Banning cops from Pride doesn’t feel like solidarity
Let me warn you: This is a soapbox column.
On Sept. 2, the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors effectively banned LGBTQ officers from 2021’s march, saying that “we cannot welcome the participation of the San Francisco Police Department’s Pride Alliance — which is to say, uniformed SFPD officers, marching as a pride contingent.” The statement signed off claiming “Queer solidarity forever.” But is kicking us out of the event really solidarity?
I reached out to S.F. Pride President Carolyn Wysinger for clarification, and she referred me to Peter Kane, the organization’s communications manager. He said that the ban occurred “because of a widespread community outcry over the inadequate response from SFPD and the city’s Department of Police Accountability over an episode of police violence at Pride 2019.”
I understand their disagreement with the DPA, but is taking it out on the LGBTQ officers and our allies the solution?
I’ve been marching for 38 years. Those days it was a dangerous thing to do; we got tomatoes and bottles thrown at us. And the cops didn’t always protect us.
In fact, Pride was born out of an opposition to prejudiced police officers both at Stonewall in New York and at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. In 1990, a few of the bravest women I knew persuaded me to join them in the Pink Panther Patrol, a neighborhood watch group that defended the LGBTQ community in Greenwich Village against bashing.
Here’s the story of why I earned a badge: I was living in Jersey City with Brian, long before we had the right to be married. Late one night, I walked to the mailbox wearing a “Read My Lips” Tshirt, adorned with a picture of two sailors kissing. A teenager whispered a slur, and a dozen of his friends kicked and punched me in the middle of Kennedy Boulevard.
I still have a scar on my forehead.
The cops didn’t come that night. Brian came to the rescue, wearing a silk caftan shirt and carrying a baseball bat.
The next day I went to the precinct, still wearing the Tshirt. A desk cop looked up from his typewriter, “Don’t you think maybe you were asking for it, wearing that?” “You can’t say that,” I said. “Buddy, if I had a nickel for every faggot that got socked in this neighborhood, I’d be retired,” he said. “You think my job is easy, you try doing it.”
So, I did. Santa Rosa Police Academy tried everything to make me quit: accidental baton strikes, putting nails in my tires, and the gun range instructors letting me know that “accidents happen on the range …”
Today, I’m a chief deputy, one of a few LGBTQ officers to reach that rank.
Because I have a seat at the table, I’m part of the change. The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office, for example, was an early leader in AIDS education. The office developed the first Transgender Awareness class for the
Peace Officer Standards of Training.
When members of the LGBTQ community started joining the police force, we began to change it. Yes, I know some knuckleheads, but there are 10 times as many decent women and men who know that their “fundamental duty is to protect the innocent against oppression.”
Over the years, straight deputies joined the Pride Alliance at the march because it was the right thing to do.
Paradoxically, the San Francisco Pride Committee discriminates against LGBTQ officers today. It’s like taking the list away from Schindler because he was raised Catholic.
When my Black son walks hand in hand with me in my uniform along Market Street, it means we have found common ground. I’ve seen people weep. This is how we win the revolution, proving that we all can be a part of making change happen, proving that all colors in the rainbow flag can come together.
We won’t get to walk down Market Street in 2021. Leave that to the corporations and the straight politicians hustling for votes.
But alongside Brian, Zane, Aidan, Buddyboy, Bandit and Queenie, the FisherPaulsons will march the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior. And in that we’ll take our own pride.
In human solidarity forever.