WHY I DON’T LIKE PRIDE MONTH

It’s Pride Month.?

As I look at the joyful photos of celebrations around the world that are being posted on social media, I keep thinking the same thing:?

I wish we didn’t need a Pride Month.?

Yes, it’s wonderful to see people free to openly show their love, no matter who the object of their affections may be, but think about this: It has been 51 years since the Stonewall riots broke out in Greenwich Village after a police raid at a gay bar there, the event that the first pride marches commemorated. And, yes, we have taken enormous steps forward. Gender has become fluid and marriage and parenthood are no longer reserved for heterosexual couples.?

All of that is marvelous.?

But it is far from enough.?

Too many people are still not being allowed to live their lives openly and the way they want. I have felt the painful fallout of that personally.?

Ask anyone who knows me what some of my favorite rock bands in the world are and they will invariably include the Lebanese group Mashrou’ Leila. It is impossible to overstate how much I love that band, and its lead singer, Hamed Sinno. I am far from the only one. Mashrou’ Leila was the most popular indie band in the Middle East and they sold out venues across the world. They were the first Middle Eastern artists to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. For a while, they were one of the great success stories of the Arab world.

And then they became one of its tragedies. One of the reasons we still need a Pride Month.

Sinno happens to be gay. Because of that and the controversial lyrics of the group’s songs, the four-member band was subject to harassment, hate campaigns, bans, and death threats. Sinno said their career was “a constant battle for breath.” At some point, the personal cost became too high. Last September the band announced that they would disband after almost fifteen years of performing.?

I was devastated. I still listen to their music often, but that is no consolation for the knowledge that there will be no new songs coming.?

Tortured for a rainbow flag

Mashrou’ Leila’s disbanding was far from the biggest heartbreak associated with the group. While their music was filled with hope, joy, and love, some managed to make something ugly out of it. There was a price to that, too; this one paid by a young woman named Sarah Hegazy.

On June 13, 2020, three years ago this week—during Pride Month—Hegazy, 30-years-old, committed suicide. She left this note:

“To my siblings: I have tried to find salvation and I have failed. Forgive me. To my friends: The journey was cruel and I am too weak to resist. Forgive me. To the world: You were horrifically cruel, but I forgive.”

Hegazy was one of several people who waved a pride flag at a Mashrou’ Leila concert in Cairo in September 2017. For that act of defiance in a nation where homosexuality is still prosecuted under decency laws, Hegazy and scores of other people were arrested. Many of them were subjected to degrading physical examinations. Hegazy was charged with promoting sexual deviancy and inciting debauchery (homosexuality is not expressly forbidden under Egyptian law), imprisoned, and tortured. After three months, she was released on bail. She was fired from her job and shunned by some of her family. She suffered from PTSD and fell into a depression. The following year, Hegazy sought and was granted asylum in Canada. But the damage was done.?

“The sky is sweeter than the earth! And I want the sky, not the earth,” Hegazy wrote in her final Instagram post, hours before taking her own life.?

No one, nowhere, should be imprisoned, tortured, or be driven to suicide, because of who they feel attracted to or who they love. That is ridiculous.?

It is wrong.?

There should never been another Sarah Hegazy.

Sadly, there are still many.?

Regression

Sixty-four countries have laws that criminalize homosexuality and in some countries restrictions are getting even tighter. In March, the Ugandan legislature passed a law that criminalizes even identifying as LGBTQ+, one of the harshest such laws in the world. And while 52 of the countries that criminalise homosexuality are in Africa and Asia, with 32 and 20 respectively, the rest of the world hasn’t escaped the march backward.

An anti-Pride backlash in the US has prompted organisers to scale back celebrations, companies to minimise campaigns, and retailers to pull pride-related merchandise.

The US Navy took down posts celebrating Pride Month that it had posted on social media accounts. Major League Baseball put a Pride-themed logo on its Facebook page, then took it down after an onslaught of negative comments.?

It breaks my heart to say this, but we need a Pride Month today as much as we ever did. The world is still very, very far from accepting that love is love.?

Those who know this to be true will continue the fight. Sinno has come back with a solo project and will be headlining the Shubbak Festival in London later this month. And throughout the world and throughout this month people will don sequins and wrap themselves in feather boas and fly rainbow flags as they take to their streets to proclaim their own freedom and to defend that of others.?

I urge each and every one of you to find a Pride Month event near you and march. Do it for someone who can’t. And then perhaps someday no one will need to. That is my fervent wish.