Blog: Do We Still Need Pride- 2024 Edition

Every year I don’t think I’m going to redo this blog until I sit down in the month of June & find myself reentering the title into the title line above. I never planned for this to become a yearly installment, but alas it seems here we are once again. Each year that I do this blog I end up highlighting the reasons in which celebrating the month of June as LGBTQ Pride is still entirely important. I do so using current & pending Anti-LGBTQ laws, relevant stories, & shamelessly, a bit of my own personal opinion as someone who lives within the community & finds the vast majority of their friends falling under one of the letters covered in the month.

If I’m being frank, I don’t take much enjoyment in writing this blog year to year. A lot of the time the reason for that is because the resounding “yes” of an answer to the question presented in the title of this piece comes with heavy news & disheartening statistics. A lot of the time this blog also ends up taking the form of a research paper when majority of what I do is think pieces, travel blogs, personal stories, & the like. This blog often weighs heavily on me as it feels, in a lot of ways, that true equality & freedom get farther & farther our of reach.

I understand that in a lot of ways progress has marched on & made a lot of headway. There is more & more queer representation in media, more queer artists are receiving their much deserved flowers & not being maligned because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. But with the march of progress & the normalizing of things that the hateful deemed taboo for many many years comes those with loud voices who make massive waves in the public by having a platform that is divisive & fueled by scapegoating & misinformation.

I want to make a few things abundantly clear before I continue on. If you are someone reading this who finds themselves on the side of history where you’re saying things like “why don’t straight people have a month” or “I just don't understand why they have to rub their lifestyle in our faces” I want you to read the following paragraph very carefully. Okay? This is a safe space for you as much as it is for those of my fellow members of the alphabet mafia. This is a safe space for you to challenge & question if what you believe & feel is true or not or if it’s just talking points & frustration. Your emotions are valid & they exist for a reason, though I’m not sure entirely if they’re being pointed at the right folks. Are you ready?

The LGBTQ community does not endorse pedophilia. We do not & will not ever include pedophilia in the rainbow banner, nor will we ever praise the outward expression of such. If anyone has told you otherwise I would ask you to reexamine your sources & reexamine their sources. Along that same vein. No one is giving gender reassignment surgery to minors & if they are (big if there) the vast majority of us also agree that said doctor should lose their license. The last & final thing that I need you to be clear on before we go forward is whether or not any of this is natural. The science, the legitimate science, has proven same sex attraction, gender dysphoria, etc, etc, etc, to be a common & pervasive thing not only amongst human beings but also all over the animal kingdom. That is no longer up for debate despite that seeming to be a “discourse” I hear brought up time & time again. Being queer is not a choice. Having the courage & the privilege to live an openly queer lifestyle that honors who you are as a person inside & out is. It is something that needs to be normalized because it is normal. No one is trying to convert children into becoming LGBTQ, if anything people are, again, trying to normalize a scientifically normal occurrence so that those who fall under the blanket of being LGBTQ stop feeling & being ostracized, vilified, murdered, beaten, abused, driven to suicide, & misunderstood. We are talking about human beings here. We are talking about your sons, daughters, children. We are talking about your brothers, sisters, siblings, mothers, fathers, parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, relatives, best friends, significant others, we are talking about real people in your lives that you probably claim to love.

As I mentioned above the march has been discouraging over the last couple of years & June 2023-June 2024 is no different. States continue to propose & pass laws that limit the rights of those in the queer community & hate crimes, specifically against those who are trans, are reaching decades long record highs. We are currently staring down the barrel of Project 2025, a Republican plan to completely gut the rights of LGBTQ Americans on Day 1 of a conservative dominated Washington DC. That’s not hyperbolic, you can read about it on the RNC’s site, laid out in plain English, right here. We are at a pivotal point in our history where the casual hate & bigotry has reached a boiling point that threatens to boil over in November of this year.

Additionally, retailers like Target, Walmart, etc. have either scaled back their Pride collections of entirely dismissed them following the outcry of the vocal minority during June of 2023. While rainbow capitalism isn’t great, neither is erasing the visibility & presence it gave to the community on a national scale.

