Friday June 16, 2006 SGN.org |
 |
Volume 34 Issue 24 |
 |
|
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
|
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
 |
 |
Tour De Life by Beau Burriola |
||
 |
||
| Pride? | ||
| Sometimes, when I look around my Gay community, I don't feel proud. I feel something else entirely.
When I see so many Gay men strung out on crystal meth, I feel sad. When I see the faces of people I know or knew and the soulless blankness left where hope and life once was, I feel loss. When I see Gay-owned businesses like bathhouses, clubs, and internet sex sites profiting from the use of heavy party drugs and the huge devastating effects on our community while they do little to stop it, I feel angry. When I see Gay men out there selling these drugs to other Gay men and ruining life after life out of pure selfish carelessness, I feel pissed. When I see so much marketing at the Gay community geared toward the never ending party - the drinking, dancing, partying, and sex - while only increasing the use of each, I feel confused. When I see steadily increasing HIV rates and younger faces testing positive while the messages we create to fight it go ignored and grow stale, I feel hopeless. When I see HIV-positive men out there spreading HIV knowingly, I feel disgusted. When I look around me and see other HIV-positive people too afraid to even say they are positive, I feel lonely. When I see huge Gay circuit parties every weekend of the year blowing away the size and frequency of more community-building events, I feel small. When I see the "community" part of the Gay world having to fight to be visible in the sea of shallowness surrounding body image, sex, and low expectations, I feel isolated. This year, as we put on the huge annual Gay Pride celebration, I hope we'll take the time to think about all the other things our community makes us feel, too. I hope we'll take time to imagine a Gay community without crystal meth, without complacency to AIDS, without the saturation of body and sex, and with more of the community-wide support that serves as the foundation of a real community, where our young Gay people can come to build a healthy life without the constant pitfalls and distractions of today. When I look around my Gay community, I don't always feel proud. I sometimes feel a lot of other things, too; but no matter how sad, hopeless, angry, pissed, confused, lonely, small, or isolated I feel, I will celebrate Pride this year and years after, hoping that we can both celebrate Pride in what our Gay community is today and exercise Pride in shaping what it can be tomorrow. (Beau Burriola is celebrating his seventh Pride, with many more to come. E-mail him at beaubrent@gmail.com or visit www.beaubrent.com) |
||
|
visit Beau at www.beaubrent.com
|
||
 |
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
International Readers |
  It's new! A blog created by the SGN staff so you can be heard |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
working for the freedom to
|
copyright Seattle Gay News - DigitalTeamWorks 2006