How Pride is like Independence Day

Reflecting on the LGBTQ+ community, past and present. (Issue #431)  
  
## How Pride is like Independence Day

#### Reflecting on the LGBTQ+ community, past and present. (Issue #431)

By The Medium Blog ∙ June 3, 2026 ∙ 6 min read ∙ View on MediumBase image by Erinblasco on Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0Pride Month, writer Rand Bishop says, has a lot in common with the Fourth of July.Independence Day in the U.S. is a time for celebration: hot dogs, fireworks, quality time with family and friends. But it’s also a time for reflection. “After 250 years,” he writes, “we are still working on becoming ‘a more perfect union.’”The same could be said of Pride Month. Since the first Christopher Street Liberation Day shortly after Stonewall, Pride has been a celebration of LGBTQ+ people around the world with parades, dancing, drag, and festivals. “But,” Bishop writes, “as we party in the streets, we mustn’t forget that our struggle is far from over.”In this issue, we take a look at the reflections on where LGBTQ+ rights have come from and where they are today.···“Kelly, my husband, has been dead for four months. Just last week I finally started sleeping in our bed again. I’ve been sleeping on the couch. I couldn’t bring myself to lie down in our empty bed. I miss the weight of him next to me, and the sound of his breathing. I miss being able to reach out and know he’s there.“My visitor is Bubba. That’s what I call him, short for Beelzebub. My sleep demon.” _—_ _Ladi Loera_ _,__Beelzebubba: A Gay Man’s Demon, Dog, and Grief_ ···

### The state of the world

The struggle for rights moves in fits and starts; sometimes rights progress before snapping back. In the United States, there were over 400 anti-LGBTQ+ bills advancing across 47 states this past May alone, according to the Movement Advancement Project.Writer Felicity Azura looks at the back and forth in a Pacific Island nation in Queer rights for Tonga. Despite signaled support from the Tongan monarchy, the struggle for rights continues to see pushback: homophobic murders and attacks on activists; the ouster of the first openly gay judge; Tongan queer people applying for asylum. “Tonga was the only Polynesian country to not sign the United Nations joint statement to end queerphobic violence in 2011,” she writes.In the United Kingdom, the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling that “man,” “woman,” and “sex” refers to biological sex at birth has upended the lives of Britain’s trans people. Recent guidance from the publicly-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission suggesting that trans people refrain from using men and women-only spaces has only added to the confusion. In As a Member of the Trans+ Community in the UK, Where Do I Piss Now?, nonbinary writer Sarah TC explains how “trans+ people in the UK are being forced out of public life, by, ironically, an equality and human rights body.”Devian Maside, a trans man, awoke the morning of the ruling to find himself legally classified as a woman. Very suddenly, his life was upended. He is out to his colleagues; would any of them report him for using men-only spaces like the locker room or bathroom?“But, I still look like a man,” he writes. “If I walk into a women’s changing room, I am doing exactly what this ruling was supposed to prevent. And a question settled with fear in the pit of my stomach: Where do I go now?”Until the EHRC reverses the ruling, Masside declares, “I will find refuge in the community that has always held me and cared for me — and I will keep on saying fuck it to this ruling. And trying my best to push doors open.”···“Honestly? I never knew what it feels like not to love a woman!“Maybe because loving women was always the only answer to me for the ever-lurking question, Love!” _—_ _Echos of Swarnali_ _,__I never knew what it feels like not to love a woman!_ ···

### Clues from the past

In 1933, just days after Adolph Hitler was sworn in as chancellor, the Nazis burned books in Berlin. But it wasn’t just books on any topic; as Grace Ann Hansen points out, the kindling was the papers and records from “the largest sexological library on the planet.”Magnus Hirschfeld’s _Institut für Sexualwissenschaft_ was the foremost research institution on gender-nonconforming patients in the early 20th century. Hirschfeld was an early champion of what we now call the LGBTQ+ community: He lobbied for decriminalization and rights, coined terms like _transvestit,_ and performed gender-affirming care on patients from across Europe. Berlin was “the world’s leading city for LGBTQ+ life,” according to the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, and a whole corpus of cultural knowledge was lost to the fires.For Hansen, there is no coincidence between what happened with Hirshfeld and what’s happening with LGBTQ+ protections today. “I am not predicting Stage 9,” she writes. “I am pointing out that we have an annotated map of these stages, drawn by people who walked the route for the first time.”That threat inspired Joe Guay - Dispatches From the Guay Life!, to look back at the queer art of the past. Upon the recommendation of some fellow Medium writers, he picked up _Rubyfruit Jungle_ by Rita Mae Brown. The 1973 book follows Molly Bolt, a young woman in the South who is not struggling to come out; instead, he writes, “here you had a lead character fully cognizant of her gayness, frustrated by the confines of the world, sure, but not once apologizing for it or showing a hint of shame.”Another book from the time, Patricia Nell Warren’s _The Front Runner,_ tells the story of Billy Sive, a gay man that shares Molly’s self assuredness:What a slap in the face, realizing this book was on shelves the year I was born and yet the adults in my life raised me through the ’80s and ’90s as though “this gay thing” was a new development and no such pride was allowed or ever even existed.For both Hansen and Guay, the clues from what came before them provide context for the future. Queer people are not new; instead, their stories have been actively hidden from the people that need them most.“Either way, I’m still here,” Guay writes. “We’re still here.”···

### A final thought

James Dale was the Eagle Scout at the center of the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the Boy Scouts could expel homosexuals. In He Said, “Over my dead body.” I’m the Gay Boy Scout Who Finally Went Back, Dale returns to the Boy Scout summer camp more than three decades after its camp director declared that “James Dale will never step foot in this camp again.”This moment, when Dale goes on a hike to a nearby waterfall, feels particularly apt:The Boy Scouts had their policies and lodges, their rituals and awards, all created to elevate or separate. The cool mist of the falls sprayed across my face. They could never own Darlington Falls.···Many of the stories from this newsletter come from Prism & Pen, a publication focused on LGBTQ+ voices. If you’re looking for more stories from the greater community, we suggest checking out the LGBTQ, Queer, or Pride Month tags. And if you find a great Pride story this month, submit it to us through this form!··· _Deepen your understanding every week with the Medium Newsletter.__Sign up here_ _.__Edited and produced by_ _brandon echter_ _,__Scott Lamb_ _, and_ _Carly Rose Gillis_ _.__Like what you see in this newsletter but not already a Medium member? Read without limits or ads, fund great writers, and_ _join a community that believes in human storytelling_ _._

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