Bring Equality Out of the Closet

Around the country and in Los Angeles, “gay pride” events grow each year as more people feel safe coming out of the closet and as they and many others agree to the need to end anti-gay discrimination. But in recent years the gay rights movement has also had some serious setbacks, including continued hate crimes such as the murder of Matthew Shepard last year as well as inflammatory rhetorical attacks from conservatives such as Pat Robertson.

There have been many attempts to explain why we seem to take one step back for almost every step we take forward, but few have examined the role that the slogan “gay pride” may be playing.

The pride concept has served the gay rights movement well until now by counteracting the shame of the closet, but it also has drawbacks. The problem with pride is that it doesn’t state clearly what the gay rights movement is really all about: equal legal and social treatment for gay people. The rallying cry of pride may even have helped inadvertently to provoke a backlash against gay equality.

Practically speaking, the “gay pride” slogan doesn’t reach people who aren’t already pretty comfortable about the facts of sexual orientation. As homophobes hear it, the language of gay pride reinforces the idea that gay people are fundamentally different. In everyday speech, people use the word “pride” to talk about things that they believe are special, extraordinary and exclusive. Talking too much about pride, therefore, is counterproductive. Gay people base our claim to civil rights on the fact that our feelings and relationships are no different--no more worthy of shame or pride--than anyone else’s. Endless declarations about pride are counterproductive. They suggest that gay people have something to prove and that we still can’t quite put the shame of the closet behind us.

A better alternative to the gay pride slogan is “gay equality.” What we need more than anything is to emphasize that people who are gay are much more similar to straight people than we are different. A new slogan like “gay equality” would help to do this. It’s time for the separatism and exclusiveness that are reinforced by the slogan “gay pride” to end.

Gay people and our supporters can no longer limit ourselves to simply countering arguments about “family values” with declarations of pride. Especially in June, which is celebrated as “gay pride” month, we need to move beyond simplistic arguments that require us to justify ourselves in terms of pride, because pride is not the point. The differences between gays and straights don’t matter in any way that is worthy of discomfort, unequal legal treatment or hostility. In the most fundamental human ways, gay people are much more similar to straights than we are different, and as a group we have nothing more or less to be proud of than anyone else.