Gay Pride is Saturday here in New York and while we usually write about Pride events (including Brooklyn Pride which was June 11), this week we wanted to take the opportunity to bring you a few different stories from the queer community and really mark the occasion.
Here in New York City, I sometimes let myself get lazy about just how much homophobia exists in the world. It’s like somewhere between Six Feet Under and the Supreme Court striking down DOMA, after my first gay wedding and before my first married gay friends divorced, I decided to believe that this particular kind of hate had been eradicated, like polio or smallpox, stamped out by common sense, progress and love.
Of course I knew that wasn’t entirely true, but living in Brooklyn it was easy enough to believe. Until last weekend. Until Orlando. Until 49 members of the LGBTQ community were murdered because they were loving life and living for it.
I look at my various social media feeds and thing that really fills my heart and makes a lump in my throat is the utter lack of hate coming out of the gay community. People are hurt and angry and so, so sad. They want change, they want the conversation to move past the empty posturing our elected officials pantomime their way through every single time gun violence erupts in this country on a mass scale. What I don’t see is anyone calling to prevent refugees from entering the U.S. or rounding up Muslims who are already here. I see a conversation. I see a hunger for solutions. And I’m humbled by that.
So here at Brooklyn Based, in a really fucking weird year for politics and everything else, during Pride Week in New York City, it’s really the very least we can do to run stories that remind our readers that Brooklyn is gay as the day. To say unequivocally, everyone has the right to feel the love they feel, to express their own identity in the manner of their choosing, to ask to be called by a name or a pronoun or an adjective that feels good to them, to be themselves without permission. We’re all human, we’re all amazing creatures, we’re all so different and so alike, and truly, the LGBTQ community reminds us all of that all the time.
Thank you.
