Prideful
This is my first Pride month as a San Francisco resident. Pride weekend itself is the last weekend of the month, with the Dyke March on the Saturday, the parade on the Sunday and a two-day celebration event at the Civic Center.
The theme for the event this year relates to that subject which is particularly sensitive here at present “To form a more perfect union”, which touches on the issue of gay marriages/unions as well as the growing disparity between those states which recognise and solemnise gay marriages and those (like California) which don’t. Off the back of the Proposition 8 win last year, it’s clear that Pride here remains something with a distinct political charge, rather than the fluffy nonsense that London’s event has become.
It’s interesting being in a city which so embraces and endorses its LGBT population and its Pride activity (and I use the term to mean the city as a corporate entity, not the populace) - Market Street, the major thoroughfare in the city centre, has large rainbow flags along its entire length, and there are pride posters prominently displayed in public buildings and places like Muni stations. Even businesses are tapping into the spirit with their advertising - there’s a bus stop ad I want to get a photo of and post.
It feels like the city is itself actually proud of this significant chunk of the population and its celebration.
Funnily enough, I recently read some comment on the San Francisco Chronicle’s site in which someone trotted out the old “well if they’re born like that they haven’t achieved anything, so what do they have to be proud about?” saw. To which my reply is the one I learned from a former poster at Millarworld when the same question arose.
We don’t use it because we’re proud of ourselves, we use it because it’s the opposite of shame.