Why gay pride matters in the great outdoors

Celebrating Gay Pride Month shouldn't cause a stir, but it is

On June 28, 1969, a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village triggered several days of riots that pushed the gay liberation movement in the United States to new heights. Ultimately it inspired annual gay pride marches and for June to be recognized as Pride Month.

More than 50 years later, on June 1, 2023, Trout Unlimited posted a photo on Facebook of a rainbow trout in the hand of someone wearing a long-sleeved shirt, the cuffs of which sported colors of the gay pride flag. It noted: “Celebrating all colors of the rainbow. Happy #PrideMonth!”

This triggered multiple TU watchers to comment that TU was going the route of Bud Light, that they would not renew their membership (if they actually were members, not just trolls), and that the organization should avoid joining trendy movements pushed by an insane minority, or that they were distressed that TU has “gone woke.”

I am a 61-year-old writer with 40 years of experience communicating the outdoor experience to a broad and diverse audience, from trappers to animal rights activists. My beautiful wife and I recently celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. We have two adult daughters. What I know about life as an LGBTQ+ person could fill a thimble compared to what I probably should understand. But I do know bigotry when I see it, and I know that words matter—especially ones that are not only loaded but poorly defined.

Negative knee-jerk rejections to all things “woke” (essentially all things LGBTQ+ or “diversity” driven) will prove a detriment to our outdoors community in the long run.

Much of it is just shallow thinking, and, folks, the only shallow thinking that does us any good involves bass and crappie in the springtime. Beyond that, think twice, thrice, before you paint us all with brush strokes of bigotry.

We don’t benefit by dismissing Gay Pride as some sort of corporate marketing strategy or deriding it as some kind of new-fangled corporate woke popularity platform. That insults the history of the movement.

The first Pride marches happened in June of 1970. Gay and Lesbian rights initiatives were not new then, just more visible. The idea that gay, lesbian, and trans people should be treated equitably is not a new concept.

As a writer, the word “woke” simply makes me insane. Its origins were slang, but it at least made sense in the realm of Black culture. Now it’s used as a nebulous pejorative by conservative leadership. It seems to carry a different meaning for everyone who spews it.

Most outdoors folks aren’t the type of people who would reject a gay hunter or angler they met face-to-face—but most won’t go out of their way to invite a gay or trans group into the fold, either.

It’s not simply political correctness that leads the vast majority of outdoor folks to refrain from using contemptuous words for African Americans, women, disabled vets, and Latinos. Still, they’re quick to declare they are not “woke,” even when some uses of the word indicate true racism and bigotry. They won’t touch a Bud Light, ever, and if an outdoors group flies the gay pride flag, well, apparently, many of them just won’t stand for that.

Gay Pride, to me, is less a political statement and more about standing up for family, friends, and co-workers. Respect for and empathy for others is at the heart of The Golden Rule. That’s this graybeard’s take on it, anyway.

Some will say “woke” is not anti-gay but against a culture forcing its ideology of race and gender upon others in a social drive to replace meritocracy. Definitions waver from something akin to Marxism to something silly as another fad of political correctness.

Sometimes public and social media use shows that anti-woke is triggered when LGBTQ+ ideology runs amok. When “gay” and “lesbian” stretch too far into a land of alphabet-soup identities and to a point where straight folks feel like they must walk on eggshells all the time. They’re tired of made-up pronouns and exasperated with the ever-evolving number of gender identities. I understand that frustration to a degree. A “What now? I’m tired of hearing about it” malaise sets in.

But being in the “woke” category for many also apparently covers simply the acceptance of Gay Pride, drinking a Bud Light, or thinking it’s OK to have Nobel Literature Prize-winning books by Toni Morrison in your school’s library.

“We’re just tired of having it shoved down our throats!” they say.

Imagine that thought from the perspective of a teenager who is gay or trans. We “normal folks” don’t recognize the sheer volume of our outward sexuality and celebration of the hetero lifestyle. In all media, in practice, in the world of social norms, daily, it’s shoved down the throats of gay and trans kids that they are different, that they do not belong, or that they are mentally ill or deranged.

