What’s PRIDE Got to Do With It?

Why, in a society racked by escalating toxicity and shaming, self-embracing is the most courageous thing a person can do.

Heartstopper Cast

Don't let anyone make you disappear, Charlie. – Mr. Ajayi, a gay teacher, to young Charlie Spring, gay protagonist in Netflix's Heartstopper series.

A faggot is… a word people use to make gay people feel bad. – Juan, to Little, in the 2016 film Moonlight, when Little, who’d been repeatedly called a faggot, asked what one was.

America has rarely seen the likes of Pauli Murray. As an African American, she was the granddaughter of a slave and great-granddaughter of a slave owner. As a woman, she was a suffragist, as an activist, she was arrested for not giving up her seat – 15 years before Rosa Parks, and as an attorney, she framed the arguments that both advanced equal rights for women and formed the foundation for Brown v. Board. Thurgood Marshall called her work the “bible of the Civil Rights movement.”

Pauli was gender-nonconforming, non-straight, an author, poet and Mademoiselle magazine woman of the year. She was Yale Law School’s first African American Doctor of Juridical Science and the first woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. Despite being female, an ethnic minority and LGBTQ+, few people have contributed more to the American story. But imagine what she could’ve accomplished in a world where all her differences were assets, not liabilities.

Or, take Stormé DeLarverie. As a biracial, “masc-of-center”, queer, non-binary person who, as a young teen, actually did run off and join the circus, Stormé was constantly confounding constructs. From joining Ringling Brothers as a rider of jumping horses to performing as both a drag king and a drag queen, Stormé, part of the Stonewall riots, would spend a lifetime on the front lines; doing everything from leading the Stonewall Veterans Association to organizing street patrols. This dedication and fearlessness earned them the title, “Guardian of the Village”. We look at non-binary people like Stormé with confusion. But Stormé wasn’t confused. They knew exactly who they were, and lived their life accordingly.

Then, there’s Kiyoshi Kuromiya. Despite being a third-generation Japanese American, Kiyoshi was born in a WW2 internment camp. But that’s not all. He was an anti-Vietnam war protestor and deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement. As a member of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), he participated in sit-ins and marches, and was in Selma where he, along with hundreds of others, was assaulted. He was friends with everyone from Fred Shuttlesworth to James Baldwin, and was so close to the King family that after Martin was shot, he was on hand to help care for the kids.

But that’s still only part of Kiyoshi’s story. Kiyoshi, in April 1968, just three weeks after Martin’s death, co-organized one of the largest Vietnam War protests ever staged. In 1969, he cofounded Gay Liberation Front, the unapologetic activism organization that grew out of Stonewall. And, in 1970, he spoke about LGBTQ+ rights at the Black Panther Party Convention. He cofounded ACT UP, and spearheaded the creation of the ACT UP Standard of Care for people living with HIV/AIDS. He was part of the FDA panel that recommended approval of the first protease inhibitors, was part of several cases that went before the Supreme Court, and worked on variegated human rights issues throughout his life.

All three – Pauli, Stormé and Kiyoshi – are examples of extraordinary people who also happened to be LGBTQ+. And they weren’t alone. In The Gospel According to Gaga, we covered all kinds of amazing Americans from Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk and James Baldwin, to Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, astronaut Sally Ride, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jane Addams and Senator Tammy Baldwin to Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two of the trans women at the center of the Stonewall Uprising, and co-organizers of what’s now recognized as the first Pride parade.

Or, take my fellow Alabamian, Navy Seal Brett Jones, who explained that he knew as a kid that he didn’t feel the same way about girls that his buddies did. He didn’t have a name for it until he heard a sermon about the “evils” of homosexuality. "Oh!" he thought. "That's what it's called." (Thanks, pastor!) Or, everyone from Tracy Chapman, Lady Gaga and Indigo Girls to Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes, Tarell McCraney (who based the film Moonlight on his own life) and the entire Heartstopper cast.

Moonlight - Juan teaching Little to swim.

Each of them shows how people of diverse sexualities and identities have been making us a better nation for as long as we’ve been a nation, and are continuing to do so today. Across the board, we’re a better people because of them. They make us proud. And when we celebrate Pride, we’re also celebrating them, along with all those who did everything from give their lives on the battlefield to fall from AIDS. We do what it takes to honor those who are still here and remember those who aren’t. Because there are people out there who not only want America to forget, they wish these wonderful people had never lived.

