Pride, Honestly
Happy Pride Month.
This month we honor the revolutionaries. What began as a protest outside of Stonewall led by our trans elders has now turned into a full blown cultural moment - part resistance, part party, part marketing opportunity, depending on who you ask.
For many people, Pride is represented by rainbow-filled parades, where disco music blasts through the air and everyone seems to be having the time of their lives.
For many older queers, like me, we watched the parade go from a Sunday afternoon where we felt free to fully be ourselves - to a never-ending line of corporate floats - with straight people danced on top of a multi-colored logo - throwing out candy to those of us below - as if we were hungry animals at a gay zoo.
As annoying as the corporatization of Pride had become, I admit to a little snarky moment of joy each year when some guy tries to show how straight he is that by holding his girlfriend’s hand in a vice grip. Dude….. don’t worry. Your cargo shorts say everything.
With all the cuts the Trump administration has made, the parade is back to being filled with real allies and advocates. To a few key companies who pulled all their Pride funding, let me say this:
Toyota, you never could be as cool as Subaru. One of you has been a gay icon since before it was profitable. The other one is you.
Pepsi who hurt you? You are like Coke’s middle sibling who had to try twice as hard to get half the attention.
And Harley Davidson, may every Dyke on a Bike come haunt you in your dreams. The wet kind. You earned it for pulling out of Pride. Word choices made purposefully.
For the past three decades, Pride in our house has been treated like any other family holiday. One I share with my wife and most years, our son.
Our son is now 25 years old and has a life of his own and cannot always make Pride with us. One year he was out of town, another one he had to work, but when he can, he will be found marching in the parade, wearing his I heart my Moms t-shirt (that he has in multiple sizes from 3T to a men’s Large) along side Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky - one of our truest and longest standing advocates, who was instrumental in my own comfort in being out.
This year, Ann and I celebrate 28 years together and our 25th wedding anniversary. Not the day our government finally recognized us, rather the day our fathers walked us down the aisle - where we exchanged rings, signed our ketubah filled with a life time of promises, and were blessed by our Rabbi and said Congresswoman - all while surrounded by family and friends from across this country and beyond.
Since that day, August 5, 2001, I have called Ann my wife. Not my partner. My wife. Or if you prefer - my spouse, my ball and chain, the little mrs. But not partner.
My Pride month confession: I feel like every time a married, straight person says “partner” instead of husband, wife, or spouse, somewhere a unicorn becomes a horse.
I know, I know. Partner is meant to be neutral. An equalizer. And, I so appreciate that effort to be supportive. But for some reason it has the opposite effect on me. I realize this may be generational and deeply personal. I straddle a generation of elders who believed every bisexual is just someone too afraid to pick a side - and a younger generation that identifies as queer because they once kissed a girl on Mountain Day at Smith College.
Neither is entirely wrong. Neither is entirely right. But I know what I am. And I know who Ann is. Ann Kaplan-Perkins is my WIFE.
We have a friend who used to make fun of us because we had so many anniversaries. But that is what happens when you have to fight for every one. The first official commitment Ann and I made was our wedding in 2001. The second was October 2003 when we became the first lesbian couple to be “domestically partnered” in Chicago.
The next was on our 10th wedding anniversary when we entered into a (separate and unequal) civil union. Then, we were finally legally married in the state of Maine some time in the fall of 2013. But it was not recognized federally. Only a few years later, in 2015, the then sane and just United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges - and all of us in the rainbow alphabet were finally granted full legal marital status.
What I realize in hindsight - is how much all of that strengthened our resolve as a couple. Because each and every time, Ann and I had to recommit. To each other. To continue building a future together. To yet another new legal status.
Yet, even with all those recommitments - until 2015, I still had to fill out “single” on every legal paperwork. I still had to pay separate taxes. I still had to check boxes that erased who Ann was to me entirely.
Often I filled out “married” on a document because it was my truth. And frankly, because I was pissed to be thought of as anything other than that. But eventually a teller, clerk, or nurse would ask for my husband’s name. When I would respond “my wife is Ann,” I would watch them scratch it out and mark me “single.” Still, I never stopped trying until their truth caught up with mine.
I know many people do not believe in the institution of marriage. Many LGBT people think those of us who chose the married path are betraying the queerness of those who came before us. I respect that opinion. In some ways I even agree with it. Marriage is, let’s be honest, so straight.
But here is what I keep coming back to. My parents sacrificed everything so that I could have a life they never had. They had their own dreams for me. And, I don’t think they could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, the actual life I live that their sacrifice made possible.
My queer ancestors did the same. The drag queens and butches and femmes who threw the first punches at Stonewall were not fighting so that we would all end up in the same place. They were fighting for a world they could not yet imagine. One with all of it - the marriage and the chosen family - the mundane and the unconventional - and sometimes the completely unclassifiable. Every version of a life lived honestly. Out and proud and without apology.
I know I have what I do because of my elders - the ones who raised me and the ones who threw the punches. They paid the price, and never got to see or have what we get to have.
Three decades later, I feel my role as an elder now. This life, this family, this love - it is one answer to everything they fought for. And for me - it will always be my greatest source of pride.
Happy Pride.
Post script: Three years ago, Ann and I were honored by the Center on Halsted (formerly Horizons). Part of that introduction was a short video below on our family.