Pride should be about love

When did Pride Month get so complicated, so commercial and so contentious?

Everyone is mad at everyone, everywhere, all at once.

No one knows this better than the folks who are running corporations. They can't seem to please anyone nowadays.

On the one hand, more and more businesses are showing support for Pride Month, a celebration in June inspired in part by the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York's Greenwich Village. Most of those efforts are symbolic and superficial. They're about signage, slogans and selling merchandise. You never hear of companies having a sustained dialogue with LGBTQIA+ activists about how they can improve the lives of people in that community.

At the same time, even these meager offerings from corporations are seen as excessive by those Americans who are uncomfortable with how fast society is changing with regard to sexual identity. Anheuser-Busch, Target and Disney are just some of the companies under pressure from conservative groups to scrap their outreach efforts to marginalized communities or risk a boycott by right-wingers.

We seem to have lost sight of the purpose of Pride Month. It was born of good intentions. Our society makes LGBTQIA+ people feel as if there is something wrong with them. Our friends and family members have been teased, attacked, humiliated, belittled, discriminated against and made to feel ashamed of who they are.

It's a lot for anyone to endure. For some people, it's too much, and they take their own lives. So, the thinking went, why not set aside the month of June as a time when LGBTQIA+ Americans could feel proud of who they are, and the rest of us could learn more about what they experience so we can be better allies? The month has also traditionally presented an opportunity for individuals to come out and live as their true selves.

This year, however, a lot of Americans are acting up in juvenile ways that no one should be proud of. From protests and fistfights to boycotts and corporate capitulation, Pride Month is taking a pummeling.

In North Hollywood, an elementary school recently became a battlefield when an assembly for Pride Month, where a book about nontraditional families was read, brought out protesters from both sides and resulted in a physical altercation. The ruckus occurred at Saticoy Elementary, where a week earlier an LGBTQIA+ flag was burned. A parent-led group - wearing shirts that read “Leave Our Kids Alone” squared off against LGBTQIA+ activists who held signs that read “Love not Bigotry.” Police were called, and officers had to form a line to separate the groups.

This promises to be a Pride Month like no other. We're only about a week in, and already I'm exhausted.

But then again, these days, I'm feeling a lot of things.

I'm disappointed in how closed-minded many of my fellow Americans are, on both sides of the cultural divide. Many conservatives are afraid that “the woke” are indoctrinating children to become part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Meanwhile, many liberals think that anyone who has qualms about how fast the world is changing, or questions whether drag queens should be reading books to children, must be a bigot.

I'm also frustrated by the lack of nuance in media coverage that spotlights the extremes. The Fourth Estate isn't interested in the view from the center of the road. Where is the story about the middleaged gay woman in a committed relationship who supports the trans rights movement but worries that it is backfiring because it demands that all Americans celebrate change - while change is coming at lightning speed?

It's one of the reasons I was intrigued by what I heard recently from a caller to “The Michael Smerconish Program” on SiriusXM radio. During a discussion about the conflicts surrounding Pride Month,

Jim in Vero Beach - a self-described “male gay moderate” and successful businessman in a long-term relationship who said he is not defined solely by his sexuality - said much of the turmoil is fueled by the extremes.

“They speak louder. They shout. And they're emotional,” he said. “I feel like there's a lot of us who understand that both sides need to chill out.”

You heard the man. Let's chill out, America - and be kinder to one another. Not just for one month but all year long. It's that simple.