A Place for Pride and Pro-Choice

Merry Mount-A Place for Pride and Pro-Choice

From the White House:

During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Pride Month, we reflect on the progress we have made as a Nation in the fight for justice, inclusion, and equality while reaffirming our commitment to do more to support LGBTQI+ rights at home and abroad. I often say that America can be defined by one word: possibilities. This month, we celebrate generations of LGBTQI+ people who have fought to make the possibilities of our Nation real for every American.

Today, the rights of LGBTQI+ Americans are under relentless attack. Members of the LGBTQI+ community — especially people of color and trans people — continue to face discrimination and cruel, persistent efforts to undermine their human rights. An onslaught of dangerous anti-LGBTQI+ legislation has been introduced and passed in States across the country, targeting transgender children and their parents and interfering with their access to health care. These unconscionable attacks have left countless LGBTQI+ families in fear and pain. All of this compounded has been especially difficult on LGBTQI+ youth, 45 percent of whom seriously considered attempting suicide in the last year — a devastating reality that our Nation must work urgently to address.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2022 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to recognize the achievements of the LGBTQI+ community, to celebrate the great diversity of the American people, and to wave their flags of pride high.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

In an interview that activist Gilbert Baker (flag designer) gave to the Museum of Modern Art, after the flag’s prototype was acquired for its permanent collection, he suggested that the rationale for selecting the rainbow was rather elementary: “It’s a natural flag”, he insists. “It’s from the sky.”

"Sky Cottage"

I hear through the grapevine that there is an impending new place for Pride named “Sky Cottage” (fingers crossed).

Why can’t mankind/womankind embrace the mantra live and let live? Because persons in power, often hypocritical religious figures, decreed a controlling moral code that set social boundaries and stifled private acts of desire and love. I agree with Biden's proclamation that now is the time to "fight for justice, inclusion, and equality", and to continue to break the social boundaries that limit individual freedoms. Pro-choice in a broad sense should include not only a woman's right to choose abortion, but also an individual's right to choose: sexual partners, euthanasia, government representatives, class improvement, military service, and (dare I say it) tax distribution. As for (LGBTQI+) rights, for those who want to look to antiquated biblical teachings, I offer, “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” -1 Corinthians 13:13 (NKJV).

In Benjamin Britten’s operatic masterpiece, Peter Grimes (libretto by Montagu Slater), the character, Captain Balstrode, leads a chorus of villagers who have gathered inside The Boar (the village pub) before and during a storm.

Balstrode:

We live and let live

And look, we keep our hands to ourselves.

Pub conversation should depend

On this eternal moral;

So long as satire don’t descend

To fisticuff or quarrel.

We live and let live, and look

We keep our hands to ourselves.

Chorus

We live and let live, and look

We keep our hands to ourselves.

Balstrode:

We sit and drink the evening through,

Not deigning to devote a

Thought to the daily cud we chew,

But buying drinks by rota.

Chorus

We live and let live, and look

We keep our hands to ourselves.

In conclusion, let us not only Live and Let Live, but let’s go a step further and Live and Let Love.

CPW