Thinking of Pride

At the end of May, I was preparing to write about how Pride looks a half-century after the Stonewall Uprising (and barely a year into Kinship’s existence). Though the Covid-19 pandemic affected us all, it didn't slow our pace of building Kinship into a business that is open to all. Since its founding, we imagined Kinship to be the company to purposefully embody the spirit of inclusiveness I first witnessed years ago when Mars, our corporate parent and a business renowned for its privacy, stepped forward to ask the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, for the benefit of its associates, gay and straight. 

But as important as Pride remains a half century later, my thoughts are on the events of today. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery—and so many before them—followed by a righteous cry for justice, dominate the world around us. I can only reflect on Pride Month through the lens of the current cry for civil rights from a population past the limits of all endurance. “What can we do?” we ask. Donations of money, time, and presence are worthy responses, but it’s difficult to see their immediate effects on institutionalized racism. It seems so easy to be kind to one another, to listen and understand, but for many of us it's hard to recognize our own part in a system that denies equal rights and opportunities. 

If I may remind you of one reason to look at the headlines with hope, it’s that these moments of intense action do yield great improvements - even if they are not immediately apparent. Though there had been brave cases of LGTBQ+ resistance prior to that summer in 1969, something took hold. The community began to celebrate what had been born from police harassment and violent resistance, and today Pride is a beautifully mad circus of all the people who make up this world. Though festivities are paused by coronavirus, that celebration continues. Pride is an opportunity to smile at the world, but it was born in defiance of a world that wanted to take that smile away.

What happened in Stonewall in 1969 didn't change America overnight. American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. In 1986, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Georgia law that punished gay sex with one to twenty years in prison. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that blocked same-sex couples from the federal recognition of marriage and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. The tide started to turn only in 2003, when the Supreme Court (not the democratically-elected legislative branch!) decriminalized gay sex - and then another decade later, in 2013 when the DOMA was struck down. It’s important to remember that what we now consider most transformative legal decisions in the fight for equal rights were made by a single-vote 5:4 majority, with Supreme Court Justice, Anthony Kennedy, authoring both. Where would gay rights be today without Justice Kennedy on that Court?

Black pioneers were not only essential to the resistance that the police raid met at Stonewall, they were the inciters and arbiters of it. Leaders like Marsha P. Johnson and Stormé DeLarverie made their stand in 1969, but they also worked for decades afterward to care for their communities. Many activists like Marsha P. Johnson didn't live to see the beautiful change their struggle has delivered. But the number of obstacles on their paths and the repeated setbacks didn’t deter them. Their commitment, conviction and resilience are the qualities we need.  

The journey to taking a stand on an issue is deeply personal. In today’s context, I’m making a point of personal examination and encouraging my team at Kinship to do the same. We’re not where we want to be, and getting to a better future, individually and collectively, will include mistakes, no matter how clearly we think we see the right thing to do. But there will also be times when we know we’ve helped each other, and made something possible that wasn’t before. The latter starts with one simple requirement: listening and reflecting. 

When we talk about building Kinship to be open to all, I’m asking myself, as the leader of this business, what are the most imminent steps I can take to provide better opportunities and exposure? Obviously my aim is to build a team of talent that represents the unique human diversity as we hire the best candidates. But we need to do much more. We are actively searching for partnerships and programs that will make us a better company that leads change. Not just to feel better for a day, to placate our guilt - but to make us better for the long term. Please share your ideas, I would love to hear them.

We must all fight to see this new uprising flourish so that like Pride, there comes the time we look back and celebrate the movement that transformed a nation - and the world. Yes, those changes are sizable, but not insurmountable. What Pride taught us is: when the big victories elude us, we do not quit; history always comforts us with another go. We remind ourselves that even the smallest step still moves us forward. More often than we think, constant, incremental progress accrues in watershed results. Opportunities for tremendous change such as now must be used to their fullest, and we can prepare for them if we ask ourselves daily how we can be fair, equitable, and just.  

Love takes many forms. They reflect who we are, each of us unique even within the many communities we belong to. Over decades, the Pride movement fought for the right to celebrate ‘the other’. Reflecting on this fight should guide us as we take the opportunity to grow.