When I was growing up, being gay was very stigmatized. If you think kids didn’t want to come out to their parents today, it was orders of magnitude worse back then. There also used to be a generalized dislike of gay people in those days. Things have changed a lot since then for gay Americans. I don’t agree with it, but gay marriage is legal today. Every group, including gay Americans, has detractors in our country, but gay Americans are a protected class under the law and in society in general. There is a reason people make jokes about the “Alphabet Mafia” coming for you if you say something negative about gay people.

This is where the problem with Pride Month starts to become apparent. If the goal of Pride Month is to get rid of the stigma around being gay and convince our society to be more tolerant of gay Americans, well then, that objective has clearly been achieved. However, no activist group in America ever seems to “declare victory” and say, “We’ve done what we set out to do and now it’s time to move on to other things.” There’s always too much money, power, and attention at stake.