Happy Pride Month To All LGBTQ+ Friends

June is Pride month when Pride parades allow LGBTQ+ people to come out and be as wild, outlandish, and exuberantly flamboyant as they want.  It’s all great fun and a joyous occasion to be seen and heard.

Being who you are is about the healthiest accomplishment you can do in living your life.  It’s the apogee of therapy for patients to embrace their uniqueness.

Having the freedom to do is not that easy for some who have been hiding who they are out of fear or shame. When I first started out as a therapist many moons ago, there was still a prevailing sense of stigma.

Many homosexuals and trans were stifled and frozen in fear of being rejected by family and peers took to an undercover of emotional masking to avoid detection.

Some couldn’t see any way out of their pain and fears other than death by suicide.  I knew of several… Others took extreme forms of punishment with self-mutilation.

I will never forget a handsome young man, barely 20, who after being hounded in his fundamentalist church as devil ridden taking a razor and slashing his face crisscross.

I remember the sorrow I felt for one man gasping his last breaths dying of Aids which was not enough to bring his family to his bedside because he was homosexual.

Transgenders stuffed their painful convictions of being born into the wrong gender locked tightly away in their terror-driven attic.  God forbid anyone should know.

Many married with the best intentions of love and had children.   It is a myth that LGBT people can’t fall in love with those with whom they are unable to have sexual feelings.

Only many years later did they have the strength and courage to come out.  Wives, husbands, and children rarely have an easy time readjusting to the reality of their loved ones suddenly proclaiming a completely different sexual orientation or gender.

I have had several family members in this bewildering and difficult situation in my practice.  The coming out of a spouse or parent as gay or trans leaves all involved as shocked with varying degrees of betrayal.

Years ago those in all the varying different sexual orientation spectrum knew they were different, but preferred to keep quiet.  Now there is much greater freedom and societal encouragement to come out.

I remember one such gifted young man who agonized in fear and guilt for months before he finally was able to tell his fiance that he was gay.  He loved her, but knew he needed to be completely honest now rather than live a lie.

Acceptance, understanding, and freedom of expression are much better now, but that didn’t come easy without a fight.  Unfortunately, the fight continues.

Ask any LGBTQ+ person about their life and their struggles to have the complete freedom to express who they are: to family, peers, bosses, religious communities and society.

As I write societal laws in several countries place limits on this expression, even on basic rights such as using public bathrooms.

Fundamentalist religions still maintain a stranglehold imposing sinful shame and guilt upon LGBTQ people.

Bullying, insults, public humiliation, and violent attacks continue to plague them. Several countries even treat LGBTQ as a criminal offense.

LGBTQ teens have more suicidal ideation than other teens and are three times as likely to have completed suicides.

Discrimination still is quite evident in some fundamentalistic protestant churches, Mormons, Orthodox Jewish faiths, Islam and in certain Catholic institutions, where LGBTQ+ persons in same-sex unions have been fired.

Even some mean-spirited and very un-Christ-like priests have denied communion to LGBTQ+ persons and couples.

There are still too many injustices and discriminatory events taking place.  Progress has been made but there is still a lot left to be done for LGBTQ+ people to have the same level of equality as non-gays.

I enjoy going to Pride parades and did so this last Saturday in Paris.  It was the first post-Covid one, as last year it was canceled.  I found a spot in front of Eglise Saint Laurent on blvd Magenta in the 10 arrondissement, on the last leg of the parade.

I met up with some friends, Briana and Celine along with some of their entourage captured here.  Though not too far from Republique, they were all merrily still energized to walk the rest of the route!

The Marche des Fiertés was more subdued and perhaps less colorful in that no floats were allowed this year due to sanitary laws in place and there was much less music blaring about.

It seemed to my eyes there was approximately the same number of participants marching, but I didn’t catch the beginning nor the end.

There were also fewer costumed and adorned bodies.  Some of my photos were from the 2019 march, taken on Blvd Saint Michel in front of the Luxembourg Gardens.

There were some bare-breasted women marching, but in France, that is not at all a big deal nor prohibited. I thought this one had painted the most artistic camouflage on her breasts.

This year they changed the route to start in a northern suburb of Pantin and it slowly wound down to Place de la  Republique.  From my spot, I noticed the crowds were fewer, which wasn’t a bad thing.

In the past, it always started at Montparnasse and ended up at Bastille. This route went through the center of Paris and I feel allowed more spectators to join in the festivities.

 

Though not too far from Republique, they were all merrily still energized to walk to the rest of the route!

Bravo to all LGBTQ+ worldwide in celebrating their Pride marches worldwide, although some countries still prohibit them.

It has been a long and hard fight and there is still a lot to accomplish!