What does Pride mean to me?
Nicole Guthrie
Director of Community Engagement, Urban Abbey
Pride isn’t something I’ve always had, and as I was reflecting about what Pride means to me, I realized that I’m still in the process of becoming who I am in some ways. Pride is standing in the boldness of the LGBTQ+ community, being bold yourself, and inviting others to the party. Literally, the definition of pride is: confidence and self-respect as expressed by members of a group, typically one that has been socially marginalized, on the basis of their shared identity, culture, and experience.
It’s challenging to have confidence, self-respect and be bold when you’ve struggled for so long to have your existence accepted, and I acknowledge that even in my own personal struggle, I’ve had a lot of privilege. My particular challenges met at the intersection of my faith and my queerness. Both are so important to me, but I grew into adulthood thinking I couldn’t be both. That I would have to choose. That I would have to leave part of myself behind, always. I didn’t really have a problem with being gay -- but I was very concerned about what the Church had to say and what the people I cared about would think of me. Those fears paralyzed me for nearly a decade. I was convinced that I would not be loved by family, friends, or God. I thought I would lose all of my most important relationships, I feared that I would never be able to be fully me and if I couldn’t be fully me, maybe being alive wasn’t even worth it. When faith leaders I looked up to told me they didn’t think who I am and how I love is “God’s best” for me, it stung. That language is dehumanizing, heart-breaking, and just plain wrong. Period. This easily leads to despair, not pride.
The intersection of faith and sexuality for me has been a lot of tip-toeing around whether or not I could or would ever feel whole in all the spaces that are sacred to me. Wondering if I would ever be able to find my voice. Would I sit in the silence or would I rise up, claim my space, and be bold. For too long, I have held onto the pain of the years I spent waffling between being gay and trying to pray it away.
Pride, to me, is also about becoming, about liberating myself from lies I believed previously. It’s finding great joy in a community that builds me up. Pride is making family from friends who see me and love me. Pride is reclaiming my faith, standing firm in who I am. Pride is working to ensure that those who come after you have less stories of despair. Pride is being BOLD. Standing UP and speaking OUT.
In my twenties, I was so timid. Instead of diving into the history of pride and gay liberation, I just barely scratched the surface. I belong to this beautiful, diverse, bold family united in Pride. Recently, I have found that I am woefully uneducated of the details of the history, the outrage and pain, and the riots that have made Pride what it is today: a beacon of hope to so many people. I have had the privilege of standing on the shoulders of those who have come before me, what a legacy they have given us. As Marsha P. Johnson, one of the prominent figures of the Stonewall Uprising, a black, drag queen, gay liberation activist said, “as long as my people don’t have rights across America, there’s no reason for celebration.”
So, I’m okay with Pride being a little muted this year -- I’m okay with there not being a big celebration. Because Pride is also about resistance. While rights have expanded, we still have work to do, there is still struggle, if black and brown bodies are seen and treated as disposable, there’s no reason for celebration. Pride reaches across various marginalized groups and because of that we amplify other voices. We stand in the acknowledgement that racism, sexism, ableism, white supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia. diminish the human spirit. What pride teaches us is that we have to stand together, we have to work for justice, we have to give space and priority to the voiceless. The legacy of Stonewall is that we resist, resist racism, sexism, ableism, white supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia. We stand alongside those who are still experiencing repression and oppression and journey with them towards justice and full liberation. This is our work, to stand alongside others, and so Pride to me this year means, I continue to stay educated, I continue to engage, I continue to resist, because in the words of Marsha P. Johnson there’s “no Pride for some of us, without liberation for all of us.”
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