So here we are, the beginning of June, Gay Pride Month. It’s hard to believe that 15 years ago I made a conscious decision to become an ally to a historically marginalize group of Americans during a cultural diversity event. That group? Members of the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) community.
LGBTQ Pride Month is a month-long observance dedicated to the celebration of LGBTQ pride, commemorating the contributions of LGBTQ) culture and community. Pride Month is observed in June, coinciding with the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, a series of gay liberation protests.
Back to the cultural diversity event I referenced at the outset.
You see, the organization, as it had done for years, planned to offer its diverse employees cultural diversity fair with music, food and booths housed by African American, Hispanic, disabled, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and women’s affinity groups. Until then there was never a booth for the LGBTQ employee group. But after months of lobbying by the LGBTQ group the event planners finally agreed. I was invited to provide consultation for the planning team.
Now when I sat down with the event’s planners I noticed that the booth for the LGBTQ group had been assigned to the far end of the event room next to the exit. After some initial resistance they finally agreed to mainstream the position of the LGBTQ table to the center of the room with the group’s signature rainbow color flag on full display.
On the day of the event, hundreds of employees poured into the event sampling ethnic foods, gathering booth literature and enjoying the music. Well, that’s when things got interesting.
For the first thirty minutes or so, once they figured what it was, many employees went out of the way to avoid the LGBTQ booth. That’s when I sprang into action.
I quietly made my way to the back of the booth and spoke to “Andy” a member of the group and suggested that they remove their flag. I then slipped on one of their “gay pride” tee shirts and took a seat at the front of the booth.
Curiosity, shock, disbelief, whatever the reason, traffic to the booth picked up. I returned handshakes, stares -and, yes, a few glares – that came at me by handing out booth literature and light chatter.
Now here’s the point I’m getting to. The fact is that I sat down inside that gay booth as a heterosexual male and, two hours later, left that booth as a heterosexual male. Other than mixed reactions on the part of passersby, nothing else changed. That is except that I seemed to have won some friends and lost some because I chose to sit behind the table in the gay booth.
Enter my – I hate to say – “former” friend “Shannon.”
You see, “Shannon,” a Black lady I’d known for a while, seemed to be the most vocal and offended about my decision. A few days later she cornered me in a hallway, harangued me mercifully and quoted me that part in Leviticus where homosexuality is condemned and accused me of co-opting the African American struggle, therefore paralleling the African American struggle with that of gays. It was clear that any attempt to convince her to see otherwise would have been an exercise in futility. She never spoke to me again. That was years ago.
Look, I understand completely that at that time and even now the issue of homosexuality remains one of those emotional sticking points for many heterosexual types. Here’s what Pulitzer Prize laureate writer Leonard Pitts once wrote about African Americans who bristle at the comparison between the civil rights movement and the gay community’s struggle for equality:
“Granted, the comparison between the Black struggle and the gay one is inexact. But here’s the thing; every freedom movement from Poland’s labor uprising to America’s feminism to China’s Tiananmen Square protests have been compared to the civil rights movement. When Czechoslovakians threw off communist rule in 1989, they sang “We Shall Overcome. It tells me this stinginess about the movement arises only when gays seek to embrace it. And that Black people – some of us, at least – ought to be ashamed.”
Yeah, a lot to unpack here, huh?.
Well not to diminish those sincerely held opinions by folks like “Shannon,” ones that warrant a fair and deeper analysis, the immediate need in my humble opinion are strategies for bridging the gap between diverse communities. Becoming allies to diverse communities seems to be as good as any place to start.
First, given our turbulent national landscape these days where, among other things, transgender Americans are being caricatured and scapegoated by ambitious politicians to appeal to their bases, and the word “diversity” has been hijacked and turned into a wedge issue for division, the need for allies and allyship with the LGBTQ – and other communities – is more important than ever.
In his typical hard-hitting commentary, John Pavlovitz in his “The Beautiful Mess” newsletter kicked off Pride Month with a piece on allyship, “A Pride Month Challenge to Would-Be Allies (And A Warning to the Bigots).”
“Yes, allyship is about rainbow flags, social media posts, and parade events, but it’s about a hell of a lot more than that. To be a true LGBTQ ally right now means visibly and forcefully pushing back against the quickly metastasizing hatred throughout this country; the toxic flood of intellectual ignorance, archaic dogma, phobic fear, and inherited stupidity ….
As with other historically marginalized and oppressed populations in this country (people of color, immigrants, women, Muslims), LGBTQ human beings are seeing their hard-fought legal protections vanishing in recent months. Long-decided laws protecting them are being furiously challenged. They are being painted as immoral existential threats and bathroom-lurking monsters for gullible, easily manipulated, hate-addled Americans who have abandoned the Golden Rule, discarded the Constitution, and rejected the call to love their neighbors.
So, we’ll end with a two-part question: First, what do you do when someone’s looking at you behind a table comprised of folks who differ from you? And second, what do you do as an ally when nobody’s looking at you once you leave that table?
I’ll now leave you with this list of six questions for a thoughtful analysis:
– As a white person, if you take a seat at an African American table, will you emerge from that table still as a white person, perhaps as an ally.?
– As a Christian person, if you take a seat at a Jewish American table, will you emerge from that table still a Christian, perhaps as an ally?
– As a citizen of the United States, if you take a seat at an undocumented immigrant table, will you emerge from that table still a citizen, perhaps as an ally?
– As a physically abled person, if you take a seat at a physically challenged person’s table, will you emerge from that table still a physically abled person, perhaps as an ally?
– As a housed person, if you take a seat at an unhoused (aka homeless) person’s table, will you emerge from that table still a housed person, perhaps as an ally?
– As an English language proficient person, if you take a seat at the table of someone who struggles because English is their second language, will you emerge from that table still an English language proficient person, perhaps as an ally?
– As a Baby Boomer, if you take a seat at the table of Gen Zers, will you emerge from that table still a senior citizen, perhaps as an ally?
Now if there’s a word I want to leave you with as you reflect on those questions, that word is …”temporary”….the adjective that describes the amount of time you’ll likely spend behind the table with some who differ from you.
But here’s the kicker. Afterwards, you have the freedom to go back to who you are once you exit the table. However, for many of those you leave behind, temporary is not a luxury, nor always an option.
Terry Howard is an award-winning writer, a contributing writer with the Chattanooga News Chronicle, The American Diversity Report, The Douglas County Sentinel, Blackmarket.com, recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award, and third place winner of the Georgia Press Award.