I spent (Gay) Pride at the (gay) beach

Never Done: I spent (Gay) Pride at the (gay) beach

For years I've attended Pride celebrations, and for years I've felt like they lacked authenticity. I think there's something about the level of organization it takes to assemble thousands of people into essentially a long line that breaks my spirit a little bit, and then when thousands more people line up to watch, it starts to feel like we're on display in a giant urban terrarium, rather than taking over the streets in an assertion of cultural and political presence.

This year, with the passage of marriage equality in the New York senate, I was more inclined to go celebrate -- particularly to support the steadfast vision and hard work of my friend Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom To Marry. But I had already made plans with friends to avoid the island for an adjacent island: Long Island -- and to spend the day at Riis Beach. (First with a stop at Rockaway Taco, which I had never done, which I can't evaluate because we waited to eat our food until we got to the beach, at which point it the tortillas had stiffened up because the tacos were no longer hot. The grapefruit and pineapple ices I tried while standing in line for tacos were glorious though, and worth returning for.)

So about a dozen of my friends and I joined about 3 dozen of my acquaintances at the beach, to celebrate Pride by celebrating community. In the past, one of the things I loved about queer community is that it tended to be clothing-optional space. In recent years, I haven't actually loved that so much, but hadn't taken the time to articulate why. Upon reflection and discussion, I realized it's that the judgment and competition and admiration of youth that permeate New York culture even make their way into New York queer culture, so I just don't feel the kind of freedom from fashion that I have felt in the past, at women's music festivals for example, or just on remote beaches with friends. Also, I find bathing fashion to be even more challenging than street fashion -- bikini or full-piece? Function or fashion? I like a bikini to sunbathe in, but I don't like a bikini for swimming. Top or topless? Print or solid? Do I want attention for how I look or do I want to blend in? If I could find a bathing suit that I thought was truly good-looking, I think I would love the attention, the way I do when I wear a particularly beautiful dress, but mostly all the suits I see are either ugly sports prints or ugly tropical prints. Where is the good beach fashion?

And then I discovered something. I brought my wetsuit to the beach to get an open water practice in -- and people loved seeing me in my wetsuit. They wanted to touch it, to look at it, to see me swim in it. And suddenly thing that is for me 100% about function was being transformed into fashion -- even being reframed as sexy -- and I noticed that I didn't mind the attention, because it was organic -- not about my body, but about my actions. That sexy is what we do, and not what we look like. That's a sex appeal I can get behind! That's Lori Petty in Point Break. That's transforming normative culture into radical culture. That's the pride I came out into, and the pride I was delighted to rediscover at the beach.

I saw The Loving Story at Tribeca Film Festival

Never Done: I saw The Loving Story at Tribeca Film Festival

In 1958, a white man and an African-American/Cherokee woman married in Virginia. They adored each other. For the next 9 years, Richard and Mildred Loving (real name) faced arrests (policemen arresting the Lovings in their own bed at 4 AM) and jail sentences and exile from the state of Virginia, and their own families -- and eventually, a law suit that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1967, and overturned anti-miscegenation laws across the country.

The Loving Story is a new documentary film that tells their story, using wonderful archival footage, so we get a real sense of Richard and Mildred, and the intimacy of their relationship, and their role in changing United States history. Neither of them were activists. Neither of them set out to change the world -- they were just very, very much in love, and asked the ACLU for help when their basic civil rights were denied.

In fact, when their case went all the way to the Supreme Court, they decided not even to go. When their lawyers asked Richard if there was anything he wanted the court to know, he said, "Tell them I love my wife." I found this to be an extremely moving reason to take a case to the Supreme Court. He was not out for attention, and he was not going after any kind of political agenda. He wanted the right to be married to the woman he loved. I think the reason that moment with Richard is so strong is because he barely says anything the whole film, while Mildred, the more outgoing and talkative of the two, expresses herself gorgeously throughout. In the end, this film is as much about their fight to live where they want to live as it is a fight about living with whom they want, and Mildred is wonderful at letting us see and hear her longing for her home and family.

In the unanimous decision in Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court wrote:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Don't you just wish you could take that language and replace the words racial discrimination with discrimination based on sexual orientation or immigration status? Don't you just wish that people understood that we could skip the next years of fighting and just skip to the inevitable conclusion -- that it is a civil right for EVERYONE to marry?

I know that lots of my friends don't feel that marriage is the key issue for the LGBTQ community, and I know that many others do. I personally don't think it has to be the key issue to be a vital and strategic one, and I have such huge respect for Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry, that I urge you, no matter where you stand on the issue, to practice humility, and to listen to how he frames the issue. And then try to see The Loving Story when it comes to your city. And then the next time you see me, let's talk about it.