Photo credit: Milwaukee Pride Facebook page
Here we are in the midst of Pride Month, our commemoration of that moment when, on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, drag queens, lesbians and gays, largely of color, rebelled against straight oppression. I’m proud of that and of being gay.
Someone recently asked me what it was like growing up gay in Connecticut. My answer probably disappointed them. I didn’t have the trauma of some. I had a partnered gay uncle, my mother was a big band singer from New York City whose only real criteria in judging a person was whether they could carry a tune, and I attended a small Catholic, all-male school with none of the obligatory, pubescent sexual jockeying I might have experienced in a large co-ed public school.
Forced or enforced heterosexual conformity wasn’t really a part of my life until coming to Milwaukee to go to college. By that point, I had pretty much figured things out but straightness was still the pervading tone (I even dated girls). My first experiences of specific animus towards my orientation were those fag jokes in the dorm. But, it really didn’t matter, although it did awaken me to certain realities.
In fact, now that I think of it, although a lot has improved for LGBTQs since then, that pervading tone still persists—like when people propose a Straight Pride Month, as if they deserve it. It’s based in that same mindset as the argument for White History Month to counter Black History Month. What they fail to recognize, perhaps because they are immersed in it, is, like White History, Straight Pride is a 24/7 frenzied bacchanal in all its incessant and crass monotony. Whether in the ennui of straight sexual innuendo on TV sitcoms, in political discourse, or in the nude “art” of the First Lady herself (with a nod to lesbian love for the titillation of straight guys), the force-fed pap is unrelenting.
And then there’s the straight-washing and straight-’splaining LGBTQ people endure as a quotidian matter of course. When I wrote that French impressionist Gustave Caillebotte was likely gay, a straight colleague reacted with “I’m not buying it.” Another chimed in, “He was maaar-ried.” Well, no, he wasn’t married. Besides, even if he had been, that would have at best been that conformity issue I mentioned. The thing is, neither offered any real proof of their premise other than the presumption that because their world is essentially straight, any accomplished individual must necessarily be so as well.
Back in 2009 when Milwaukee’s SSBL hosted the gay softball world series, there was a bit of gushing local press about it. In response, some readers’ commentaries were not “buying” that, either. One, I recall, went, “If they want equality, why do they need their own world series?” Silly straight people…it’s not about that sort of equality (which sounds more like assimilation to the point of surrendering LGBTQ identity because it makes straight folks more comfortable). Maybe it’s because, like having an Italian Community Center or a Methodist Church, we just enjoy our own company, culture and commonality...birds of a feather, and all. Besides, we’re more fun. Of course, everybody is welcome to our table, proudly.