Honey Mahogany, Chair of the SF Democratic Party, in a June 2022 email, described how a contingent of men identifying themselves as Proud Boys disrupted the San Lorenzo library’s Drag Queen Story Hour, with angry shouts and threats of violence, while wearing camo and t-shirts blazoned with automatic weapons. "As a Drag Queen Story Hour Queen," she explained, "I am very aware that this could have happened to any one of us. We all received the email asking if we were interested in reading at San Lorenzo. I keep thinking about how terrified she [Panda Dulce] must have been given what had just happened a few weeks prior at Uvalde” (the shooting tragedy where 17 kids and 2 teachers were killed).

Honey continued, “I also can’t help but think of the children and their families and the trauma they endured and how the parents are going to explain what happened to their preschool-aged children." And this wasn't an isolated incident. For instance, self-described Christians gathered to pray outside a NYC library as a drag queen named Flame sang the ABCs with kids inside, led them in coloring activities, and read books to them about how it’s OK to be different. And, in Chicago, protesters gathered to harass parents who brought their children to the story time event while denouncing the library staff that organized it as “from the devil.”

Around the same time as Honey’s announcement, openly gay California State Senator Scott Wiener, who’d been sent numerous death threats, received an email, unnerving in its specificity, claiming that bombs had been placed in his office and at his home. Senator Wiener, who, in 2017, negotiated with robbers to pay them $200 in exchange for his phone (they all walked to the ATM together) was both undeterred and unsurprised. He described how "words have consequences," linking the drag queen harassment, the escalating anti-LGBTQ+ violence, and the bomb threat he received to the rhetoric being espoused by so many political leaders and Christian organizations.

But the worst thing about this form of violation is that it’s not even remotely new. Take President Ronald Reagan. Much has been written about how he refused to even say the word “AIDS” in public until 1985, a year into his second term, and that he gave no address on it until his second term was almost up. But this wasn’t because Reagan hated gays. He and Nancy had gay friends and even invited one couple to spend a night at the White House. Reagan wasn’t homophobic. But he also wasn’t principled.

So, when Christian fundamentalists came to him and told him they wanted to back him, a man who had no real religious beliefs, over incumbent Jimmy Carter, a born-again Southern Baptist, Reagan accepted their help. And help, they did. The Moral Majority, founded in 1979, the year before the Reagan/Carter race, was a massive political wolf in religious sheep’s clothing. After Reagan’s victory, the Heritage Foundation penned its first strategy paper, Mandate for Leadership (which gradually morphed into today’s Project 2025) to help him govern, and many of its contributing authors went on to hold roles in his administration.

Chief among them was Gary Bauer, veteran executive of Christian culture war organizations ranging from the Family Research Council to Focus on the Family, who became Reagan’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. When the Presidential Commission on the AIDS Epidemic was launched during Reagan’s last year in office, Bauer nominated William F. Buckley, the man who proposed that we permanently tattoo all people who tested positive for HIV, on the arm if they were drug users and on the buttocks if they were gay. Meanwhile, Senator Strom Thurmond put forth Paul Cameron, a psychologist who asserted we should do to gay Americans what we did to Japanese Americans during WW2 – intern them.

Both Nancy Reagan and their son, Ron Reagan, desperately tried to convince the president to take action, but they were vehemently opposed by folk like Bauer who wielded almost unimaginable influence in the administration. Nancy, among other things, fought tooth and nail for the inclusion of just one gay man on the commission, even as Bauer warned that doing so would be “catastrophic”, as it “legitimized the homosexual lifestyle”. Nancy eventually prevailed. Likewise, Ron, in defiance of his father, starred in a July 1987 television commercial where he said: "The U.S. government isn't moving fast enough to stop the spread of AIDS. Write to your congressman," before adding with a smile, "or someone higher up."

By the time Reagan publicly addressed the plague for the first time, again, at Nancy’s insistence and Liz Taylor’s urging, 16,000 American lives had already been lost. Still, as tragic as these deaths based on willful neglect were, what’s happening right now has the potential to be so much worse. Because today, LGBTQ+ people are no longer just being neglected, they’re being targeted.

