This past weekend got me thinking a lot about "gay pride." On Saturday night, my feminine alter ego Anita performed at a Pride Day celebration at a local Unitarian church. The show was wonderful. The church staff could not have been more dedicated to making the event a success, and the audience members—gay and straight, young and old, religious and non-religious—could not have been more wonderful. It was truly a drag queen’s dream show. The audience was large enough for high energy but intimate enough to work the crowd. They clapped along to the upbeat songs and stared, entranced, during ballads. They threw dollars bills as us like crazy. Most importantly, they told us how much our performances meant to them and how beautiful we were. I left the church that night feeling like a rock star. Then, on Sunday, a group of us headed up to the City of Brotherly Love for the annual Philadelphia Pride Festival. We had a great time. We ate like pigs, shopped liked crazy, cheered the entertainment, and drooled over local traffic reporter John Ogden as he announced the winners.

I was especially impressed by the support our community enjoys from people who do not identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning. These powerful and dedicated allies put the very important "A" in "GLBTQA." At the show on Saturday, there were middle-aged and older heterosexual couples whose smiles beamed back at me throughout each performance. There were also a number of very young heterosexual audience members, including a high school senior who was comfortable enough to ask a drag queen advice on her fingernails. Not only did these heterosexual audience members attend the event, they made it a point to thank us for entertaining them and supporting the GLBT community. The pastor even donned some "bad drag" including a hideous K-Mart moo-moo and a tacky wig in curlers. Straight but not narrow, indeed! A number of our allies were present at Philly Pride, too. I was most touched by two adolescent girls in white T-shirts with rainbow writing: "My grandpa is gay, and that’s OK!" Sally Starr, at 85 years young and facing double-knee replacement, said she would not have missed the event for the world. During the parade, she even chewed out some protesters and threatened them with her cane.

I realize that my attitude on gay pride has changed over the years. When I first came out during my freshman year of college, I wanted to shout it to the world. I restarted the University of Delaware’s chapter of Queer Campus. We chalked up the sidewalks. We held kiss-ins. We plastered bulletin boards with thought—and conversation—provoking slogans like, "We’re hear, we’re queer, get used to it!" and "Faggots, Dykes, and Bi’s, Oh My!" I even wore a full-length hippie skirt to the annual student organization awards, hosted by the university president, to protest his failure to listen to our group’s concerns during a private meeting. (He was more concerned about warming up his coffee than considering our viewpoint.) At the same time, the Lesbian/Gay/ Bisexual Student Union (LGBSU) at UD took a more conservative approach to educating the public about our issues, including dorm presentations and the distribution of educational materials. Queer Campus had an unintended but interesting effect at the school. We became known as "the faggots who took things too far," while the LGBSU earned a reputation as "the reasonable gay people." We forced many formerly prejudiced students to accept mainstream GLBT persons without their even realizing it.

Today, I’m much less vocal about my sexuality. I am very comfortable with who I am. Just out of the closet at age 18, I felt the need to scream "I’m gay!" from the rooftops. But as the old saying goes, those who are on fire scream the loudest. I was screaming about my sexuality to convince myself that I was OK, even if I didn’t know it at the time. My partner recently came out to his family, and it was difficult to put myself back in those ruby-red slippers. Coming out for me was an incredibly painful experience that threw me into a severe clinical depression. Also, it’s been "a few" years since I came out, and I sometimes take my gayness for granted. I happen to prefer cheesecake for dessert, and I happen to prefer men for romantic partners. I no longer walk around with a chip on my shoulder and something to prove to the world. Take me or leave me. I am what I am. I will survive. (And I’ll always love disco music.)

Unfortunately, on occasion, I get slapped back into the reality of the world in which we live. It can be something as simple as a billboard advertising wedding rings, and I cringe at the heterosexism plastered all over the ad. It hurts a little, and I wonder, "Will I ever see two men or two women on that billboard?" I know that I will. The jaded side of me knows it will happen because the wedding industry will eventually wake up to all the money to be made on this 10% of the population. The sentimental side of me knows it will happen because the majority of Americans will wake up to the fact that we’re "just like everybody else" in so many ways. Either way, I know it will happen, and it IS happening, and that literally gives me warm fuzzies. Because we still don’t live in the world we deserve, I continue to do what I can, including my work with Delaware Pride, these columns I write, and donations to various organizations. I am comfortable in my skin now, but I need to remember those who are not and that I wasn’t always OK with being gay. I worry sometimes that we’re selling ourselves out a bit to move into the mainstream and enjoy its great social advantages, but at the same time, I’m not going to pierce myself in nineteen places and strut down the streets in ass-less chaps when I’m naturally more of a clean-cut, blue jeans kind of guy. Everyone should be accepted and cherished for who they are and what makes them happy. That’s the world I’m looking forward to living in, and that is what gay pride means to me.