Why is Pride Month (still) important?
As a teenager, who at the time understood his sexuality about as well as the theory of topological quantum computation, I always viewed Pride with some disdain. After all, why should you be proud of something over which you have no control and involves no achievement on your part? Maybe this was me still being in denial, maybe it was to do with the attitudes around which I grew up — these were along the lines of “gays are fine, as long as they don’t rub it in our faces” — or maybe I just never had anyone point out to me that the same reasoning could be applied to the shame LGBTQ+ people have to face. Why should anyone feel shame for something they cannot control?
To me, Pride is about just that — undoing the implicit and systemic shame that every LGBTQ+ person faces at some point in their lives, as well as recognising that there are indeed achievements to be proud of, celebrating them, and not taking them for granted. Equal LGBTQ+ rights were not easy to fight for, they were not obtained overnight, and in most of the world, the fight is far from over.
In my home country of the Czech Republic, same-sex marriage has not been legalised yet (somehow surprising to most British people when I tell them), so we have the great pleasure of revisiting the issue on a semi-regular annual basis in the form of suitably toxic public discourse. Of course the beginning of Pride Month this year was no different, when a motion to legalise same-sex marriage was tabled in parliament, only to be closely followed by another to constitutionally define marriage as being between a man and a woman. Though the Czech Republic does have same-sex registered partnerships, they do not guarantee the same rights as marriage — there is no concept of matrimonial assets, there are no bereavement benefits available in the event of a partner’s death, and crucially, registered partners cannot adopt children together.
It is sometimes easy to forget just how recently these battles have been won in other Western countries, where equal rights are now a matter of course. In the UK, the equality act is only 11 years old, and the law allowing same-sex marriage only came into effect eight years ago. I’m old enough to remember the enactment of these changes, but not old enough to know what it was like before or to truly appreciate the impact they had on people’s lives. That’s why I think these conversations are the most important thing about Pride Month.
For LGBTQ+ individuals struggling to understand who they are, it can be very reassuring to see the full spectrum of rainbow rebrands enter mainstream culture (as tacky as the M&S LGBT sandwich is), but it is even more important to have conversations about how we got here and acknowledge the inequalities that the community still faces. Though great achievements have been made over the past couple of years, it would be an insult to start taking them for granted. As the overturning of Roe v Wade has just demonstrated, it can be surprisingly easy for that progress to be suddenly undone overnight.