The actions currently being undertaken by an autocratic administration, and allowed by a cowed Congress and a complicit Supreme Court are unlike anything we’ve seen from our government since Democrat Woodrow Wilson, the first Southerner elected to the presidency after the Civil War. Wilson not only made the infamous decision to segregate our nation’s capitol; the first film ever shown in the White House under his presidency was The Clansman (renamed Birth of a Nation), a work that drove KKK membership to unprecedented heights across the United States. Fast-forward more than a century, and the Trump administration is doing the same kind of targeting. The only thing that’s changed is the target.

There’s what he’s doing to immigrants, including the sending of the military into sanctuary cities to protect ICE agents from protestors. And that’s not all. The executive order, issued without congressional approval, authorizes military deployment anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activities are even “likely to occur.” Then, there’s what he’s doing to the poor; attempting to cut everything from Medicaid to programs that feed children. And there’s the impact of his elimination of protections for historically exploited groups (calling such protections “unfair”), and those suffering from the multiplied harm intersectionality causes. And that’s before getting to the outright decimation of LGBTQ+ rights.

Trump has issued executive orders limiting trans rights, banned transgender people from serving in the armed forces, and rescinded anti-discrimination policies for LGBTQ people. Take the Stonewall LGBTQ National Monument, where a Trump executive order renamed it the “LGB” National Monument – erasing trans and queer people, despite the fact that the majority of original protestors were both trans and of color, from Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera to Stormé DeLarverie. "The transgender community threw the first bricks that launched the contemporary LGBTQ human rights movement," said New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, one of our nation’s few out, LGBTQ+ elected officials. And he’s right.

He’s also one of the many people who helped spread the word about Andry Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old gay, Venezuelan who, due to his sexuality and pro-democracy activism, was forced to flee his home country. He came here seeking asylum. Andry, a makeup artist and stylist, had no semblance of a criminal record and his request for asylum was in process. But none of that stopped the administration from seizing him, transporting him, without trial, to a country that was not his own and imprisoning him. Simply because he dared come to us for help.

Trump signed an executive order that removed any other gender identities besides male and female from all federal forms, after declaring, in his inauguration speech, "As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female." Of course, that’s not true. It won’t “henceforth be the official policy of the United States government” – just until he and this administration are gone.

Then, there are the rapidly proliferating state statutes that do everything from outlaw gender-affirming care to eliminate access to safe abortions, to businesses that dropped out of the Human Rights Campaign’s equality survey, which rates companies by whether they’re fair places for LGBTQ+ people to work, and stopped supporting Pride events. And that’s before getting to the new rash of rulings protecting discrimination, from the SCOTUS decision affirming that businesses have a right to refuse to serve LGBTQ+ customers, to executive orders stating that reporting LGBTQ+ discrimination is, in and of itself, discriminatory. That it’s Christian persecution.

And they’re not stopping. For instance, Southern Baptists, at their annual convention this week, asked its 10,000 delegates to vote on whether the denomination should adopt a long-term plan to overturn marriage equality, even though nearly 70% of Americans believe it to be a civil right. The resolution was written to include all statutes that, according to them, “defy God’s design for marriage and family”, from outlawing surrogacy to further restricting women’s roles in church leadership beyond the denomination’s decree, 25 years ago, prohibiting female pastors. Sadly, but expectedly, the resolution passed.

A June 9, 2025, New York Times article reported how the statement asserted that elected officials aren’t beholden to the Constitution or accountable to the people. Rather, their duty is to “pass laws that reflect the truth of creation,” and “oppose any law that denies or undermines what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.” Today, they’re no longer even pretending to care about democracy, nor are they still claiming to be the (moral) majority. Which makes sense, given their dwindling numbers. This June marks the 18^th straight year of membership decline. The SBC, a denomination that’s increasingly telling people that there’s no place for them, is now the same size it was 50 years ago, before launching the culture war.

But still, they keep pushing this ill-conceived agenda based on the majority they used to be, but are no longer. That’s the entire problem with having bullied our way to the top. Because everything is changing, the tactics that once kept us afloat are the very ones that pull us under. We find ourselves irrationally resenting others who are awarded the same rights we’ve had all along, whether getting a fair shake in a job interview or being given the benefit of the doubt by police, whether kissing their partner in public, marrying the person they love or marching in a parade.

