Pride Month 2018

What does PRIDE mean to you?

Pride Month represents my best friend, some of my graduating class in high school and my late grandmother. It is a time when they can be celebrated for what makes them unique, happy, and colorful human beings. It is a time to remember the trials and tribulations they had (and still continue) to overcome to obtain rights that others take for granted. It is a time to remember the awful things that this community has endured, such as discrimination, invasive scrutiny and the Orlando shootings. Pride Month is a time to see past mere labels, broadening our understandings of the communities and individuals they represent. It’s not just about LGBTQ+ people; it’s about entire subsets of cultures spawning from one head. For the LGBTQ+ community, Pride Month isn’t just one month of involvement. It represents a commitment for the rest of their lives, and for a brief time, we can celebrate all the wonderful things these lives mean. Pride Month matters because it validates everything that LGBTQ+ people go through and shows them how many people are by their sides. Pride Month matters because every year, it makes our prejudices shrink a bit smaller, lessens the amount of hate in the world, and replaces it with love and understanding. Pride Month, ultimately, is a celebration of people who just want to love and thrive regardless of labels.