Pride is once again slipping back into the realms of its origin & becoming a protest. A protest for visibility, for public safety, for rights. It’s becoming a protest for freedom, not only of expression, but also of peace of mind & security. Pride is undoubtedly more important than ever. It is a demand to be seen, to be heard, to not go silently & turn over because it’s convenient or easier for those who live on the outside looking in. Pride is not only needed, it is essential. It is essential for those who someday dream of having a quiet, normal life with their partner & their children. It is essential to the person who one day dreams of looking in the mirror & seeing their body reflect the beautiful human underneath. It is essential to those who dream of living a life free of fear of persecution, of emotional & physical harm, of having to chose between who you are & who those with outdated mentalities think you need to be. Pride is essential. Pride is community building, fortifying, & solidifying. Pride is health care, preventative care, & suicide prevention. Pride is expression, & honesty, & loving. Pride is, & continues to be, needed.

If you are someone who is reading this who finds themselves within the community; whether that’s questioning or confirmed, you are loved & you are valid & there are people out there who are so beyond ready to embrace the real you & show you what real, true, unconditional love looks like. If you are someone who is not in the community but loves its members personally, on behalf of all of us, thank you. Your support, affirmation, & affection goes so much farther than you could ever know. If you are someone who is neither of these things I challenge you. I challenge you to make a queer friend, to reach out to that estranged loved one, to make a genuine human effort to see them as who they are because I promise you’ll find so much beauty & unfiltered love waiting there. Set your beliefs, your politics, your whatever aside for a while & meet someone where they are, just as two human beings trying to make their way through the world. And finally, if you are someone who claims to love a queer person but then votes against them every chance you get, I beg of you, listen to what those in marginalized groups are trying to tell you. Please. It is not a loving act to claim that you care for someone & then worsen their lives because you think they’re overreacting or being alarmist. The last couple of years have proven that none of us were or are being alarmist.

As always, much love to you all,

& of course, Happy Pride!

-C

Blog: Do We Still Need Pride Month?

How is it already the end of June?! How has 2021 flown by so quickly?!

At the beginning of the month I knew I wanted to, at the very least, write something about Pride Month, seeing how June is Pride Month. So, I guess, why not make it the last blog of the month? I was wracking my brain over & over searching for what I wanted to write about this year as I usually do some form of Pride post in the month of June. Did I mention it’s the month of June & it’s also Pride Month? Sorry haha, just feel like I’ve said that a lot in my first couple lines of this blog. Anywho, back to it. I was struck by this idea for a blog post when I came across the comments section of the CMT Pride Playlist on the godless wasteland we all know as Facebook along with a slurry of hateful individual posing the question “why do they still need a Pride Month?” Their rationale being that “they got their right to legally wed” along with, of course, “there’s no straight pride month.” Vom. The post is hyperlinked if you’d like to go read the rest of these truly distasteful humans’ comments or if you just want to listen to the playlist itself. This blatant ignorance got me thinking though, do we still need an LGBTQ+ Pride Month? I mean it’s not like, though it should be more so, it shines a light on LGBTQIA+ history? So, should pride month still exist as a form of visibility for members of the alphabet mafia, after all, marriage equality is the law of the land. But then after the smallest fraction of a nanosecond I immediately landed on the answer being “of course we do.”

People who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community are still, in terms of rights & opportunity, considered second class citizens in this country we call the United States. That’s not to even mention the atrocities they face around the world by simply being who they are or loving who they love. They are disproportionately discriminated against, attacked, brutalized, rejected, marginalized, & forced to the sidelines of society when compared to their CIS gendered, heterosexual peers; especially when it comes to transgender people of color. I think all too often, at least outside of the community, the perception is that the battle is over, the fight has been won but I’d argue it’s just getting started.

Let’s take Arizona for example. In 1991 the state made it illegal for any teacher to promote LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” That meant anything from same sex education, to expressions of gender identity, to even the acknowledgement of certain historical figures being a member of the community. This wasn’t even the full extent of the law though. Say a student was struggling with their identity in any form other than heteronormativity. If they were to go to one of their teachers & ask for advice or assistance & the teacher offered any form of advice other than “talk to your parents” or anyone other than me & they were caught doing so they would be fined upwards of $5,000 dollars & have their teaching license called into question just for trying to be helpful or offer mentorship to a struggling student. Fortunately, that law has since been eradicated though that hasn’t stopped Arizona law makers from trying to implement similar laws in its place. As recent as April of this year a motion was put into effect to try & make it illegal for any school to teach about anything the government deemed even remotely LGBTQ+. This included historical figures, events, mention anything about gender expression or sexuality outside the CIS/Hetero. It also, unsurprisingly, included lessons about the HIV/AIDs epidemic unless all students involved had signed consent from their parent or guardian. (link) Sounds just like a diet version of the previous law.

