Happy LGBTQIA Pride month!

It’s that time of year again. Rainbows, confetti and glitter mark the streets as brightly colored and sequin clad men and women claim the streets for annual pride parades. This time of year is a time when queer people can take to the streets and reclaim who they are. It’s a time for people in the LGBTQIA community to come to together and bask in all the greatness of enjoying who they are with people just like them.

In a heteronormative world that makes anything “other” as “immoral” and “bad” it is a time when queer people can be unapologetically authentic and out in the open without fear. This month, and pride parades themselves are about more than just drag queens putting on a show or everything being “overtly gay,” Pride parades are a long-standing symbol of freedom in the fight against those who would oppress the queer community. To understand why pride parades and pride month are so important to queer people, you must first understand where it began.

Late on June 28, 1969, a local underground gay club was having a typical night of frivolity when a group of policemen raided the club. In 1969, it was illegal to be gay and to be wearing “three or more articles of clothing designated to the opposite sex.” Police officers would extort money from local gay and lesbian bars in exchange for not arresting club goers and putting their names and faces in the papers, thus effectively ruining their lives. Men and women who had been outed for being gay could be fired from their jobs, kicked out of their homes and apartments, and more commonly, beaten and murdered.

On this particular night, the police officers had already raided the club three times prior in the same week and the people in the club had enough. They were angry and would no longer be bullied and threatened those who vowed to “protect and serve.”

The Stonewall Riots began in the heat of the moment when Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman of color, threw a brick at a police car thus inciting all hell to break loose. Club goers fought the cops and effectively ended up forcing the police into the club and barricading them into the club.

The police eventually escaped saying things like they “couldn’t believe a bunch of fairies had it in them.” But the riots didn’t end there, the rioters of Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York continued their fight for three more days straight, no pun intended. Queer people from across the country heard about this and began to fight back as well. On the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, June 28^th 1970, two simultaneous Gay Pride Marches were held in Los Angeles and Chicago, marking the first pride parades and the pride movement itself.

Queer people could no longer be silenced and, since then, the fight has only grown stronger and fiercer.

So when you ask, “why do gay people need a whole month and whole parades dedicated to them?” Just remember, there were never laws criminalizing who you are and police raids on the places you love.

In light of laws like HB2, and other laws against trans people, it is incredibly important to keep in mind that Pride month is about the reclamation of humanity and dignity after generations of society dehumanizing us. Pride is about freedom and the hope that one day equal rights will truly be a human right.