PAWPAW'S MESSAGES TO MY GRANDSONS 35
Pawpaw loves Connor!
Pawpaw loves Bryson!
Pawpaw loves Archer!
Why I Celebrate LGBTQ Pride by Steven Skelley
I can trace my maternal family line back to 1720 when Abraham McWilliams was born. He sailed to the New World, settled in Pennsylvania and his son Samuel fought in the Lancaster County Militia for American freedom. I am proud of that history.
Just as I have a place in the history of my genealogical family, I am also a part of another family. I have a place in the history of the homosexual family. Unfortunately, unlike my genealogical history that can be easily traced, the accomplishments of my homosexual brothers and sisters have been erased.
Cave drawings and art from the Mesolithic period in on Sicily, Bethlehem, Zimbabwe, Czech Republic, Egypt and more depict LGBTQ members of society.
Millions of people throughout human history have been born like me. Some societies valued my family. Most societies shunned, imprisoned, castrated, tortured or killed us. This is why I celebrate LGBTQ Pride.
What do we have to be proud of, you ask?
Three hundred years before Christ, the Sacred Band of Thebes is documented. The Sacred Band was an elite fighting force made up of 150 gay couples. They were so fierce, though outnumbered, they defeated the mighty Spartans. They finally fell to Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander the Great.
Native American / Indigenous communities welcomed and honored LGBTQ people for centuries before conquering Europeans forced bigotry and religious persecution upon them. These Two Spirit people were considered valuable assets who were able to view both the male and female perspective.
Alan Turing is considered the father of computer science. An Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his Enigma code-breaking work in WWII which saved hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives, he was convicted of homosexuality and chemically castrated. He then killed himself.
Harvey Milk was a civil rights leader who became one of the first openly-gay elected officials in the United States. He was assassinated.
There aren’t enough pages available to share all the history of my LGBTQ family that has been erased.
Even though my LGBTQ family has been sharing this planet with heterosexuals since the beginning of time, prevailing religions have been victorious in suppressing us, imprisoning us and killing us for being born the way we are.
We barely won the right to marry in 2015 but in most states, we can still be legally fired from our jobs or denied housing by heterosexuals for no reason other than we are LGBTQ. In many countries, we are still tortured, imprisoned and murdered.
For me, LGBTQ Pride events give me the chance to remember my family, to take my place proudly in the history of our shared world and to stand up to say we will never again allow anyone to make us second class, shunned, imprisoned, castrated, tortured or killed again.
I am an American. I am Gay. I am a Naturist. I am proud to be all three.
Pawpaw loves Connor!
Pawpaw loves Bryson!
Pawpaw loves Archer!
