Blog: Perspectives

A short primer to help activists working on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression and Sex Characteristics make the most of your experience.

Kabbalat Shabbat, or synagogue services on Friday night, is the best part of my week. While I do not abide by the traditional Shabbat laws, attending Shabbat services gives me the chance to refocus myself and my priorities by connecting to my religion and the Jewish community through song and prayer. If I ever have to miss Friday night services for some reason, my week feels incomplete.

Growing up, I thought pride was synonymous with a parade. The images, I often saw in the media depicted flags, glitter, beads and glistening bodies celebrating in the street with cheering and supportive bystanders. It reminded me of carnival in the Caribbean but not quite as attainable or supported. I yearned to experience the freedom a pride parade embodied and got the opportunity to participate in DC Parade in 2010. It was an excitingly liberating and carefree experience.

Andy Campbell is the author of Queer x Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ. Published by Black Dog and Leventhal, Queer x Design is a compilation of the art and symbology borne from queer social movements. Ranging from pre-liberation lesbian pulp fiction to various modern pride flag designs, the book presents a wide variety of LGBTQ+ symbols from various communities and identities.

Pride is protest. Pride is celebration. It is defiance, rebellion, revolution. It is a manifestation of one of our basic human rights – the freedom of assembly. Pride can be a city-wide festival, a march, or an underground gathering concealed from eyes of the authorities. Pride is diversity, beauty, love. It can last hours, days, a month, or be over in a matter of minutes. In some places it is not only state-sanctioned, but heralded. In others – banned -, and its organizers - persecuted.

Brazil’s Supreme Court decision to criminalize homophobia and transphobia should be a step in the right direction to avoid impunity in the future. But not the only step.

For the past two weeks, I have been elbow deep conversion therapy research, specifically legislation banning it around the world, and the opposition to such bans as part of my role in OutRight Action International. I will not rehash the many studies that show that conversion therapy (CT) is profounding detrimental to a person’s wellbeing. It is very clear that there is no scientific basis for CT, and it has been rejected by every major psychologist organisation worldwide. Nevertheless, it is banned in only very few places (and a CT ban doesn’t a queer-friendly nation make, in many countries with a ban it was because the CT there was the most violent and reprehensible); Malta, Ecuador, Brazil, parts of Spain, a few others but also in all these places CT still occurs.