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Mill Bay Pride Visits Nanaimo

12 June 2016
Wyatt Tanton, Ellis ‘16
The first Pride was a riot – literally. Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York, was cracked down on by New York City police in 1969. In response, members of the LGBT community came together long before we were recognized as anything resembling a legitimate community. We were disgusting to mainstream society, but for the most part kept to ourselves in the underground (more out of fear than anything else). That all changed at Stonewall, when activists – primarily lesbians and drag queens of colour – started a proper riot that would forever alter the queer community’s passage through history. It’s why June is Pride Month; it’s why New York, Tel Aviv, Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles and countless other cities have Pride events that can go on for almost a week. It’s why same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination policies are becoming a reality around the world. It was the queer community’s coming-out moment, and it was as unapologetically gay then as it is now. On Sunday, June 12th, a group of Brentwood students went to Nanaimo to celebrate the first-ever Pride event held in that city, and even though we missed the parade itself we still got to see the celebration afterwards, including musical acts, interpretive dance, drag queens, and people on stilts. And let’s mention the things people wore – it was like a Cirque Du Soleil show ran over Ru Paul and her Drag Race. The significance of Pride is hard to explain to people who aren’t queer themselves. It comes with a sense of freedom and community that queer people don’t have anywhere else, because we’re a permanent minority in everyday life, where we’re conforming more often than not (and more often than we’d like).    The community has always had its setbacks – AIDS, the resulting blood donor ban, the death of Matthew Shepard, the bathroom bills that cover North America, and other policies and attitudes that permeate our society. But unlike nearly every other group of oppressed people throughout history, we fought back in the unusual form of Pride, with glitter and rainbows and anything else that makes opposition look not only ridiculous, but downright evil - who on this planet can be fighting a group that flies a rainbow flag and not look like a villain? When the shootings in Pulse happened on June 12th, the same day as Nanaimo Pride, the same day as someone tried to bomb LA Pride, the community around the globe had a choice to make: do we go back to our homes, lock our doors, and hope we’re spared from this kind of tragedy, or do we march, and cheer, and celebrate like we have in the past to show that no amount of hatred and anger is going to stop us. There’s a quote from Sense8, a sci-fi show detailing the lives of eight people with a unique mental connection, that I thought of when I was debating it myself. “For all the people who can’t march… Today I march to remember that I’m not just a me. I’m also a we. And we march with pride.” It’s a quote from Nomi Marks, a transgender lesbian woman from San Francisco, talking about her upbringing and the hatred it came with, about how for years she’d been afraid of something her mother believed was the worst sin: Pride. If you’ve never seen Sense8 before, I’d highly recommend it. It’s amazing. On June 12th, we celebrated. Not for the deaths of forty-nine innocent people or the injuries of a further fifty-three, but for who they had been while they were alive and what they had meant to us. As separate as we all are, the queer community is a family that shares similar experiences (many bad) that have made us who we are today. We’re a family that has grown over the years from gay, to gay and lesbian, to LGBT, to LGBTQ, to the ridiculously long LGBTQQIP2SAA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Pansexual, 2 Spirit [a First Nations term], Asexual, and Allies). We all stand together, because for a lot of the community, it’s the only support they have. Some of those people in Pulse were still closeted, their family only finding out when they received the call that their son or daughter had been shot to death in a gay club. Others were allies, a group of people who are instrumental to the community at large. The vast majority were Hispanic, people who’d been at Pulse for Latinxs night to enjoy a community within a community. None of them deserved to die. What happened at Pulse is a result of the passive homophobia and transphobia that’s built into our culture, built by people who don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. People who “aren’t homophobic, but don’t think gay people should be allowed to marry.” People who “aren’t transphobic, but don’t think trans people should be allowed to use public washrooms.” People who “don’t think it’s a big deal to use slurs, because to me, it means something different, like lazy, or stupid.” These are not the people who shot up Pulse, but these attitudes created him. Regardless, Pride will continue to move forward, as it always has, unabated and unashamed of itself. It’s a glitter steamroller that will keep running forward until it’s crushed every last bit of hatred and ugliness towards us into the ground and left it sparkling like Kesha just exploded over the crowd. And sure, it’s ridiculous. That’s the whole point: something serious, but fun, that has no time for anything but celebrating life. So on June 12th, Brentwood students marched because within the community, there is no ‘me’, only ‘we’, and for those who will never get to march again, we march with Pride. If you would like to donate to help the victims of the shooting, here’s a link: https://www.gofundme.com/PulseVictimsFund Wyatt Tanton, Ellis ‘16

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