I’m sure some of you are going to make the argument in favor of that policy since “students should be learning at school, not exploring their identity” but adolescence is the time in most of our lives in which we call our identities into question. The “who am I” of it all becomes a constant part of middle & high school life & if you don’t have a way to investigate that or ask even the most innocent of questions without feeling like who you are is unworthy of societal recognition then that can lead down some dark hallways.

Let’s talk stats:

90% of LGBTQ+ students reported hearing anti-LGBTQ+ slurs on a daily basis in their schools. Most saying they average hearing around 23 a day.

Around 28% of all LGBTQ+ identifying students end up dropping out of school due to harassment, not only from their peers.

About a quarter of LGB youth report having been physically assaulted because of their sexuality, a higher average of around half of any trans students say the same.

An astonishing 3/4ths of trans students reported having been sexually harassed simply because of their gender identity.

LGBTQ+ youth are twice as likely to abuse drugs or alcohol as compared to their CIS/Het peers.

Anywhere from 20-40% of queer youth have reported homelessness at one time or another though it is thought that number may be much higher.

(link)

Let’s look outside of schools shall we?

We all remember the trans military ban of 2017 right? Sounds like equality winning out to me. What about in 2019 when the previous administration made an attempt that allowed insurances to legally deny an individual coverage simply based on gender expression. In addition to being a massive blow to the transgender & non-binary folks living in this country, it also would have allowed doctors to deny care to anyone with an LGBTQ+ identity. (link) I angry wrote an entire blog post about this that I ended up never posting, I can still see it sitting in my drafts out of the corner of my eye as I write this. The crazy thing is, these two movements barely scratch the surface of the damage the previous administration did or attempted to do to the queer community at large! Here’s a full list if you’d like…(link) Fortunately a lot of these measures have been reversed by the current administration, though not all of them.

Let’s talk more stats:

LGBTQ+ suicides account for 30% of all suicide deaths.

Greater than 50% of those identifying as transgender say they have at one time or another attempted suicide.

1/5th of all LGBTQ+ individuals report having experienced hiring discrimination with people of color reporting a higher number of 2/5ths.

Around 46% of all LGBTQ+ members aren’t out to their coworkers work mostly in fear of discrimination in one way or another from their peers as well as higher ups.

(link)

But it can’t all be bad can it? Well luckily, no! According to a recent survey, Gen-Z is the queerest generation we’ve ever seen, at least from an honest statistical standpoint. According to a 2021 Gallup poll roughly 15% of all Gen-Z-ers polled identified as LGBTQ+ in one way or another, sometimes multiple! It seems the more recent we go generationally, the more people are willing to express their true selves openly & authentically with the Millennial statistic being about 1 in 10. (link) Another beautiful thing happening is that more & more fortune 500 companies are beginning to cater to the needs of their queer staff with around 91% actively making positive changes to their discrimination policies in regards to LGBTQ+ matters, another 53% offering benefits for civil unions, & 65% offering transgender inclusive healthcare plans, and these numbers are rapidly climbing!

So I ask you. Do we still need Pride Month? Do you think the course has been corrected enough to warrant a stall in the fight for equal rights or do you think, like me, that there is still a long, long way to go. I’d like to issue you a small challenge. I’d like you to be a little bit of introspection here & look at how you treat you LGBTQIA+ peers. Is it the same as how you treat your CIS gendered or heterosexual friends? If not, what can you change? Are you as an employer doing what you need to do to be inclusive? Are you as a parent, as a friend, as a sibling doing enough? I want you to look at yourself honestly & answer that question. Are you electing individuals who enact policies that harm marginalized communities such as these? Are you treating all of your neighbors with the love, respect, & decency they deserve or are you stabbing them in the back behind closed doors, from the other side of a keyboard, or in the polling station? I seriously want you to ask yourself these things, to get your ego out of the way, to got the “what about me” out of the way & open your eyes to what is actually happening in the world around you. I didn’t even make a dent in the hindrances of freedom for members of the queer community here, mostly because I wanted to focus on the US, where it is currently Pride Month. I’d advise you to do your own research, to go into these comment sections & see for yourself because if you willingly turn a blind eye to the suffering of others how is that coming from a place of love?

