Black and white flags are flapping wildly everywhere, as young couples celebrate yet another successful Straight Pride Parade. Here is a safe place for young men and women to truly express themselves without a care in the world. Over to my left, I see a boy about my age daring to kiss his girlfriend. Here, heterosexuals are safe to be who they truly are. It is truly magical.
Except that never happened. And it never will.
This last month on social media, I couldn’t help but notice a bit of a racket in regards to certain individuals clamoring for Straight Pride. The idea here is that if the LGBTQA+ community can have pride, then the cishet (cissexual/ heterosexual) community can also have pride in themselves. Keep in mind that this clamor occurred during June, which was set aside as Pride Month for the LGBTQA+ community. This is due to the Stonewall Riots happening in June of 1969. Furthermore, it was June of last year when marriage equality was legalized in all 50 states. Of the 12 months of the year, this is not the month to try and celebrate Straight Pride.
Furthermore, and more to the point, the very idea of Straight Pride is ridiculous, and even offensive. When the LGBTQA+ community talks about pride in the various orientations and expressions, it’s not the simpler pride we refer to in everyday conversation. Instead, the pride that is espoused by the LGBTQA+ community is that of being proud of yourself for existing in a world and society that tells you that you shouldn’t. It is a pride in being alive, and hoping to stay alive. After all, we not only live in a world where a man can gun down individuals in a night club for the sole crime of being gay, but where people, however few, can have the audacity to congratulate the Pulse shooter. We live in a world where in the United States, only one state, California, has banned the “trans panic” defense. This is the legal defense wherein the defendant claims that the shock of finding out their partner is trans led to violence; a vile form of victim blaming. We live in a world where the trans* community is not only more likely to be murdered, but are far more likely to experience police violence as well. We live in a world where up to 40 percent of homeless youth are members of the LGBTQA+ community; worse still, the prevailing cause of this homelessness are these youths being forced from their homes by their families. In this world, over half of the LGBTQA+ community lives in fear of being the victim of a hate crime.
When an individual starts espousing Straight Pride, they are marginalizing the struggles of the LGBTQA+ community, boiling it down to some pretty parades and pretty flags, when it is so much more than that. The Pride movement is a celebration of life. This is a struggle that the cishet community does not face. When was the last Nicholas Sparks novel that showed a homosexual couple breathlessly kissing on the front cover? What makes Straight Pride even slimier is when you see it for its true nature -- a whiny, privileged reaction to the Pride movement. It’s in the same boat as Men’s Rights Activists. The real goal is not pride or equality, but to try and silence the underprivileged and keep them from rocking the heteronormative boat.
The bottom line is, Straight Pride is absolutely unnecessary. It’s the same logic as the little kid who wants braces or a cast because another kid in class has them. They fail to see that they are in a position where they don’t need one, and should be glad as a result. The day when the statistics are flipped and it is the cishet community who is homeless and despised is when we will need straight pride. Until then, we must support the LGBTQA+ community and try to fix the awful statistics.
