Finding Your Own Pride - The Gay Pride W/O
Jun 01 '03 (Updated Feb 05 '04)
The Bottom Line Pride's a personal realization that you make in your life and marks the point when you'll never be ashamed of your queerness again.
It’s June – It’s Gay Pride Month! Here’s my entry for the Queer Pride/Gay Pride Write-Off!
A big thanks goes out to Ed_Grover, Psychovant and SurgRN911 for putting together the Write-off. Check out Ed’s page for more information (http://www.epinions.com/user-ed_grover) on the write-off and how to sign up!
What is Gay Pride to me?
I have been thinking for several days about what to write for this write-off. I thought perhaps a story about some friends, or a story about my own struggles, or even a story I just made up, but after all that thought (and it was a lot of thought!) I’ve decided to write about the one action/event that probably took more courage than any other for me to accomplish as a gay guy. That's what builds pride to me.
Finding my Pride
Way back in 1999, I was a senior at Lyndon State College (Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom if you’re wondering where it is) and I was also the president of the Gay-Straight Alliance on campus. For the prior 3 years, while we were an active club, we were pretty much relegated to obscurity, you didn’t know about us unless you wanted to find out more. That wasn’t for a lack of trying, we tried bake sales, dances, raffles, posters and everything, but year after year, it was the same group of people doing all the work with maybe one or two more each year.
We helped one another through difficult times, as there was plenty of harassment of gay students on a small campus in the middle of northeastern Vermont and we did provide a “safety net” of sorts for other LGBTQ (that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Questioning, did I miss any?) people on the campus and many times we organized around an issue and pressed the college administration to make changes. We had an Ally/Safe Zone (safe places for LGBTQ people to be) instituted throughout the campus and we were notified of any issues occurring on campus so that we could intercede if we needed to. But we still struggled to make a difference, to be pro-active. It wasn’t as if we weren’t proud enough of our sexuality, I don’t believe that any of us were ashamed, it’s just that I think we all had the desire to be activists and really attempt to push the envelope, but none of us really knew what to do.
Thus by the time I got to my senior year, I was pretty sick of gay-straight alliance existing really just in the shadows.
When we first got back to campus that year, we noticed that some of the residential life staff had used sidewalk chalk to offer hints/instructions to the new students. The idea stuck in our heads because about a month later, in deciding on activities, someone thought up the idea of chalking the entire campus.
Our group wasn’t that big – maybe 10 active members so this would be a big undertaking and it had to be done quietly and quickly. We also wanted it to have the greatest impact possible. With that in mind, we settled on 6 of us going out the night before Parent’s weekend for the college and chalking as much of the sidewalks and walkways around the campus as possible.
Once we were all set to go, it was a relief that it wasn’t raining and wasn’t supposed to rain for a while (since chalk doesn’t do too well in the rain).
We organized into teams of two around midnight and set about writing our messages of LGBTQ pride throughout the campus (I’ll have to admit, it was more lesbian, gay and bisexual messages, not many of the T and Q’s). Within two hours, we had just about every sidewalk, walkway, stairwell and any other chalkable surface covered with slogans that ran the gambit from “silence=death,” to ֿ in 10 people who cross the bridge are gay.”
Amazingly we had few problems while we were doing it. The few students we did run into either didn’t say anything or wanted to help out. We only had one yell out of their dorm window going “what are you f*gs doing out there.”
We got rid of the chalk and called all of our friends and started wandering around the campus. It was amazing. There were so many chalkings all over, that no one would be able to miss them and in the process, we were really making a statement to the college community. We were here and we were queer! (yeah, I know it’s not ACT-UP, but it was big deal to us).
Once we got back to the room, I sent out emails to all the local and statewide newspapers. I figured we might as well get some press out of the deal.
Little did I know what was going to happen…and what kind of situations that I would be forced into handling as the president of the group.
Around 8:30 the next morning I received a call from the Dean of Students telling me how great it looked and what an educational opportunity it was. That made me feel pretty good. So I went back to bed.
Then the phone rang about an hour later and it was the Dean again, this time she told me she had just finished talking with the college lawyer. Apparently not everyone thought it was such a good learning moment, students were up the administrations’ butt for them to do something because they felt “threatened” and “harassed” by the chalking. She told me that it was likely that the chalk was going to have to be removed.
