June has arrived, and with it comes rainbows, parades, glitter, and the annual conservative meltdown about all three.
Let’s get something out of the way: the current administration does not recognize June as Pride Month. The White House, which once lit up in rainbow colors, is now about as welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community as a Southern Baptist potluck — technically open to the public, but you will absolutely be talked about on the way to the parking lot.
While they are still eating your Aunt Sarah’s Banana Puddin’ and wondering how you could still afford the ‘fancy’ tupperware.
The official proclamations this June will celebrate things like “Great Outdoors Month” and “National Homeownership Month.” Which, honestly? Fine. Gay people love the outdoors. Gay people own homes. We are everywhere, and no amount of bureaucratic erasure changes that.
But I digress.
A Brief History of People Trying to Cancel Gay People (And Failing)
Homophobia is not new. It’s not clever. It’s not winning. It is, however, remarkably persistent — like that one relative who still forwards chain emails and asks if you’ve “tried just being straight.”
We’ve survived Anita Bryant, the Moral Majority, the AIDS crisis, the exgay movement (personal experience on that one), Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and approximately nine thousand think pieces about whether gay people ruin the institution of marriage. (Marriage, for the record, was doing fine on its own — divorce rates were already a whole thing before we showed up.)
And yet: here we are. Still gay. Still proud. Still fabulous. Still going to RuPaul’s Drag Race watch parties, you know, the usual…
On the Current Unpleasantness
Soooooo, I’m not going to pretend we’re not in a genuinely alarming moment. The rollback of protections, the erasure of trans recognition, the quiet administrative deletion of LGBTQ+ resources from federal websites — it’s not nothing. It’s something. It’s a lot of somethings.
But I’ve been queer and alive through worse, of my own making and others, and I’ve watched my community survive things that were supposed to finish us off. We are constitutionally incapable of being quietly disappeared. We literally invented spectacle.
You want to erase us? Hunty, please, that would be like trying to feather dust a super nova. Speaking of, now let’s talk about your eyebrows; they are pulling in signals from deep space.
Why I’m Still Celebrating
Here’s my theology of Pride, such as it is:
Pride was never a gift from the government. It was never handed down by a benevolent administration as a reward for good behavior. It was born in a riot — a sweaty, furious, glitter-adjacent riot in Greenwich Village when a bunch of people who’d been told to be invisible decided they’d had enough of the dark.
Stonewall didn’t happen because a president issued a proclamation. It happened because people who had nothing left to lose decided to be loud.
So when I hear that the current regime isn’t officially recognizing Pride Month, I feel — and I want to be precise here — absolutely nothing. They don’t get to define this. They never did.
June belongs to us because we made it ours. Not because it was assigned. Because it was claimed.
Practical Advice for Pride 2026
For my fellow LGBTQ+ readers: Go to the parade. Wear the thing. Kiss the person. Cry at the drag show — you will, it’s fine, we all do, there’s something about a 6’4″ queen (before heels) in a Dolly Parton wig singing “I Will Always Love You” that just gets to you.
Call your people. Thank your allies. Buy something rainbow-colored from a queer-owned business. Donate to a LGBTQ+ youth organization. Read something that makes you feel less alone.
And if someone tells you Pride is unnecessary because “you have equal rights” — bless their heart, smile warmly, and point out that equal rights are apparently so fragile they can be deleted by executive order. We’ll circle back.
The Punchline
You know what’s kind of stupidly funny about all of this? The people who are most aggressively anti-gay have spent the last fifty years telling us that being gay is a choice.
Which means, by their own logic, they’re waking up every morning and choosing to be this insufferable about it.
That’s dedication. That’s commitment. That’s — almost — a kind of pride.
But not the fun kind with the floats and go-go men throwing out lip balm and beads.
Happy Pride Month, friends. We’re still here. We’re still queer. And we are absolutely not getting used to it whether you do or not.
A quick note: I’m going back on blog vacation — but sh*t happened, then more sh*t happened and then…. Yay! Pride Month waited for no one, and neither did I. I’ll be back in full force sometime next week. Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone. (I’m talking to you, Congress.)
🏳️🌈 If something I wrote made you feel a little more understood today, or maybe even a smile on your face, consider subscribing to the blog — and sharing it with someone who needs it. And if you haven’t yet grabbed a copy of my memoir WHY, it’s a book about survival, identity, and what happens when you stop trying to be someone else. Feels relevant. Grab it here.
Leave a Reply