Every June, rainbow logos appear. Flags go up. Corporations discover a sudden enthusiasm for diversity. While we love the celebration, truly, pride is more than celebration.
Pride began as resistance. A movement. It started because we were fed up with being criminalized, pathologized, fired, institutionalized, assaulted, and told, sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly, that our existence was a problem to solve.
That history is not distant. As a matter of fact, it’s in the room with us now. Many of us lived through times in the community’s history that were scary, and difficult. But there are a lot of people in the family that didn’t. Those who had the benefit of a soft place to fall when they came out, more representation, rights, and comfortability in their identity.
For some, where we are right now feels terrifying. I want to address that, but first I feel it’s important to turn around. Look at where we’ve been. I can tell you, it’s a great template for how to navigate where we’re going.
Before We Had Rights, We Had Each Other
Before Pride parades, resource centers and affirming therapy we had secret gatherings, living rooms, and chosen family. Throughout much of modern history, being openly queer could cost you your job, housing, family, reputation, freedom, and possibly your life.
So, we learned to recognize each other. Through language and subtle signals. Friends of Dorothy, green carnations, pink triangles, bandanas and handkerchief codes…these were all signs of shared identity. The community knew which bars were safe, which bookstores had clandestinely placed queer sections, which doctors were affirming, which churches were accepting, who was with us and who was against us. Entire societies existed beneath the bigot-drenched surface. It was not offered freely so the community had to mine its own belonging.
Again and again, queers did what marginalized communities have always done: became resourceful, creative, and fiercely devoted to one another. Marches, court cases, legislation and protests change lives. No question. But movements are sustained by the mundane. Rides home, spare rooms to crash in, shared meals, time spent.
The life things we do with and for each other are what makes this community extraordinary, strong, and resilient.
Before Pride Was a Parade
Most of us know the story of Stonewall. In 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back against the incessant police raids. What began as an act of resistance, became a spark for a movement. Stonewall was pivotal. But it wasn’t the beginning.
Three years earlier, transgender women, drag queens, and gay sex workers resisted police harassment at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. Across the country, queer people were already organizing, resisting, and refusing to disappear.
In the ‘50s, when being outed very literally meant risking it all, the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis published newsletters, hosted meetings, and created spaces where people could connect without shame. In ’65 demonstrators were demanding equal rights and recognition outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Frank Kameny, one of the earliest gay rights activists in the U.S., fought his dismissal from federal employment and spent the next many years arguing that homosexuality was not a sickness. Barbara Gittings organized efforts to confront psychiatric organizations that classified gays as mentally ill.
The AIDS epidemic we watched an entire generation dwindle. The death toll mounted while institutions remained indifferent, fearful, hostile. Families abandoned loved ones, politicians remained silent, the media treated queer lives as disposable. But we found each other. We organized meal trains, raised money, sat at hospital bedsides, attended funerals…so many funerals. Groups like ACT UP refused to quietly accept government inaction. Activists staged demonstrations, occupied public spaces, disrupted business as usual, and demanded research, treatment, and dignity for people living with HIV/AIDS.
The road to where we thought we got wasn’t lined with parades. It was long suffering, arduous, and irrevocably brave.
The Myth of Progress
For a while, it started to feel like we were winning. The decades that followed brought real victories. More representation, visibility, legal protections. More families willing to embrace their LGBTQ+ children.
In 2003, the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing same-sex relationships. In 2015, marriage equality became the law of the land. LGBTQ+ characters appeared on television. Corporations wrapped themselves in rainbow branding every June. Younger generations came out earlier and more openly than many in the community would have ever imagined.
Many of us began to believe progress was inevitable. That history moved in one direction. Forward. We thought that each generation would have it easier than the one before it. That the hardest battles had already been fought.
Then came 2016. For many LGBTQ+ people, the election that year wasn’t simply about politics. It was a reminder. Rights can be challenged and protections can be weakened. Public opinion can shift or be revealed when the temperature is right. The backlash we thought had been defeated was alive and robust, waiting for an opportunity to reemerge.
The years that followed have brought escalating attacks on our community, particularly against transgender people. Restrictions on healthcare, book bans, curriculum bans, restroom monitoring. Efforts to erase LGBTQ+ identities from public life. Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced across state legislatures.
As it turns out, progress is slower than we thought. Rights aren’t self-sustaining. History is indeed not linear. It bends, stalls, surges forward, and apparently, gets dragged backward.
For some, the fear is familiar. For others it feels too bizarre to be real.
Regardless of what side of that skin care routine you are on, one this is certain…when we organize, care for each other, draw together, and refuse to disappear, change happens.
Why This Matters in Therapy
Therapists often talk about context. For LGBTQ+ clients, historical context is essential. So much of what is talked about in my therapy room is drenched is the residue of queer history. Hypervigilance. Rejection sensitivity. Identity concealment. Medical mistrust. Chronic stress. Complex grief. Community loss. Minority stress. Attachment wounds. Survival strategies. These experiences exist within a broader historical reality.
Minority stress research has repeatedly demonstrated that chronic exposure to discrimination, stigma, and social exclusion affects both psychological and physical wellbeing. Anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, shame, and relational difficulties do not develop in a vacuum. They develop in systems.
Understanding LGBTQ+ history helps us understand the environments that shaped those responses.
Pride as a Practice
Pride is often framed as celebration. And it is. I’m not denying that. But at its core, Pride is remembrance for those who fought, resisted, organized, cared for others and refused to hide. It’s remembering that queer joy itself is an act of defiance and a practice. Pride is what happens when we tell the truth about who we are, choose community over isolation, check in on struggling friends, mentor, learn our history, defend our community and create spaces where we can safely exist.
For many, community is not just about social connection. It’s a protective factor, a source of resilience, and a pathway to healing.
That’s why affirming spaces, representation, and understanding history matters. Oppression doesn’t just target our rights. It comes for our identity, belonging, safety, and self-worth.
Liberation is not just a political project. It is the radical act of refusing the stories oppression taught us about who we are. Every time a queer person enters a room where they are fully seen, fully respected, and fully human, that history is present. It’s there every time we choose authenticity over shame and solidarity over fear.
Pride as we know it today exists as evidence that people before us resisted, survived, and created something larger than themselves.
The work of liberation did not end with them.
And it will not end with us.
