What is Pride and why the celebration

Pride = Power

After a long history of being harassed by the New York City Police, and after an early morning raid on June 29, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar popular with drag queens, and young gay men, the patrons of the bar fought back and pushed the police out of the bar into Sheridan Square. The police quickly found themselves in a defensive position in that small park, with a growing crowd of angry queer people gathering. The police called for backup, and found themselves involved in a full scale riot. The disturbances went on for several nights.

This initial scene of violence got the attention of and raised the awareness of both Gays and Straights to the casual indignity that this group endured on a routine basis in New York City, one of the most liberal of large cities in the world, at the hands of the police, whose duty is to serve and protect.

During those first few days, there was a sense of empowerment and pride, a sense that equality would soon be ours. The fight for equality and acceptance in the larger human community has taken much longer than we would have expected. It is, however, important to remember where we have come from, and retain a sense of pride in our history and in our personal self-worth.

Fast forward to 2015, and the discussion in our community is still what does Pride mean? For some it means having the biggest party ever, where there are massive crowds of half-naked men listening to loud music, dancing till the sun raises, alcohol and drugs. There is nothing wrong with having a party and pushing the line, not at all. However, when all is said and done, what have we as a community accomplished.

Phuket Loves You Club’s (PLU) goal is to create a week of activities that individual in our community can put their heels on, prancing down the street to “I am what I am” and feeling proud. Whereas the other part of our celebration is beginning to address the major issues that are affecting our community: the lack of protection in the work place, no proper medical care, lack of housing protection, transgender issues such as changing one’s ID to reflect who they truly are and marriage rights. Yes to make a difference we need to raise money. No government or agency provide enough resources to make a difference. We need to take control of the health and wellbeing of our community.

This year we implemented our HIV/AIDs awareness program. This program’s intent was to reach out to the workers in Paradise and to provide educational material about safe sex, to provide necessary tools such as condoms, to provide HIV testing so one knows their HIV status and to help those individuals who are HIV positive connect to the medical programs which will help them get the necessary medications.

There have been many studies to determine what percentage of the total populations is LGBT. A safe figure would be around 10%. With these relatively small numbers, we need allies who are ready to advocate with us when fighting for all of the rights listed above.

A key component of our strategy is to reach out to others in the broader population who would be natural allies. Communities who represent women, those that are working to help those in the straight community that are dealing with this AIDs crises, those who are marginalized and look down upon. We are building bridges to those communities by working with them and providing financial support.

Just recently, there was a big uproar in America when one of the Midwestern states decided to pass a Freedom of Religion law that would discriminate again our community. This is an example of the constant attacks made against us by the extremist Christian Right. With the relationships that our community has developed over the years, many companies, organizations and gay friendly religious organizations decided to challenge this law. Instead of a few members in our community speaking up, there was a ground swell of support.

Finally, this year we are actively working to bring down the walls that separate our communities. To change the social stigma of how the broader community views who we are. We are challenging our diverse community to come out of the closet and showing the world who we are. From April 20th to 26, there will be a photo exhibit at Jungcelyon Shopping Mall show everyone the many faces of our community.

Globally, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (ladyboy) communities have come a long way towards achieving equality. In Thailand, we are just starting to see the foundation being built towards achieving equality. With the building of bridges and relationships with those outside of our community and in addressing our community’s immediate needs, will we finally achieve our dream of Equality.

Kenneth J.Miller
PLU Community Program Chief