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So what’s important for the gay kid in the room is not that no straight boy ever says faggot and no straight boy or girl ever uses gay as a pejorative. And so they externalize that fear, and they want to broadcast to the world that they ain’t faggots. There’s a certain amount of panic and insecurity that’s hardwired into adolescence and into all the little straight boys because they’re all afraid it’s going to happen to them. I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I have to hug you,” and I’m like, “Really? You have to?” The way to give me a hug is not to touch me. They approach me and Terry in restaurants or airports, just sobbing because it saved their lives. The It Gets Better project is five years old, so I’m meeting 22-year-olds who were 16 or 17 when it started. What makes me uncomfortable? Compliments and praise. Monogamy is not something straight people require of each other to be legally married. The standard riff was, “Why shouldn’t loving, committed, monogamous gay couples be allowed to marry?” But not all of that was true. And there was this disconnect between the way we live and what was being said about us in the argument about marriage equality. Most long-term gay male couples are not monogamous. When I wrote about the fact that Terry and I are not monogamous, I expected more anger than I got. And that process disincentivizes apologizing for shit in the first place. It’s brought up constantly as fresh new evidence of your assholery. What’s weird is that the thing that you apologize for is constantly thrown in your face over and over again, as if you hadn’t already apologized for it. And so having to say “Yeah, that was a mistake, and I’m sorry” is part of the gig. But you know what? There are shitty gay people in the world.Īnybody who runs their mouth for a living is going to run themselves into a ditch every once in a while. And they have this expectation going into the gay community that they’re going to meet all of these wonderful, nice, lovely people who will love and support them. They are told that coming out is a solution to all their troubles when, in fact, coming out is the beginning of new and different troubles.
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The term gay community is silly because it creates unrealistic expectations. Pride didn’t mean you have to act on any impulse you have as a queer person without thinking about consequences or other people’s feelings. Pride didn’t mean everything queer is good or better than anything straight. Pride meant all this garbage was thrown at you and you came through it as a healthy, sane, functional adult. It gets abused by some queer people as a shield against self-reflection and any sort of accountability.
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I just wish more people understood what that term is supposed to mean. I’m for pride parades, and I’m for pride. I don’t want to hear about you sucking your boyfriend’s dick anymore. Straight people.” Eventually she was like, “All right. Who’s making our relationship a dead end? The culture. And she would look at my boyfriend, and all she could see was blow jobs and a dead end. So she knew my sister was fellating her boyfriend, but she didn’t have to see the blow job because she could picture what would come from it. When I came out to my mother, she said, “Don’t bring a boy around to the house.” I would say, “How come my sister’s boyfriend can come over, but my boyfriend can’t?” And my mother would say, “It’s different.” What was different was she would look at my sister and her boyfriend and see the potential for marriage and family life.