With the beginning of June comes Pride Month, where members of the LGBT+ community celebrate their individuality and freedom to express their sexual orientation or gender identity. One of the largest Pride Month events is the Pride Parade, which takes place in multiple cities across the country and is most known for its colorful display, especially of the rainbow gay pride flag. In Boston, however, a group is attempting to plan a "Straight Pride Parade," drawing backlash from both the LGBT+ community and its allies.
The organizer of this event, Mark Sahady, stated that he is planning the event to make fun of the left's "identity politics," and added that "For them, everything is based upon identity and whether or not one is categorized as a victim or an oppressor. If you get victim status then you are entitled to celebrate yourself and expect those with oppressor status to defer to your feelings."
This diminishing of Pride and LGBT+ identities as a manner of playing victim only shows an extreme lack of understanding of Pride and minority identities as a whole. No minority group ever willingly assigns themselves the role of the victim: the LGBT+ community has faced a long history of discrimination and, even now, still faces widespread discrimination across the country. Pride is a way for them to fight back and start to normalize their identities, and it provides an opportunity for them to celebrate themselves much more openly than they would have been able to do in the past.
Although Sahady seems to believe otherwise, Pride is not some sort of discriminatory action towards straight people or those who are not a part of the LGBT+ community. The celebration of Pride is not intended to label those outside of the community as the "oppressor," and members of the LGBT+ are certainly not "entitled" to this celebration. If anyone is acting entitled, it would be Sahady and the group behind the organization of this "Straight Pride Parade." Heterosexuality was and still is the norm, while members of the LGBT+ community are only just beginning to see themselves represented in the media.
Any LGBT+ representation, including Pride, is usually met with some amount of discontent and comments about the LGBT+ community pushing some sort of agenda or complaints about "forced diversity." Sahady might want to consider that the real issue is most likely that the majority can't handle something that isn't made specifically for them, no matter how small. Pride is just one month of visibility and celebration out of a whole year. The world is still very much heteronormative, so why can't the LGBT+ community just have this one month at the very least?
Pride is not a threat towards people who are not members of the LGBT+ community, and any minority's celebration of their identity does not diminish that of another group. The celebration of LGBT+ identities, therefore, is not discriminatory towards those who are not part of the community: in case anyone has forgotten, Pride is meant to be an all-inclusive event. So no, we do not need a "Straight Pride" parade.