“We get it; you’re gay. That doesn’t make you special. Why must you proclaim your sexuality for all?”

Pride needs to be proclaimed, especially now. “Anti-woke” is now a presidential campaign agenda promise in the United States. Meanwhile, Gay Pride is celebrated worldwide.

It took 60 years for Britain to come to terms with the fact that it arrested and chemically castrated an international World War II hero and computer genius named Alan Turing. Suicide by cyanide took him, but Britain killed him. The country finally awarded his name the dignity it deserved in 2013 and posthumously pardoned him and others like him—in 2016.

If you see something bigoted or unkind, say something. Silence is a choice, and it communicates very clearly to the person being harmed that you do not care about them. 

Emily Heath

In the 1990s, a photograph of a couple embraced for a kiss on the front page of a newspaper would be celebrated as beautiful. A newspaper might even sell copies to the family.

But a photo of two women in such an embrace in Fairbanks, Alaska’s first-ever public Gay Pride March in 1995, brought thousands of subscription cancellations, death threats to the reporter (who didn’t even take the photo), and lots of reminders to all of us working at the News-Miner at that time that this was “a family newspaper.”

A straight-family newspaper that is, no gay families.

Just a few years ago, I helped a friend who was down on his luck to look for a new place to live. We toured a mobile home park where the manager asked—friendly like—if we were a gay couple. We laughed. No! Our friendship alone was being tested at that particular moment.

Sensing he was among like minds, the manager told us there were no gays in his mobile home park, those kinds of people were not welcomed, and applications could be rejected for any number of reasons.

He chuckled. Made me want to puke.

Everyone knows Rachel Carson for her book “Silent Spring” and the launch of environmental movements that have improved our world in countless ways. Hardly anyone knows or comments upon the fact that she was a lesbian in a time when it was essentially forbidden. She had to love in secrecy. Fearing publicity, she reportedly destroyed all her personal correspondence with the love of her life.

That’s why it’s still important to stand up and declare pride today.

In a July 2020 blog for Trout Unlimited, The Rev. Dr. Emily Carrington Heath, a United Church of Christ minister, theologian, and writer from Exeter, New Hampshire, noted that one of her early posts to Facebook looking for other LGBTQ anglers ended up with “some truly vile” comments. She reported that a group site admin simply told her she shouldn’t have posted “something political.”

TU still is fighting those battles, apparently.

Trout Unlimited’s current strategic plan contains a strong, renewed interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It fits that they would support Pride Month, and it should have come as no surprise to its membership.

The Nature Conservancy also showed its pride colors this month. These groups should not be alone in striving for diversity and inclusion.

On the flip side, several professional bass anglers posted snide reactions to Bud Light’s outreach to the trans community last month. Social media saw plenty of firearms turned on cases of Bud, too.

I’d wager that if I walked up to any group gathered anywhere in Oklahoma with my pistol on my hip and a Bud Light in my hand, I’d get much more taunting about the beer than inquiries about my choice of sidearm. That’s just sad — and dumb. It’s just a beer.

Professionals who represent the pinnacle of where high-school fishing and shooting programs can take kids—and in the case of bass fishing, one of few that allows boys and girls to compete on an equal playing field—demonstrated a hard line when it comes to the very few trans kids who might find salvation in our cherished sport.

The longer the Good Old Boys Club rules, the more imminent the demise of our outdoor and conservation traditions. As a group, hunting and fishing enthusiasts are not diverse enough or young enough to survive.

Too many anglers and hunters are sending a clear message that our healing waters and peace-inspiring wild places are not for the LGBTQ+ community. Vets with PTSD draw an enthusiastic call to help however we can. Teens suffering from gender dysphoria in an age of anti-woke populism? That’s a different story. A loud few broadcast the message, “No healing waters for you.”

That has to change.

The number speaking out against their outbursts is too few. I add my voice when I can. That’s what I’m doing in today’s column.

We should be reaching out to these kids, not adding to their woes.

If my feeble mind can find an effective way to do that, I will, proudly.