National GLBT Pride Month on June, 2024: Whats Pflag?
June, 2024 is National GLBT Pride Month 2024. LGBT Pride Month Volunteer At Pride! Help Make The Case For Equality.
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Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG) is a national non-profit organization with over 200,000 members and supporters and over 500 affiliates in the United States with additional chapters in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
In 1972, Jeanne Manford started an international movement when she marched with her son Mortie in New York’s Gay Pride Parade. Enraged that her son had been beaten at a gay rights protest two months before while police did nothing, she carried a sign at the Pride march that said, "Parents of Gays: Unite in Support of Our Children." PFLAG represents the largest chapter network in the struggle for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) rights.
Why should any class have the right to force their sexuality on someone else?
1) "Being gay is not a lifestyle so much as it is a sex style."
I beg your pardon? Being straight is not a lifestyle so much as it is a sex style, too. Except that . . . sexual orientation is much more than just sex. It is about romance and love, too, both in heterosexuality and homosexuality (and bisexuality and pansexuality, and so on and so on).
2) Getting fired for a joke Halloween costume is ridiculous.
3) I wish we lived in a society where sexual orientation didn't matter, I really do. I wish we lived in a place like your home, where your friends are your friends, not your gay friend and your lesbian friend, where the only difference between us was what we did behind closed doors (or in the backseat of the car . . . or the gloryhole in the men's room . . . yada yada). I wish we lived in a place where nobody assumed anybody else's sexuality.
But we don't. We live in a place where sexual orientation is still a HUGE issue, where people are teased, harassed, attacked, raped, and even killed or driven to suicide because of it. THIS is what gay pride is trying to fight. Gay pride is saying that until the world stops treating gay people different, we NEED to stand up and say that we're gay. Homophobia and GLBT violence all come from the same place: dehumanizing gay people. Gay pride tells us to come out, to stand up, to say that we are here, we're queer, and you better get used to it. It urges people to realize that gay folks are all around you- we are your friends, your family, your neighbors, your mailman and your grocer. It is a sign to everybody still hiding away in the closet to come on out, to work towards acceptance of everybody.
Frankly, I'd love to live in a place where EVERYBODY came out and said their orientation, and celebrated the sheer diversity of human life and the sexual spectrum. You'd rather everybody shut up, but I'd rather everybody spoke out. I can't imagine how hard it must be being away in the military, and the one thing that we all pretty much share regardless of gender or orientation- love- is such a comfort . . . yet you'd have us hide it away. Never able to talk glowingly about your partner and show pictures to your bunkmates, to never share a bawdy joke that celebrates the funny silly wonder of sex, never to share what makes us human instead of robots. I dunno . . . that just makes me sad.
Our society is so screwed up when it comes to sex, and I think that pride is one of the things the GLBT community has gotten right- I wish we could spread this openness about sex and sexuality and sexual orientation to the straight community, too. But that's just me.
