Finding my place in Pride

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I was sitting across the table from a friend this weekend when she looked at me and said, “Well, it was just very anti-establishment.”

She was giving me her thoughts about a Pride gathering we had attended together in Albany — one that promised to “reclaim” the event for the queer community. (Its slogan was: “No cops! No corporations! No politicians!”)

As my friend explained how the event was a bit too extreme for her taste, I tried to reconcile how I felt about it myself. I’ve been consistently bored and disappointed by mainstream Pride events, where banks and tech companies parade through cities with rainbowfied logos, as if to say, “mission accomplished.” So I was thrilled this year to see something that took a decidedly different approach to Pride, one more in line with its activist roots.

I was expecting something of a protest; I was ready to be roused to action. That’s not quite what I found. Sure, there were some bricks lying around (presumably meant to be thrown) and tables advertising grassroots political movements. But the event was small, a bit underwhelming — not much more than a few musical performances broken up by brief political speeches. I left feeling mostly disappointed and confused.

I think that’s less the fault of the event organizers, and more the product of my own uncertainty around my role in this movement. As a queer Eagle Scout, I often feel pulled between two worlds: The relatively moderate space of the Boy Scouts of America, and the more radical streams of queer activism.

It’s a tension I’ve heard from many of the LGBTQ scouters I’ve talked to. James Dale, who ended up in the Supreme Court fighting for gay inclusion in the Scouts, told me he at first felt torn between his identity as a Boy Scout and his involvement in ACT UP. Evan Wolfson, who served as Dale’s attorney, told me that working the Boy Scouts case wasn’t always the obvious thing to do, especially as the fight for basic gay rights was ongoing. Many queer activists saw the whole organization as too “conformist” to be worth fighting for, anyway.

Dale ultimately decided his unique power was in being “the gay Boy Scout,” the poster child for inclusion in the organization. He embraced that role and honed his identity as a clean-cut young man. Wolfson, after representing Dale in the Supreme Court, went on to be one of the architects of the same-sex marriage movement.

I often find myself grappling with similar questions about my role. I feel that my background as an Eagle Scout and journalist makes this the most impactful lane, so to speak, that I could be working in. But I wonder if focusing on the Boy Scouts distracts me from more urgent concerns for the LGBTQ community. Just to name a few: The epidemic of violence against trans women of color; the record-breaking number of anti-trans bills make their way through state legislatures; the many states where discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is still perfectly legal.

I also know that focusing on the Boy Scouts doesn’t necessarily mean ignoring those other issues. Somewhat miraculously, the Boy Scouts is one place where the right of trans youth to participate isn’t under attack. And the organization’s sheer scale creates the ability to make progress that can spill over into other parts of society. In my work as a journalist, I know telling that story has power, too.

So maybe my struggle is less about finding my place in Pride, but more about embracing the role I already have. You still won’t find me cheering as corporations strut down Fifth Avenue, but you probably won’t find me throwing bricks, either.

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