Do Pride events need to be ‘family friendly’?
Normative demand smells of fearmongering
When we moved to a new city several Junes ago, Zach and I were excited to meet new friends and make the area feel like home. So even before we finished unboxing our belongings, we made sure to attend some of the local LGBTQ Pride events.
We watched as hundreds of our new neighbors in solid-colored T-shirts marched through the historic downtown in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, forming a rainbow as long as the parade itself. We stopped by the open-air marketplace to sample food and drinks from local vendors. And later that evening we enjoyed live music and nightlife complete with thumping dance beats and drag queens.
The lineup was striking for a city of fewer than 22,000 residents. As boyfriends in our late 20s, we found plenty to enjoy at Pride in our new city – even though we encountered one event that left us feeling a bit uncomfortable.
As we chatted with vendors in the mid-afternoon heat, we saw a group of teens begin taking turns at a microphone on a stage nearby. One by one, they spoke from the heart about feeling othered, then finding community. Some talked frankly about battling depression. Their peers responded with generous displays of affirmation.
The teens spoke with such candor and emotion that Zach and I felt uneasy just standing there, even in a public space with friendly neighbors of all ages. We instinctively kept our distance, recognizing that the teens were using that corner of the venue for a particular purpose. We were welcome in the area, sure, but this moment was about them.
What we didn’t realize until later is that the organization hosting that communitywide Pride event had existed more than 20 years for the express purpose of supporting LGBTQ youths. The teens who stepped up to that mic were members of a community. What we witnessed was a beautiful display of their support for each other.
I think about that experience each June when someone inevitably asks a pointed question about Pride-related discomfort of a different flavor.
The question usually goes something like, “Should Pride events be family friendly?”
Pride, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day parades
By that, the asker means they want to be sure kids won’t see or hear anything overtly sexual. I get it. I really do. A hard-partying parade is no place for a child.
That’s true whether we’re talking about a Pride event, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day or another occasion adults have used to make a booze-infused series of questionable decisions. For that reason, I have no objection to the existence of “family friendly” Pride parades. Organizers can plan and market such events. Families should seek out the ones that suit their sensibilities.
But the correct answer to that perennial question (“Should Pride events be family friendly?”) is not “yes.” Those who answer in the affirmative are saying Pride should strive to be palatable to anyone and everyone. Yikes. That normative demand for respectability fails to respect the queerness of LGBTQ communities. And it smells hauntingly reminiscent of the fearmongering tactics bigots have used to claim that LGBTQ people pose an exceptional threat to women, children and the concept of family itself.
The sad reality is that our society still imposes uneven standards of propriety.
Double standard follows LGBTQ kids into adulthood
Children’s films depict straight couples falling in love all the time. They even romanticize the truly problematic idea of a prince kissing an unconscious damsel, without fear of being dinged as family unfriendly. But the slightest reference to same-sex longing or the briefest acknowledgment that a queer-coded character is, indeed, queer draws controversy.
That double standard follows LGBTQ kids into adolescence and adulthood. Public displays of affection between adults of the same gender may not meet the palatability standards of the broader community, even when that community tolerates such overt sexual expressions from straight folks.
So when someone says Pride should be family friendly, they often are trying to sanitize queer spaces without recognizing that their sanitizer was formulated by the very same heteronormativity that Pride exists to reject.
Our rituals of celebration and protest have never been about pursuing palatability. They have always been about making ourselves visible and asserting the dignity that society has sought to withhold.
Zach and I went to Pride in our new city to socialize and celebrate. We did not expect to hear teens bare their souls to one another, nor did we find that experience particularly enjoyable. And that’s OK. Pride is multifaceted. Not every event needs to meet my wants and expectations, just as not every parade needs to be a comfortable space for each and every nuclear family.