June = Pride

Happy Pride Month!

June is Gay Pride Month here in the U.S. (and many other places, as well) and if I wasn't busy trying to get a show up and running, I'd be attending every Pride event I could. Of course, the scheduling of the Annual JTMF Benefit show during Pride is no accident.

It's also no accident that Pride is celebrated in June. On June 28th, 1969, the Stonewall Riots took place in response to an unwarranted police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village.  The Stonewall was a notorious Mafia-owned bar in the Village where gay men were actually allowed to dance, albeit in black-painted rooms with dim lighting. It s often mistakenly noted that many of those at the Stonewall that night were gathered to mourn the loss of Gay Icon Judy Garland, who passed away on June 22nd of that year.

Regardless of why they were there, it is commonly accepted that the Stonewall raid and subsequent riot were the start of the Gay Rights movement in the U.S. And while great strides in LGBTQ rights have been made over the past 41 years, we still have a long way to go.

Recently, several high-profile sports figures have come out publicly and just today, the San Francisco Giants baseball team released their own "It Gets Better" video. Things are finally really starting to progress for our community, even while hate groups like the FRC and NOM continue to spew their anti-gay rhetoric wherever and whenever they can get people to listen. Of course, the latest generation of young Americans are onto these creeps, and I am happy to predict that they and their ideals will be seen as sad, lonely dinosaurs within the decade.

You can see the Giants' video below (via), followed by the JTMF "It Gets Better" clip:

I wish all of my readers (gay; straight; bisexual; transgendered; inter-sexed or otherwise queer) a happy Pride Month and urge you to not only participate in your local Pride events, but to continue to write your legislators and demand that they address equality issues. Together, we can eradicate intolerance in our lifetime.

More, anon.
Prospero