In the ‘60s, they started out saying, “Keep America White”. But before long, that wasn’t working anymore. So, it morphed into “Take America for God”, then, “Make America Great Again”. This irrational anger at changes they can’t stop is the driver behind everything from racism to antisemitism, to the increasingly desperate attacks against the LGBTQ+ community.

But the once-targeted are no longer having it. Their struggles have taught them the truth of Frederick Douglass’ words that the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress, and they’ve long figured out that every time they refuse to let anyone make them disappear, every time they assert their right to be and stand proud, they do so much more than shift the narrative, they change the world.

In DEI Is Resistance, I described my first day arriving in San Francisco to attend seminary. During our tour, we went through the Castro, and there, I saw this 17- or 18-year-old waifish guy walking down the street in nothing but black leather hot pants and a pair of angel wings. He walked slowly, as if it had taken effort to gather his dignity around him; the rigidity with which he held his head high, the only evidence of the many blows, both metaphorical and physical, he’d endured in order to become the person who could wear those wings. I looked at this person and thought of all he’d overcome just to be who he was in that moment. And I remember thinking that I was proud of him.

I’d have the same thought 20 years later when I saw Ellie. Rev. Eliot Castillo was many things; husband and father of five children, grandfather, retired Baptist minister and ecumenical cooperation pioneer. Then, at 70, Eliot completely changed his life. He became Ellie; a high-heels-and-mini-skirt-wearing, Sinatra-belting street performer in Provincetown, MA. I remember seeing her, this incongruous image of a tall, leggy senior singing in this full-throated baritone in front of Town Hall. But what stayed with me was her ever-present sign, “72 – and Living My Dream”, updated each birthday. Ellie, at 79, would succumb to pancreatic cancer just 56 days after diagnosis, but the person she was at her passing was who she knew herself to be. For nine wonderful years, she lived her dream. She made me proud.

In the ‘60s, Civil rights activists learned to leverage their fortitude, built from a lifetime of denigration, to their advantage; enabling them to not just march for freedom but stand against everything from church bombings to government oppression. A decade later, LGBTQ+ activists would tap into the same strength, but with a different manifestation – a parade – where they celebrated the very things about them that, for their entire lives, had made them targets of denigration, subjugation and stigmatization. They also chose pride.

Meanwhile, the religious tribe to which Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson (who famously said, “Thank God for AIDS”) and Jerry Falwell (founder of the Moral Majority, and who insisted that Tinky Winky was both gay and recruiting our preschoolers) belonged, declared gays enemy #1. They called it “flaunting” – their word for when queer people did the same things in public that straights did. Take kissing. Gay couples doing so were met with disgust and revulsion. But the same kiss shared between a man and a woman was celebrated and declared beautiful. The sight of queer people wearing skimpy clothing was revolting. But straight women on display in Hooters restaurants, and the straight men who ogle them is just good red-blooded Americanism.

Fundamentalists were especially appalled by the idea of Pride, quoting verses like “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Across the country, pastors, like the one young Brett Jones, long before he was a Navy Seal, had, taught people that even if God made them gay, he never intended for them to do anything about it. It was the equivalent of Saint Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”, their “gift” of suffering. Despite their sinfulness, they could still win God’s acceptance if they opted to spend their lives hating how they were made, praying for deliverance, and condemning others to the same fate.

But they’d completely missed the point. From James Brown’s Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud) to the annual commemoration of the first parade after Stonewall, pride wasn’t about conceit, saying that you’re better than anyone else. It’s always been about self-affirmation, refusing to accept the societal notion that you’re worse. From declaring, “No more!” as cops kept raiding gay bars the way ICE agents are raiding churches today to the refusal to just lie down and die, this is what Pride has always been about.

AIDS activist Hank Wilson, speaking at a 1983 Pride event, said: “AIDS is causing homophobia to surface. It’s not new, it’s been there all the time, but it’s an opportunity for those who are homophobic to vent, and I’m ready for them because we can handle it. I know we can handle it.” And he was right. They could handle it. And they did. As will we. Because, despite everything their detractors, from the Nixon administration to the Trump administration, from Anita Bryant to Gary Bauer have thrown at them, and despite everything, from gay bashings to reparative therapy, from the ignoring of an epidemic to efforts at invalidation that was done to them, the community survived.

