Pride Means Proud

It’s June and that means Pride month. For many years people in the LGBTQ+ communities had to hide their true selves for fear of being ostracized at best and physically hurt at worst. So as an act of self love Pride was born. A whole community of people had to show each other and the world that they loved themselves and thus were also entitled to be loved by others.

I am a strong ally to the LGBTQ+ community and have been for years. When I was a kid I knew friends of my parents who were gay. People who worked for my father at Avon who were gay and smart, attractive and successful. Then in college I had gay friends. Some I knew were gay before they admitted it to me. It made no difference to me that they were gay. They were fun, brilliant and kind.

I graduated and moved to Washington, DC a city run by gay people. Then and now. I have many gay friends from my Washington Days. One day I was having dinner with my friends Art and Chris. I was saying that my sister had just flown into DC from Boulder to visit my parents and I had picked her up at the airport. She had not said anything to me, but suddenly it dawned on me while having dinner that she was a lesbian. Since she was nine years younger than I am I had not spent much time thinking about her sexuality. But there was something about seeing her walk off the airplane in her cowboy hat that made me realize she was gay and always had been. She is by far the smartest, most hard working person in the family. Being gay was not her most important trait.

At least twenty years ago I remember my pastor Hayward Holderness give a sermon about the acceptance of gay people. One line really stood out for me. “God doesn’t make any junk.” He was espousing the thought that God made us all, all in his image. So God made gay people, just like he made everyone else. And who are we mortals to judge that anyone of us are better than any others. Only God can judge.

So when Carter was in high school and came out to me I was fine with that. God made her the way she is meant to be. I knew that being gay is not the most important thing about her. Being a good person, hard working, kind, curious and loving are her main attributes. Being gay is like having blue eyes. She was born that way.

So in this month of June, LGBTQ+ Pride month, I am proud of how my girl lives her truth and found love with Claire. The only thing a parent wants is for their child to find love with a good person and be happy. So I am proud of how my daughter lives out loud.