It's not identity politics or woke nonsense to acknowledge that coming through all the challenges still associated with being gay and learning to accept yourself and live your authentic life are things to be proud of.Ĭonservatives certainly shouldn’t embrace the woke progressive vision of gay pride month. While thankfully it is increasingly rare, thousands of young gay Americans are still exposed to pseudoscientific, tortuous, anti-gay “conversion therapy.” But in the real world, being gay still usually means years of tearing yourself up inside, perpetual self-consciousness, and, often, serious familial issues. In theory, conservatives are right about that. Not because there's anything special or worth celebrating about it inherently. But conservatives go too far when they dismiss the notion of gay pride entirely. So, the mainstream gay pride movement, dominated by the Left, has become worse than useless. In this, the intolerant liberal approach to pride not only does a tremendous disservice to those of us deemed the wrong kind of gay person, it also sabotages the acceptance of gay people, rapidly on the rise among Republicans, by making holdouts incorrectly if understandably believe that gay acceptance and a conservative political worldview are incompatible. It wrongly conflates the essence of gay identity with progressive politics and a left-wing worldview that many gay people, myself included, do not share. It denies them the very agency that the gay rights movement was founded to fight for. Thus, the liberal pride movement strips gays of individuality. If you simply spent 10 minutes walking around any major city’s pride events in the last few years, you likely saw anti-gun signs, heard anti-Trump chants, or otherwise encountered unrelated liberal activism interwoven through the events’ very fabric. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a pro-Trump gay group was banned from pride events because members were deemed by organizers to have the wrong “values.” A Washington, D.C., “Dyke March” event banned some lesbians from marching with a Jewish-themed pride flag because organizers said they thought it represented “violence against Palestinians.” ( Antisemitic, much?) This year, the group that runs New York City’s Pride Month events banned gay, lesbian, and transgender police officers from participating in uniform because their occupation runs afoul of the far-left’s hate for law enforcement. Now, woke activists have taken over the pride movement - and made progressivism a litmus test for participation. Just a few decades ago, gay rights activists were the ones silenced and banned from marches and events. First, the liberal perspective on Pride Month has become startlingly intolerant in its own right.