LGBTQ Pride Speech

given as emcee of Madison, Wisconsin’s 1999 pride rally

Before we can celebrate we must remember. I would like to ask all of you for a moment of silence in memory of Matthew Shepherd, Billy Jack Gaither, Jane Vanderbosch, all of our brothers and sisters who have died of AIDS, of violence, or just because it was their time.

Thank you. I asked for that silence and I am here today because I am gay. I use the word gay because I speak from my own experience, but I mean to include both gays and lesbians. I mean transgendered and bisexual. I mean everyone in our community. I mean people of color and ethnicity. I mean the entire family of poor and disenfranchised, the rainbow of oppressed people.

I am here to be out, because I truly believe that when all of us are out, when the grass roots, common, middle-class American people discover that there is not one of them, from Stone Mountain, Georgia, to Madison, Wisconsin, to Helena, Montana, who does not know at least one gay person among their relatives, friends, co-workers, and neighbors—when that has occurred—then there will be less need for debate and no more need for rallies like this.

But I have come here today because things still need to change. I have come here today because I am tired and I am angry, simply because I am gay.

I have known people who were beaten with fists and boots and brass knuckles, to the point of hospitalization, simply because they were gay.

I have seen friends lose jobs, simply because they were discovered to be gay, though other reasons were given for the dismissal.

I have been verbally harassed, physically threatened, and had my life threatened, simply because of my gayness.

I have known people deeply in love who were denied the chance to express that love in the form of marriage, simply because they were gay.

I have had friends who were disowned by their families, simply because they were gay.

I had a friend who took someone home with him for the night and who was stabbed 17 times, who survived that and was found in another city four months later clubbed to death, simply because he was gay, and Native American.

I have had my best friend commit suicide simply because he was gay.

These things have all happened here, in Madison, and in Wisconsin, the gay rights state.

I am tired, and I am angry, simply because I am gay.

It is time for a change. The chains of oppression have been wound so tightly around us that our hearts are bleeding. But it cannot go on forever. One day, when all of us are tired enough, or angry enough, we will break those chains and link our arms in a defiant march of love. And the power of our love will overpower. Our love, a trickle at first, will become a stream, the stream a river, the river a sea, the sea an ocean, and that much love cannot fail to engulf the hatred we face and destroy it. Then we will be free. Then we will be joyously alive, simply because we are gay.