Proud of What?
J.D. “Jim” FoxNew York City, home to World Pride celebrations, is awash in rainbow flags. My own NYC neighborhood, Hell’s Kitchen, probably deserves to be anointed Gay Ground Zero. We boast Broadway theatre a few blocks away, not to mention two gay bars on my street alone (one features outside seating where I sometimes stop with my rescue dog Sam).Though I’m happy to see all the revelers in from everywhere, I must admit to feeling a little left out (and I’m not the only one).I just don’t feel much pride as a gay man; never have. What I do feel, I’ve just realized, is some pride as a survivor, specifically this: I came of age during a plague that targeted my tribe. It stole the closest thing I ever found to a soulmate, but I survived.
Beyond that…I survived coming out to a quietly loving, yet completely baffled Midwestern family. This was in the late ‘80s, when liberals considered themselves cutting edge to not oppose civil unions. Marriage equality was on no one’s radar.I survived an indifferent government — Reagan and Bush — who I think deserved criminal prosecution for not even mentioning HIV/AIDS during the first SIX YEARS of their administration, as the number of sick and dead grew exponentially. I worked as a Capitol Hill press secretary back then, and my congressman boss declined my proposal to send Surgeon General Koop’s Report on AIDS to every household in his district, as all Members of Congress could in the name of education and prevention. He was a Democrat.And, I survived a hostile religion — Catholicism — and am now amazed I tried as hard as I did to fit my family’s traditions and practices into my life. Truly, how NOT proud was that? They got a Church that sanctified their lives and relationships. Best I could do was to survive its continuing, official, ridiculous condemnation.So, in all the media coverage of World Pride, you probably won’t see me. What I am going to do, accompanied by co-volunteers from God’s Love We Deliver – my not-religious charity which provides home-delivered meals to 6,000 New Yorkers too sick to cook – is to finally go to Stonewall in Greenwich Village. In my 20+ years in New York, I’ve walked by its door a thousand times, but never went in. It’s finally time to pay my personal respects to those far-braver-than-me drag queens who publicly fought back almost 30 years before I got here.My own march to a place of some pride has been far more private, at least until now with this online essay… like the boy from Wisconsin that I guess I still am.
About the Author: J.D. “Jim” Fox is Head Coach at Next Act Coaching. https://nextactcoaching.net/