So I get out of bed and get out on campus, most students are walking around, reading the messages, and then continuing on their way. However, some of them, especially on that bridge with the 1 in 10 message, were trying to jump across the stream because they refused to cross the bridge.
I got to the Dean’s office (after a few verbal confrontations by students along the way) and by then they had decided to remove the chalk – and there was as chance that the club would be sanctioned and that all the members could be held responsible for “defacement” of the college property.
It sure wasn’t pride I was feeling at that point, but anger. Especially since a few weeks before I had run this by the same Dean and she thought it would be a great idea.
When I got back to the room, there were several messages from the local papers asking me to call them back – I’m guessing that they heard the news from others in addition to the emails and now wanted the story. So for the first time in my life, I went out on a limb, called them back and publicly identified myself as a gay man (well I was the president of the GSA, but that was just on a college campus – talking to papers, now that could be the whole world).
The interviews were all fairly similar, why we chalked, what we did, what the college administration was doing and how we felt about it. I believe that in one, I was quoted as calling the College president a homophobic bigot for failing to provide a supportive atmosphere for gay and lesbian students.
You can probably guess that didn’t win me any backers with the administration.
The parents had started to arrive for parents’ weekend and the chalk wasn’t yet removed, however a note from the college president to us had already announced that it would be washed off immediately because while the college supported LGBTQ students, parents’ weekend was not the “appropriate” time for us to be raising these issues.
What’s the matter? Parents don’t believe that gay students go to LSC?
The custodians soon came out with pressure washers and started washing everything. I was out there watching and you know what, here’s the one thing that made me feel better than anything else that happened that day. Students who were never members of the gay-straight alliance, students who were straight, and professors we didn’t even know, were going up to the custodians and trying to make them stop washing away the chalk. They were yelling at them and trying to block them.
It made me realize that for all the crap I had to go through that day (and would go through with the ramifications of it), was worth it because we really did make a difference. We managed to raise the consciousness of the campus and we brought out students and professors who before were never vocal on LGBTQ issues, out and had them speak their mind and demonstrate their support of us. I realized that in the 4 years I had been at LSC, we did make a difference and that the gay-straight alliance would keep making a difference for the LGBTQ people on campus and for their straight allies.
Epilogue
The papers came out the next day with headlines that included “LSC Invokes little known regulation to quell student demonstration,” and the administration considered its attacks on our club. In the end, the College officially “admonished” the club and we had a portion of our budget frozen for a few months. I was interviewed a few more times for more articles and as a Student Senator in the student government, I had the non-enviable task of defending the club’s action in front of the full student government. There was as lot of screaming, some people walked out, many votes were taken, but somehow I managed to stand up proudly and speak my mind and made everyone aware of exactly what kind of struggle the LGBTQ people on campus went through.
The club went on a month or so later to stage a rally against hate where about 300 people showed up and continued that success with dances and activities throughout the rest of the year. We even got more members and everyone knew who we were…
Pride
I’m not sure if people really understand what pride is sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating our queerness, and nothing wrong with throwing a big party for ourselves either (hey, I’ll be at Boston Pride this year), but I think that some people miss the point. Pride is a personal realization, I think it’s the point when you realize that you really are queer, that you really are different and that you are not afraid to stand up and let the world know that. Once you have realized that, nothing is going to stand in your way and you'll never be ashamed of who you are!
HAPPY GAY PRIDE MONTH!
Other Gay & Lesbian Themed Reviews
Magazines, Newspapers and Books
Instinct Magazine / Genre Magazine / Out In The Mountains / The Advocate / Love Makes a Family / XY Magazine / Out Magazine / The Gay Guys Guide to Life / Gay Guy's Guide to Love / 501 Great Things About Being Gay / Metrosource / [2] Magazine / Unzipped Magazine
Music & Movies
Work OUT (Dance Music) / Lie Down With Dogs (movie)
Writings
Finding Your Pride / Massachusetts Leads the Country In the Right Direction / Gay Marriage in Massachusetts - an Update
Shopping
Kleptomaniac
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