They disarmed the WROs (weapons of religious oppression) fashioned against them, from criminalization to stigmatization, to calling people “abominations”, and they outright refused to be pushed back into the closet. The harder Christian militants tried to silence, shame and erase them, the stronger, bolder, and prouder they became. They took the very worst society could throw at them, and they stood. And today, everywhere we look, there’s evidence that the LGBTQ+ community is not just standing, it’s stronger than ever.

Take San Francisco’s Alliance Health Project (formerly “AIDS Health Project), which just celebrated its 40^th anniversary. I was a volunteer at AHP through the height of the crisis. The organization was one of the first tangible efforts to offer support to people suffering from a disease that, in the early ‘80s, lacked a clear scientific explanation for how it was acquired, let alone, how it might be prevented or treated. And that was before taking into account the unimaginable psychological toll the crisis was exacting—especially with the atrocities being committed by people of faith—the very ones who should have been helping. So, the community had to help itself.

The AIDS Health Project was one of the earliest manifestations of a community that had committed to standing on its own, even if the rest of us failed to stand with them, and it’s been doing so ever since. This year, AHP chose TRANS – Thrive, Resist, Affirm, Nurture, Shine – as its motto for Pride 2025. It speaks to the same values that allowed the community to emerge, still standing, as Elton John sang, “Better than they ever did.” And it’s how, the community will overcome these new attacks, from anti-trans executive orders to efforts to reverse marriage equality.

Similarly, there are people of faith and conscience, more than ever, from Sojourners’ call to sacred resistance to religious denominations like the Alliance of Baptists’ condemnation of the SBC vote to attempt to repeal same-sex marriage, who are stepping up as allies. They’re being anything but silent, refusing to allow the faith narrative to be controlled by Christians who want a world devoid of LGBTQ+ people.

Take Pastor John Pavlovitz, who, earlier this month, wrote: This Administration has built a platform upon their dehumanization. It is relentlessly targeting [LGBTQ+ people] with dangerous propaganda, willful disinformation, and predatory legislation, all designed to pander to the uneducated, ignorant, and fearful religious people who encompass their hateful base. Our trans brothers and sisters, in particular, have been fashioned into the monstrous enemy for them to aim their perverted theology toward. As a result, LGBTQ PEOPLE have never been more emotionally, physically, and existentially threatened than in this moment. What this means, dear friends, is that our responsibility on this PRIDE month is to place ourselves in harm’s way on their behalf; to move and speak and live in such a way that it is costly to us…

Then, there’s the growing number of everyday people, including courageous, compassionate people like my friend, Susanna. Years ago, she and I talked about the effect the “Black Lives Matter”, “Love is Love”, and “No Person Is Illegal” signs in my neighborhood had on me. How they made me feel safe, and how, despite what detractors might say, actions like that do make a difference. Because the very reason we ended up here is because, by our silence, we affirmed a society where the statements on those signs weren’t true. Susanna ended up buying similar signs and posting them in her yard, including a large “Love is Love” flag, hung on the fence.

She had to overcome what she calls her “WASP training”, the kind that says one should never make such bold statements, or risk disapproval from anyone who might not agree with those signs or might find them inappropriate. But she did. Months went by. Then, one day, a man stopped to smell the roses growing in her and her husband Paul’s yard. Susanna gave him a smile and engaged him in conversation. The man and his husband and Susanna and Paul became friends. He later mentioned that he would never have had the courage to smell the roses were it not for that “Love is Love” sign. It made him feel safe.

When the house directly across the street came on the market, two young women, a female couple, showed up to look at it. Seeing that flag must have felt like a sign, because they bought the house. Today, Susanna and Paul are like a second set of parents. Paul helps them with projects around the home, and Susanna brings over homemade goodies. The couple is pregnant with their first child, and though they have the full support of their families of origin, Paul and Susanna are the relatives they have living across the street. That flag made them feel safe.

Nor is this just about LGBTQ+ people. Susanna is a therapist who works out of her converted garage. A brown-skinned Latinx man brought his son for a session. They’d mistakenly arrived an hour early, so he was waiting, albeit nervously, in his car when Susanna saw them and invited them in. He explained how normally, he’d never wait out in front of someone’s house, for fear they’d call the police, and how badly that goes for people who look like him. But he wasn’t worried about himself. His concern was for his autistic son, and what the officers, if they mistook his son’s actions as a threat, might do to him. Though the “Love is Love” sign didn’t strictly apply to this man, seeing it nevertheless made him feel safe.

