Miles to go

The idea that Reno Pride could come and go with little commentary from the Reno News & Review seems almost awkward. The fact is that the LGBT community has taken major steps forward since last year, mainly nationally, although to a small extent in the Silver State, too.

Still, it’s not as though our community does not have miles to go, it just seems as though we have come so far. So, of course, staff members will be down at Wingfield Park, on the corner of Arlington Avenue and West First Street, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 17, to celebrate with our friends and family.

But this idea begs certain questions. Why does the least amount of forward momentum mean we the press can sit back and watch what we hope is the inevitability of history? This country has 237 years of hateful discrimination to account for. And just as laws pretending to “protect” marriage swept the country only a few years ago (in Nevada, 2002), the tide can turn with the vagaries of the U.S. Supreme Court. Not to point out the obvious, but despite a vote in the Nevada Legislature, we still don’t have marriage equality in Nevada.

We’re not likely to see protesters outside the park, as we did only a few years ago, but we are likely to hear pejorative names downtown. When does that blight on the American conscience end?

Interestingly, the Reno Pride marches of just a few years ago happened in spite of public ignorance. They were, in no small way, the gay and lesbian community coming together to thumb their collective nose at mainstream society. They required a certain courage on the part of marchers and supporters to participate. We were there. We saw the protesters and heard their hateful slogans. Westboro Baptist Church with its hateful placards can almost be expected to protest somewhere this weekend.

But this weekend will be a celebration. Perhaps that’s the crucial difference between then and now. There are things to celebrate.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The court also overturned 2008 ballot Question 8 in California. Those rulings restarted same-gender marriages in our neighboring state just seven weeks ago. These were baby steps forward, giant only in comparison to the crawl we’ve faced in the years since the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the massacre of 32 gays in New Orleans in 1973. Seems like an eternity, doesn’t it? Since Reno Pride was last celebrated, seven states have made it legal for all couples to wed.

Even looking outside our little section of the planet, gay people are still often treated as second-class citizens. Has our country as a country stood up to fight against new anti-gay laws in Ghana, Nigeria or Senegal? How many other countries with homophobic discriminatory laws does Uncle Sam count as friends? Will Obama stand by during the 2014 Winter Olympics as our gay athletes face prosecution due to a new Russian anti-gay law?

We in Reno have a lot to celebrate this weekend. But there’s a world of hate out there, and we all must maintain vigilance.