What Pride Means to Me

By Scott Yelvington

Reprinted by permission from Glendora Forward Newsletter

Gays, lesbians, and bisexual people of my generation are made of really tough material. After all, we had to be. We lived through Mathew Shepherd and the AIDs epidemic, bible thumping and the rise and fall of second wave evangelicals, bogus gay conversion camps, prop 8 and a fierce battle over whether our marriage counts the same as that of all our straight (allegedly) peers. Had you told me when I was 7 that we’d be seen as more normal members of our urban and suburban settings, I would never have believed it. Instead, those of us, myself included, who survived those times quietly developed a very very thick protective outer skin. And let’s be honest, below that skin lives a cocooned child in each of us that had to live in fear of what would happen if people knew who we were. That child spent a short lifetime dividing themselves in two. That child sometimes hurts.

I feel blessed in some small way every day with my husband knowing that this really is the best time in history for people like us to be alive. We still face indignities. Holding my husband’s hand in public, clad with our wedding bands, is still not always a safe act even in 2026. We still get occasional shouts and jeers. There are times we let go when we’re untrusting of our surroundings. We modulate how we read at work despite being out, we don’t want to “seem too gay” in a normie professional world. I don’t count what I don’t have and what I don’t get to do after what I’ve lived through. I just count what privileges we do have when we know who didn’t get to have them with us. 

And despite the worst of the culture wars being over (allegedly), those of us who persevered through all of this still feel, from time to time, an ache underneath the surface. Let me circle back to the point of this essay: pride is the singular month where we get permission to feel fully normal. We were never the deviation. We were the self-sufficient souls who made it. Pride is the month where we’re the normies. Bring your booty shorts or your baby stroller. You’re the normie this month. You need not hide. You need not fear. This month of all months, we give ourselves permission to feel normal in our own hearts. It’s my favorite month of the year. Pride is the month when our hearts are free.