ENID, Okla. — Pride Month may look different this year, with the nation’s attention turned to the Black Lives Matter movement. But local and state LGBTQ leaders say attention on Black Lives Matter is not a distraction from Pride — because it’s all the same fight.
Enid city commissioners may soon get to vote on a measure to guarantee equality for LGBTQ city employees — a measure that failed seven years ago.
June is Pride Month, celebrated every year around the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City in June 1969, in which gay and transgender people protested police raids and brutality against their community.
Pride parades and large festivals already were cancelled or pushed back nationwide because of the coronavirus pandemic, before the Black Lives Matter movement erupted nationwide in the wake of a Minneapolis, Minn., police officer killing George Floyd on Memorial Day.
Julian Pendergraft, a member of the Enid LGBTQ Coalition, said the focus on Black Lives Matter enhances the overall goal of Pride.
“I don’t think, when it comes to fighting for inclusion, there can be too many players,” Julian said. “When someone is being disenfranchised, it doesn’t matter when it’s happening — it matters that it’s happening. If we have any capacity to fight for equality for all, we should do it, in any way we can.”
He said the civil unrest happening now around Black Lives Matter resonates with the LGBTQ community because the movement for LGBTQ equality first gained national attention in the Stonewall Uprising.
“The protests do remind me to an extent of Stonewall,” Julian said. “While I don’t condone the violence and the rioting, if something positive can come out of it, at the end of the day that will be beneficial for all marginalized people.”
Julian’s husband, Cris Pendergraft, said the convergence of similar calls for equality among LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter activists has transformed this year’s “Gay Pride Month into Gay Wrath Month.”
“We do closely associate with minorities in general, because we ourselves are a minority,” Cris said. “A lot of us already support the Black Lives Matter movement, and the movements to end deportation of immigrants. And it does infuriate us when we see others being ostracized and discriminated against as we have been.”
Shaun Miller, also a member of Enid LGBTQ Coalition, said it is important for all marginalized people to stand in unity.
“I do think it is important for the LGBTQ community to support BLM (Black Lives Matter),” Miller said. “I do not think it will be overshadowing Pride Month. We should be working together to make the world safe and all-inclusive for everyone.”
Toby Jenkins, CEO and executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Oklahomans for Equality, said the focus right now needs to be on Black Lives Matter, and the broader issues of race relations and police brutality.
“In this particular moment, we need to be focused on race,” Jenkins said. “We need to be focused on the inequities because of race and we need to be focused on police brutality and reforming policing in America.”
Jenkins said the objectives of Pride have always intersected with the justice movement for indigenous peoples and people of color, and with women’s rights, because the LGBTQ movement spans all races, genders, cultures and classes.
Racial justice is of paramount importance to LGBTQ activists, Jenkins said, because LGBTQ people of color face compounded discrimination and violence.
“If an LGBTQ person is also a person of color, on average, their chance of being assaulted or discriminated against doubles,” Jenkins said. “That’s not to minimize the discrimination faced by white LGBTQ people, but it is worse if you add a racial component to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Jenkins said calls for justice are not just about Black Lives Matter, or Pride, or any single group.
“I have to stand up for queer Muslims, I have to stand up for the undocumented, I have to stand up against police brutality and how it targets young black men, I need to stand up for Native Americans and women,” Jenkins said. “It’s all married together and it’s all one fight.”
Allie Shinn, executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma, said this year’s focus on Black Lives Matter may help broaden people’s understanding of the Pride movement.
“I think it’s really important to remember that when people talk about the LGBTQ+ movement, they’re thinking of white people, and that’s not what our community looks like,” Shinn said. “Our people live in the margins of every group, and because of that we stand unequivocally with Black Lives Matter, and we are here to put LGBTQ+ lives, resources and voices on the line for this movement.
“Black Lives Matter is a critical part of Pride and the LGBTQ+ movement,” Shinn said, “and we are very happy the country as a whole is seeing the Black Lives Matter movement with the attention it deserves.”
In some ways, Shinn said the Black Lives Matter movement is the perfect way to celebrate Pride this year.
“We have to remember our movement started at Stonewall, when black, trans women stood up and said enough is enough, and you police don’t get to brutalize us,” Shinn said. “Black Lives Matter is the fullest returning to the full intentions of Pride, and we are so proud to stand with Black Lives Matter.”
Whether it is through Black Lives Matter or Pride, Cynthia and Rhonda Stevison, of Enid, said they just want America to be a safer place for their family.
“We have a gay son and a transgender nephew,” Cynthia said. “That’s a parent’s worst nightmare — that our son would be in a bar or be walking down a street and be murdered because of who they love.”
Cynthia said the LGBTQ community’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement is a demonstration of the principle that “together we rise.”
“Everybody needs to be in this together, and there needs to be equality for everybody,” Cynthia said. “I want my grandkids to be able to have a better life than my kids, and hopefully in the next 20 years we can see that equality is for all. Either everybody matters, or nobody matters.”
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