I’ll leave you with one last bit, brought to you by the weapon most used against those in the LGBTQ+ community:

“Truly I tell you, whatever you do unto the least of those among you, you have done unto me.”

— Mark 25: 40

Happy Pride Everyone! Be proud of who you are & the path that led you here! Keep fighting the good fight & know that love is always the answer.

-C

Blog: Representation In Country Music

I’m not sure if you followed the news coming out of Nashville this past week but for those of you that may have missed it, something revolutionary happened on Wednesday. In a Time Magazine article that dropped around 10 AM Eastern on Wednesday TJ Osborne, of The Brothers Osborne, came out as gay making him the first openly gay major label country artist.

Here’s the article in question, it’s definitely worth the read:

This is a significant milestone in country music for a few reason not the least of these being that almost a decade & a half prior Shelly Fairchild, a Sony signed artist at the time, was dropped by her label because it got leaked to them that she was lesbian.

Shelly commented on Wednesday’s events in an instagram post here:

While I viewed mostly overwhelming support for TJ’s bravery from folks of all walks from around the internet I began to notice a few comments that sought to diminish the effects of truly what he had done. I’m sure a lot of these comments were well meaning but there were a large cluster of comments similar to the following:

“Who cares what he does behind doors, it doesn’t effect their music.”

or

“I’m straight! See, nobody cares. Why do we feel the need to announce this to the world.”

I think TJ himself diminishes the impact that his actions have had & how they will ripple throughout all of history going forward. He mentions in the article that part of the reason he felt he needed to make his sexuality public was that people might think it odd if he were to just show up at an awards show with a male date. His actions, however, cannot be overstated. What TJ has done is open doors for LGBTQ country artists that were previously sealed pretty tight simply because they didn’t fit the mold of “Straight, White, Cis Male.”

I’ll be the first to admit our genre of music has a historically conservative audience; hell I myself have battled with that in the past being a fairly liberal, all accepting human. It’s still hard to carve out a niché as an artist of color, it’s still hard to get “unique” sounds & stories to mainstream radio & labels, & it’s even still incredibly hard for female artists to make it in Nashville but this is progress is being made in the right direction. Country is not a genre limited to the white yokel, despite what stereotypes would say. Some of the biggest country fans I’ve ever met are people of color or members of the alphabet mafia & their stories deserve a platform to be shared as well. It’s clear Nashville is, at the very least, attempting to make steps in the right direction; embracing TJ & signing/promoting artists like Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen, & Willie Jones but there still seems to be some major resistance to change. For every black artist or female artist signed there seems to be five white male artists signed. It almost feels like the industry is trying to counter balance or compensate. And I will admit as a straight passing, cis, white male I’m a part of the problem, but I choose to be part of the solution.

This industry needs to be more open to change, more open to different stories being told because dear lord am I tired of the truck/beer/party songs. Country music deserves to be an ever evolving story told by a beautiful mélange of people from completely different walks of life instead of the same damn things over & over again. People are starved for representation in their media, they’re starving for someone who looks like them or has the same sexuality, gender identity, etc. to say that you can do this too, that this can be their dream as well. That their stories have value & are equally important to the culture at large. It deserves to appeal to a mass audience, not just the rural white American. Country music deserves to evolve just as the listener base has, it deserves to be a platform where everyone can tell their stories, not just the privileged. TJ’s openness & the acceptance of said openness is definitely a step in the right direction but we still have a long, long way to go. Representation matters. Openness matters. And the continued acceptance of both matters. We must continue to do better.

Blog: Pride Month, Straight Pride, & Being an LGBTQ+ Ally

First off…

HAPPY PRIDE!!!!!

Whether you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, asexual, omnisexual, demisexual, pansexual, queer, non-binary, gender fluid, questioning, a straight ally, or any other identity under the LGBTQ+ mantle; Happy Pride!!!

For those of you that don’t know, June is Pride Month, a month of the year where we shift the lens to focus on those members of our society & our history that are/were LGBTQ+. Pride month exists to draw attention to the marginalized, not to boast one sexuality being greater than another. Pride month exists as a time for celebrating what makes us different, what makes us human, what binds us all; love, or rather love in all of its forms. It also exists as a tool for helping to educate the ignorant & normalize other types of sexualities & genders other than straight or cis. The goal of pride is to show that we don’t live in a world that’s black & white, we live in a world that is a rainbow of millions of different lifestyles & ways to love. Pride month not only is meant as a way to celebrate our differences but is also a way to celebrate the love that we all are capable of sharing & the acceptance we all desire to have.

