The Year To Show Up
Pride 2025 isn’t “just another” Pride. It is, bar none, the most important Pride in at least 30 years. Our community is being battered by a reaction more powerful than any since the early days of the AIDS crisis. Our opponents aim to strip us of every right they can. For them, last week’s awful Skrmetti decision marks a mere touchstone toward that goal.
This year, of all years, be part of Pride. It matters. It matters because Pride ranks as the most visible event of the queer year – and numbers mean strength. It matters because thousands and thousands of us dare not march—it’s just too dangerous. If you lack documentation, or even “look like” an immigrant, ICE might be anywhere. If you’re trans, nowhere might feel safe right now. If you’re an LGBTQ young person, the messages you’re hearing could easily leave you more confused and scared than ever.
The Year to Show Up
For those of us who can show up, it’s the year to show up. Please show up for those who can’t march. Show up to honor the thousands who marched and struggled—often at great risk—to get us what we’ve got. Show up because you’ve fought too damn hard for all we’ve won to be taken away. Show up because when they come for any of us, we all must fight back together. Show up because we all know we’re far stronger as a united community than on our own.
And if you just can’t make it, mark your Pride some other way. Dig deep and make a generous gift to an LGBTQ nonprofit—many of which are reeling from massive cuts in public funding. Write to someone in your life you haven’t come out to. Put up a flag.
My 40th Pride
It’s hard to believe, but 2025 marks my 40th Pride celebration. It’s been a lot of marching, waving, cheering, dancing, and, in some years long gone by, outfits I’d not dream of wearing today. In recent years, maybe I haven’t looked forward with the same better-than-Christmas-morning excitement of those years. Yet every year, I’m there—and always, always swept up in the exuberance and the power, and the joy.
Nothing’s going to keep me away this weekend. If you’re able to show up at any of the many Bay Area Pride marches and celebrations, I hope nothing keeps you away either.
