The Betty Pages sprung out of some conversations Betty Desire a local drag queen adn I were having in a gay bar. These editorials may be out of context now and were written for a local audience in the Bellingham area. but I am sure readers everywhere can make some sense of parts of them.

Taking Pride

June 2004

As this is my first column in this 'zine let me introduce myself. I am a heterosexual man with so many bends and kinks in my sexuality that when added up I could never claim to be straight. I help manage a sex positive community center, operate a pornography portal on the internet, take naked pictures of people, and teach classes to people on how to do kinky things to each other whenever I get the chance. I am the patriarch of a polyamorous family and bottom to a dyke who is also my mentor. Most of my friends and rolemodels are gay or heterosexual leathermen. But some still call me straight. Sometimes I believe them as I can pass in a world that assumes I am. The goal I have is a world that I can thrive in when they know I am not. I hope you enjoy reading what I write here. If you think I am right, thank you. If you disagree with me, I am glad you are thinking about it.

I had a conversation recently about pride celebrations and their purpose for the GLBT community and their relationship to the rest of the community. My partner in this discussion asserted that pride celebrations had a primary role of outreach to the greater community. My argument is they should have no such mission. That pride celebrations are about a community taking pride in themselves. Note the verb there, "taking". No one is going to give you pride. Pride is something you manufacture from within yourself. Pride celebrations are a great place to start. However, do not fool yourself about pride celebrations being about outreach beyond your own community.

Too illustrate this point I look at my own journey. I grew in the eastern part of this county. I was an aspiring redneck as a youth with all the homophobia and bias that comes along with it. This was not the fault of my parents, who still managed to instill the foundation for acceptance I would use later on, but my peers and my youth. I watched footage of Seattle's pride parade every year on the TV news. Never once did it make one small dent in my bias. In fact it probably gave me ammunition to reinfoce any biases I had. I am pretty sure my experience is not unique in this regard.

There were two forces that changed my mind when I was a young man in college. The first was my libido. Over and over I kept getting into situations where my libido caused me to suddenly have to accept things in order to get laid. Not a very honorable or high minded path to enlightenment, but it seems to have worked very well for me. The second was plain old familiarity. Knowing someone well, having many things in common and then finding out they were homosexual.

The first time my libido drove me to enlightenment was a girlfriend who had a very out gay man as a friend. If I was going to get along on Saturday night I had to coexist (at first) with a homosexual. Getting along meant that Saturday night was going to end with me celebrating the new loss of my virginity with my girlfriend. If I acted the fool, a fight was sure to happen and I would be celebrating solo. In time this getting along turned to acceptance and even some understanding. This was not the first time my libido caused me to try acceptance on before I was ready. I thank all of those ex-lovers for the many opportuinities to grow they gave me.

Familiarity lessons were a little tougher on me. A man I grew up with, worked on his dad's farm, played football with, died. I met his dad on a loading dock in Lynden one afternoon when working my way through college in the '80s. I was making small talk asking about his children and grandchildren when his face grew sad. He told me that Troy had just died. He matter of fact told me it was this HIV that killed him. I was doubly stunned.

Not only was someone I grew up with dead, he had been gay. I had worked on his Dad's farm at the age of 8. I committed illegal acts of underage drinking with him. I played football with him, dressed next to him in the locker room. This was the last dent my armor of bigotry could stand. It shattered. I was not aware of how broken it was at first. But over time I look back at that point in time as a major turning point in my life. The kicker for me was not realizing our differences, but rather realizing how inconsequential our differences were compared to the things we had in common. He was one of "us". Everyone has an "us", a group of people who you feel you belong amongst.

That more than anything is the key to fighting bias. It should not serve as a surprise that the polling numbers of people who support same sex marriage track over time with the number of people who have a close friend or relative who is gay. They always had gay friends and relatives, but now more people know they do. They have too many other things in common to maintain their bias against that one person and quickly the belief system is broken down and replaced.

That is the path to acceptance in our society. Familiarity. In this case familiarity breeds acceptance. Homophobia is not conquered in a parade, but rather in the cul de sac complaining to your neighbors about traffic, cooperating with your co-workers, or celebrating a holiday with your family.

Pride parties on the other hand are about your pride in yourself. Your individuality and celebrating your differences. They are also about remembering those who fought the battles that have already been won. The pride celebration movement has its roots in a riot started by a drag queen after all. So, be as different as you can muster. Find pride in your every kink, bend and twist. Honor your differences with a raucous celebration. Then cure the world of bias tommorrow as you stand in line at the grocery store, or complain with your neighbors about the soaring price of gas.