Positive Living: Pride Made Me an Activist

I remember the very first time someone called me a “gay activist.”

Fortunately that jarring epiphany didn’t come while I was alone. Just prior to the first St. Pete Pride celebration, we founders were sitting around a table having one of our last-minute board meetings. Since there had never been a gay pride celebration of any size or merit in St. Pete before, understandably the Tampa Bay Times (actually it was still called the St. Petersburg Times back then in 2003) was following our planning process very carefully.

There in black and white in front of us on the front page of the local section was just one of those in depth stories. It referred to the organizers as “a group of local gay activists.” Reading that story out loud you could hear an audible gasp from our little group. “Oh my God, they are talking about US,” I remember someone saying.

Here we were planning a gay pride celebration and not a single one of us had ever thought of ourselves as “gay activists” before.

Honestly it took me some time to get used to the idea, but then I realized that although I had never put that label on myself I had actually been a gay activist for years just by living my life openly. I’ve lived in St. Petersburg for 35 years and I’ve never once changed a pronoun or lied about exactly who and what I was…a proud gay man.

Becoming a founder of St. Pete Pride took my activism to a whole new level, but it was just the beginning. After I became comfortable with the activist label in the last few years, I’ve become an activist in a lot of things: climate change, income inequality, women’s rights, stopping gun violence and now unfortunately as an active member of the Resistance. I rejoined the religion of my youth which was Quakerism. It’s almost a prerequisite to being a Quaker that you are an activist.

In 2003 while we were struggling to get used to the idea that other people saw us as “gay activists,” I wasn’t yet “out” about my HIV status. Never in my wildest dreams then would I have thought I would become as outspoken an activist on that issue as I have. As a 26-year survivor I feel I’ve earned my place at that table and I can thank Pride for giving me the courage to eventually take on that role. This very column is dubbed “Positive Living” for a reason…as an HIV/AIDS activist I wanted to show by example that your life can be a positive expression of richness and fullness regardless of the challenges of living with a “positive” label.

Over the years I’ve learned that being an activist isn’t always easy. Over the past 15 or 20 years I’ve fought with the mayor of St. Pete on the front page of the newspaper, stared down armed riot police as an Occupier and have given so many television, radio and print interviews that I’ve lost count; not to mention the stories I’ve authored myself. There are downsides though. I strongly suspect that one of the reasons I’m still single is that potential suitors may be put off by the idea of being intimately involved with someone who is so “out” in so many different ways. I asked a therapist a couple of years ago if she thought I intimidated people and without hesitation she said “absolutely.” I continue to hope to find a husband who understands I can be just as passionate about a man as I am about gay pride or walking with kids in the March for Our Lives.

Being an activist can put you in tough positions too. I’ve felt lead to speak out against Pride itself for its wildly unpopular move of location of the parade downtown. I continue to speak out on that issue because I believe it’s wrong for the celebration and wrong for St. Pete. No one seems to be talking about the fact that we went from an attendance of 150,000 the year before the move to 30,000 last year. I am. Some of you have said to me “you need to get over it.” That is the wrong thing to say to an activist. True activists don’t “get over it.” They get informed, they stay the course and they don’t back down. It’s called “speaking truth to power.”

Regardless of my headstrong stance on that issue, as we head into Pride season again I am grateful for the nudge the celebration gave me to get so involved with the issues of our day…local, state and national. Participating in Pride is fun, but it remains at its core a political statement of the power and vibrancy of our community. So remember this June, just by marching, exhibiting or attending you are a “gay activist” too. Welcome to the fold!