Good Reads: Celebrating Pride Month
Published: June 28, 2022
June is Pride Month, with parades and festivals happening in vibrant motion around the globe, working to promote equality, acceptance and respect for LGBTQIA communities and individuals worldwide. While many Pride events were put on hold during the pandemic, this year Pride was celebrated in full color in cities around the world, with events in some places attracting as many as four million participants.
There are sobering exceptions to these many joy-filled festivities. Ukraine’s largest LGBTQ rights event, KyivPride, was relocated to Warsaw, Poland this year, due to the ongoing conflict with Russia. The Pride parade in Oslo, Norway was canceled this past weekend due to an attack believed (though not yet confirmed) to be a targeted hate crime. Violence also broke out in San Francisco, cutting festivities short. There are more examples, too.
According to Human Rights Watch, there are currently around 70 countries that criminalize same-sex relationships between consenting adults, and nine countries that criminalize expressions of gender that include transgender and gender non-conforming identities. Whether in Minneapolis, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro or Beirut, Pride is all about coming together to support and rejoice in individuals who identify as LGBTQIA, as well as the people who love and learn from them.
Please join us in celebrating Pride Month this June by exploring some of the histories and perspectives below:
- Dive into these PBS documentaries highlighting LGBTQIA voices and experiences.
- Learn how historians are documenting the lives of Transgender people.
- Check out the Global report card on LGBTQI rights from the Council of Global Equality.
- Find out why LGBTQIA+ rights aren’t antithetical to climate justice work in Our pride can’t numb us from the state of the Earth.
- Discover how Youth Pride Association helps schools address the substantial adversities LGBTQ youth face in schools.
More perspectives to explore:
- A Gay pilot reflects on what travel means to Queer folks
- ‘Wildhood’ explores Queer Indigenous experience
- The Queer revolution in the Middle East: 'One good song can do more than 5,000 protests'
- African photographers use their lenses for social change
