For almost two decades, June has been a month dedicated to showing off your true colors. It is a month where all members of the LGBT community are encouraged to be themselves. The month signifies a new era of support for minorities: it offers a look into the future, a future where people who identify as LGBT can walk the streets and be seen as a normal human beings.
Now, straight people want to have their own parade, even though straight people have no idea what oppression based on sexuality is. They don’t know what it is like to live in fear because of the purest thing on Earth: love.
The point of Pride Month is to honor the impact that the LGBT community has on the world, and to show respect for LGBT members who may have gone through struggles due to their sexuality. It highlights the discrimination, death, and struggles that older members of the LGBT went through— or those who face them today.
The whole point of Pride Month is to commemorate LGBT people for their fight for equal rights. It is to reminisce on the prosecution, death, and all the pain and suffering the LGBT community was forced to endure.
Straight people have never been questioned for their sexuality. They have never been forced to run from their homes because the government would put them in jail just for loving others.
In 1997, Florida banned same-sex marriages. It was only until 2014 that said amendment was proven to be unconstitutional nation-wide. During this time, if anyone suspected another person of being a homosexual, the suspected individual would be put in jail for up to twenty years.
Straight people have never had to live in fear of being kicked out of their homes, being sent to conversion therapy, being killed or murdered for who they are. Today, many hate crimes around the world are still against the LGBT community.
In 2013, 20.8% of the hate crimes enacted that year in the U.S. were against the LGBT community. In England and Wales, the situation gets worse. Between 2013-2014 and 2017-2018, the rate of homophobic crime per capita increased by a horrifying 144%, according to The Guardian.
We don’t need to look at statistics to understand the stigma behind the LGBT community. We don’t have to look at charts or numbers to understand the hatred stirring in the hearts of many. Florida will never forget the deaths of 49 people at the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
Straight Pride doesn’t exist because everyday is Straight Pride. People who identify as straight see themselves in movies, in shows, in books. The LGBT community had to fight for years for equal representation in social media.
Straight people don’t have to worry about whether or not they will be rejected for healthcare. Straight people don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll be kicked out of their houses or be discriminated against at work. Straight people don’t have to fear walking into churches or into their religious family member’s household.
Straight people don’t have to worry about having their bodies found in allies after a torturous death or being shot to death or about having their bodies thrown into a river.
They can walk the streets and be respected and treated as equals while members of the LGBT community are treated as lower than humans. It’s been almost two decades since we began to celebrate Pride Month and the LGBT community is still being treated as if they carried a contagious disease, and this mindset will never be okay.
The world is always in favor of straight people. They have privileges that the LGBT community doesn’t have. The concept of “straight pride” is absolutely ridiculous because of that simple fact.
