Has Gay Pride Become Too Straight?

Published June 29, 2017 at 11:00 AM EDT

A group of marchers walk at the Pride parade in San Francisco, Sunday, June 25, 2017. (Jeff Chiu/AP)

Who owns gay pride? The parade routes are crowded now. Who owns gay identity?

For the longest time, gay and lesbian, LGBTQ Americans, lived their full identities at the margins, in the shadows. In the closet. Now, we’ve got gay pride parades all over the country. Big ones. With corporate sponsors and tons of straight people coming out to say hooray. Gay bars too. Popular now for straight bachelorette parties. Some in the LGBTQ community now wonder what’s happening to their singularity. Their identity. This hour On Point: Who owns gay pride? — Tom Ashbrook

Guests

John Paul Brammer, associate producer at NBC Out. ( @jpbrammer)

Jane Ward, professor of gender and sexuality studies at University of California Riverside. Author of, “Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations.” ( @thequeerjane)

Jane Coaston, political writer for MTV News. ( @cjane87)

From Tom’s Reading List

MTV News: The Right To Be Remarkably Unremarkable — “We’ve fought for, and won, the right to marry, the right to serve our country, the right to be exceptional for something other than our sexual orientation or gender identity. But there is no achievement in the fight for LGBTQ equality in America more notable than the fact that a person can now be, in a sense, quietly queer.”

NBC Out: Decades After Riots, Activists Spar Over Stonewall’s Legacy — “The election of Donald Trump stirred slumbering spirits of resistance in the LGBTQ community. More acutely, it stirred them in factions of the gay and lesbian communities that had perhaps become comfortable under the Obama administration. Pride parades became marches, which drew on a rich history of LGBTQ protest. But on the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, it seems fitting to ask: Are we truly returning to our radical roots?”

New York Times: Is Pride Still for Queer People Like Me? — “That’s where Pride succeeds. It gets more inclusive and welcoming every year, and as the queers become less threatening, more straight people come, and more minds are opened to the possibility that we gays might just be regular people, after all. (Albeit with better decorating sense and the sass to pull off chaps that leave little to the imagination.) This inclusiveness is also where Pride fails, for lots of us. Who is Pride really for these days? Queers who are proud to be queers, of course. But it’s yet another place that straight white people now feel 100 percent welcome, even though they feel perfectly at home in any public space.”

Your Take On Pride

I think a party is a party – I'd rather have straight supporters than haters who wish we didn't exist.

— Scott Democrat ✳ (@Scottf929) June 29, 2017

Seems to be a standard progression from marginalized counter culture to commercialized party-bro appropriation.

— Paul chamberlain (@Paulcha63159687) June 29, 2017

Too straight! That's of course. Straight people are the majority. Gay people need straight people in thier camp to help push the agenda.

— Adam Reyes (@ReyPackage) June 29, 2017

@OnPointRadio I think most people have conflicted feelings about pride's corporatization but still recognize its huge historical importance.

— Sylvia Guerra (@smaguerra) June 29, 2017