ in our history out of memory, we would lose classic movies from actors such as Rock Hudson, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Cary Grant. We would also not have inventors such as Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Francis Bacon (the “Father of Modern Science” without whom our observational methods would not exist), not to mention Florence Nightingale and George Washington Carver.
Yet we only want our talent to come from what we consider “normal” or “safe.”
News flash. None is us is completely normal or safe, yet we contribute.
Pride Month is not so much about what is unusual about human behavior as it is about realizing that the behavior comes from a variety of souls with stories enough to fill Earth with a library in which no two books are the same.
Would we reject a cure for cancer if it came from an LGBTQ+ person, just because somebody who is not an opposite gender companion is waiting at home for them after their research is done?
I’m glad our town’s parade was a success, and that everybody got a chance to say their piece in their own way. And I hope the protestors came away with some well-grounded afterthoughts about what happened to them. Which was nothing. Because “Pride Month” is not a threat to them or anybody, but a call to reason and a reminder that we all have something to offer in life.
Let us all live to the fullest.
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