But, this isn’t just a one-way street. Susanna will tell you that her life is the one that’s been enriched by these relationships, just as mine was by the AIDS patients I worked with. Susanna recently attended a lovely picnic/birthday party for one of the girls across the street, she formed a wonderful human connection with the man who brought his son, and just last weekend, she and Paul were thrilled to be invited to their first Pride party. While there, the guy who’d smelled the roses introduced her to another gay man also attending the party. The host referenced her house as “the one with the Love is Love sign.” The other man smiled, knowing exactly the house he was speaking of. Susanna no doubt felt many things, from the warmth of human connection to the strength of Beloved Community. But I’d submit that, more than anything, she felt proud.

Bayard Rustin, one of the key architects of the nonviolent strategies that powered the Civil Rights movement and, arguably, our nation’s first openly gay public figure, said it this way: “When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.” And that’s the thing about pride. Every time we create spaces where others are safe to show the world who they are, we do the same for ourselves. Likewise with those of us who dare stand. Each time we follow in Bayard’s footsteps, choosing the path that confers dignity upon us, we shape society itself, collectively, moving us ever closer to truly becoming a different, better place – a land that’s made for each of us and that belongs to all of us.

All of which gets us back to Honey Mahogany. "What was supposed to be a joyful, celebratory moment,” she said, referencing the disruption at San Lorenzo library, “Became yet another reminder that we are under attack." That is why in San Francisco it is so important that we continue to give them hope. Every year we give them a 200 foot pink triangle visible from 20 miles away. We give them a Pride flag on every corner of the city. We give them Trans March. We give them Dyke March.

We give them a Pride parade and celebration where thousands fill the streets. We give them a Transgender District, and a Leather LGBTQ District, and a Castro District known the world over. This year, this June, this Pride month, let us make it clear that we renounce all hate. Let’s promise each other that we will strive to bring people together. And let’s ensure that we build a future where all of us are seen, heard, and respected for who we are.

Someone else, speaking to this recent upturn in anti-LGBTQ+ activity, commented, "Every year, some of us ask why we still need Pride. This is why." And they’re right. We had the same questions about Pride at the height of the AIDS epidemic. “Is it OK to celebrate life amid so much death?” we asked. The answer, from people fighting for their lives, was unequivocal. “Absolutely,” they said. “It’s how we make our sacrifice count.”

Cesar Chavez said: “You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” He was also right. Because what anyone who’s used to controlling the narrative wants from those they’re attacking is the opposite of pride. They want people to be ashamed and feel unworthy, to skulk back into the shadows and cede all social territory – whether the front of the bus or public office, whether the right to define family values or to parade – to them.

So, every time we don’t do that, every time we embrace ourselves and accept others, it changes things. Every LGBTQ+ TV character, every Story Hour Queen, and yes, every hanging of a “Love is Love” flag, does more than make us more welcoming of diversity. It makes us a place where every one of us can be who we are. What’s Pride got to do with it? Everything.

---

There are all kinds of closing songs I could have come up with for you today, from Diana’s I’m Coming Out to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, from The Replacements’ Androgynous to Pink’s Raise Your Glass, from Lil Nas X’s Montero to Elton’s I’m Still Standing, from Hozier’s Take Me to Church to Whitney’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody. And, of course, there’s Gaga’s Born This Way; together, the makings of a veritable Pride playlist. But, in the end, I settled on three to highlight.

The first is I Will Survive, both because of what it means to the community and the enduring power of the words. “Weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye? Did you think I’d crumble,” Gloria sang, “Did you think I’d lay down and die? Oh, no, not I – I will survive. Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive. ‘Cause I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give. I’ll survive. I will survive!” Exactly what the community has had to say to every one of its detractors over the last 50 years.

The second is Sara Bareilles’ Brave – “Show me,” she sings, “How big your brave is.” I hear this song, and I think of all those who’ve dared do just that. Because every day is an opportunity to stand proud, and stand with those who need us to stand with them. And third is RuPaul’s Supermodel (You Better Work), just because it’s so fun - and so unabashedly queer. “It don’t matter what you do,” RuPaul sings, “’Cause everything looks good on you.” And it does. Happy Pride to you and yours!