Now, this year, like most years, there’s a huge push for a “straight pride month” or a “straight pride parade” which I find absolutely ridiculous. For starters, no one is stopping you from attending pride. No where on any LGBTQ+ organization will you find “straights not allowed” (the same can’t be said for the inverse) because again, pride is all about inclusion. The LGBTQ+ community actually encourages straight allies; people within the societal normal that affirm members of the LGBTQ+ community that they are not alone, that they have value to society, that they are deserving of love & acceptance. The main reason that straight pride is insanity is the fact that being straight does not come with the fear of persecution, it does not come with the fear of being beaten on the street for holding your partner’s hand, it does not come with the fear of losing your job when your boss finds out your sexual orientation, it does not come with the fear of being ostracized by your friends & family, it does not come with the fear of “I love you, but,” it does not come with the fear of being kicked out or shut out because you’re different. Being straight is, and has been for thousands of years, the societal norm. That’s changing, slowly, but straight is still, as they say, “the default.” Straight pride is unnecessary, illogical, & if I’m being honest a downright pathetic attempt to reclaim what is believed to be lost ground. Love wins y’all. Love always wins.

To The Allies:

I want to shift my attention back to being an ally for a second because I know there are quite a lot of people out there that identify themselves as straight LGBTQ+ allies but wear that label with conditions, accepting LGBTQ+ friends & family members, but only to a certain extent. Claiming acceptance & showing acceptance & the unconditional love that comes with it are two very different things. You cannot be accepting of someone you love & ask them to hide who they are or deny themselves in public in fear it would reflect badly upon you. You cannot be accepting of someone you love & not use their chosen name or pronouns. You cannot be accepting of someone you love & claim their sexuality is just a phase or that they’re too young to know. You cannot be accepting of someone you love & wish that down the road they would revert to the person you trained yourself to believe they were. You cannot be accepting of someone you love & not stand in solidarity with them when hate comes knocking at their door. You cannot be accepting of someone you love & then actively vote for those that would harm or put into place legislation that would undermine their rights to love whomever they chose or be whoever they want to be. Just because you don’t cut the people off you claim to love does not mean you accept them, it does not mean you are an ally. Just because you don’t kick out your kid or stop talking to your friend or spew hate back at them doesn’t mean you’re accepting of them. Not hating someone or isolating them should not be the standard for acceptance. Acceptance is embracing what makes them different, it’s taking the time to educate yourself on topics you may be completely oblivious to but you do so because you love that person. Acceptance is taking people at their word & trusting that they’re living their true self. Acceptance is asking people about their relationships in an open & interested way, it’s taking an interest in the person they love & putting in effort to form a bond. Acceptance is driving them to their doctors visits, being a pillar of encouragement & strength through their transition, & loving their new identity whole heartedly. It is your job as an LGBTQ+ ally to be a beacon of love in a world that so often hates them not to tell them to act straighter or conform to the societal norm.

To The LGBTQ+ Community:

To those who pray to God every night begging to have your identity taken away, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those that feel like their family’s “dirty little secret,” like your identity or who you love gets swept under the rug, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those living on the street because the people that claimed to love you wouldn’t accept you, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those that feel like they’ll never be able to live their true self, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those who are fighting with feeling like they have to choose their family & friends or themselves, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those who are picked on, bullied, rejected, fired, assaulted, or abused just because you’re different, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those trying desperately to shift self loathing into love, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those hesitant to drape the pride flag around their shoulders in fear of physical or emotional violence, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those that feel the world has turned its back on them, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those that never feel like they’ve been represented properly in media, I stand in solidarity with you.

To those desperately searching for love & acceptance, I stand in solidarity with you.

To the millions of marginalized humans around the globe, I stand in solidarity with you.

To the millions that would rather die than be who they are, I stand in solidarity with you.

To the outcasts, the unwanted, the rebels, the dreamer.

To the different, the beautiful, the unique, the defiant.

To the marchers, the activists, the lovers, the fighters.

I stand in solidarity with you.

Love is love. Love will always win. Keep pushing on, keep being strong, & keep fighting for a better tomorrow.