Robert DuSold

It’s Pride Month! A month of gay Pride. A month. I just bought “I Love My Gay Dads” bandannas for the dogs from Petsmart and gay foamy soap from Bath and Body Works with matching gay Pride hand sanitizer. It smells like a heavenly, tangerinish gay ambrosia.

I bought the candle too.

There’s rainbow circles to put your Facebook profile pic in and gay ally memes. There’s a gay Pandora’s box of programming on Apple TV and I have a gay Apple Watch face proudly displaying rainbow, squiggly lines of gay.

I’m visible. We’re visible. We’re here. We’re queer. We’re happy!

I’m the last one to virtue signal anyone on how to be queer, or how to be an ally. In fact, I usually wince when I see click bait social media lecturecrusades that start with “Dear______”….fill in the blank with people you think owe you something or are seemingly better off.

I’m not the woke police…. personally, I wasn’t sleeping. I’m full up on caffeine. I would say the fact that tRump gained 4 million more votes in the last election is a testament to people of every stripe yelling a resounding “fuck you!” to sitting in a virtual cacophony of wokeness class.

So, this is how I celebrate gay Pride. LGBTQ Pride. LGBTQIA2S+ Pride. I hope I didn’t leave anybody out:

I celebrate Pride by being true to myself. By using my head. By remembering where I’ve been and where I want to go. By reading books. By advocating for others. By marching to my own drum that doesn’t necessarily have a rainbow on it. By questioning. And speaking out when it’s not comfortable or safe. By making art.

I’ve tried to channel my energy into awareness and action instead of wondering why people can be so cruel to gay people, because I will never understand that.

I have been, and still am a target. If you’re a Catholic, the pope says I’m “intrinsically disordered”, if you’re Rick Santorum, I’m a dog fucker, if you’re Kevin Hart, I should have my head bashed in with a dollhouse….

Yada yada.. I won’t woke you with the rest.

I will indulge myself briefly and wonder why Rick Santorum got hired by CNN in the first place when he is such a vocal, vitriolic homophobe, but got fired for disparaging Native Americans. I wonder why most people forgot about the gay people are dogfuckers part.

Anyway, theater has been my home for as long as I can remember… from “Funny Girl” to “The Wiz” to “Dreamgirls” to “Sweeney Todd” to “Evita” to AIDS to “Les Mis” to a nice pension.

My 🏳️‍🌈 peeps. My 🌈 peeps. I want to pause the Pride celebration for just a moment.

For the last few years I have noticed an unmistakable backlash in the theater community against gay men…gay white men in particular. An ease in spouting prejudice. An institutional acceptance of casual and overt marginalization. A bandwagon of tropes.

That’s from the comments section in an American Theater Magazine article written about Terrence when he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. If I had to pick, I chose that one. There were many…

He died shortly after.

Oh, I just found this:

He seems nice.

Here’s a tweet from a councilor in Actors Equity. She’s the diversity spokesperson.

Making me an object. A cismanwhitegay. A thing. A “These”. Typifying me. Running together words to further dehumanize me, um, is in essence calling me a fag. I was so appalled when I saw this… which happened to coincide on the very day Actors Equity was sponsoring a show she was directing about diversity(there isn’t enough irony in irony to describe it) that I contacted the executive director of the union and several councilors. The day before a friend had been beaten in front of his apartment for being, you know, a fag.

The executive director defended her, and her language, and explained to me that writers were calling to support her and a friend on council who I’ve known for decades when pressed by me to comment refused.

Ok, let’s take a dance break.

We’re back. The most troubling I’ve seen of late is this:

That is an excerpt from a manifesto called “We See You White American Theater”. This was followed by a list of demands to change theater. You know, make it more inclusive. More welcoming to all. It was signed by people of note in the industry including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Viola Davis, Lynn Nottage among many others.

It was one of those “Dear________” things. Dreamt up by people of privilege in theater. It’s sort of an ear in a box that’s being implemented in theaters across the country. It’s a movement. It’s becoming an institutional reality.

It’s dangerous.

It’s toxic. It’s a movement based on further targeting not only gay white men, but women as well. It’s picking up a convenient kick the dog trope and demanding people rally behind it, sprinkled with race baiting.

Evidently they’re stating that oppression is multi-layered.

Yes. It is.

Look in the mirror. I can see your reflection.

I’m not sure where theater is headed for gay white men, but at the moment, to me, it’s not good. I think many people are afraid to speak out.

I celebrate Pride by opening my big, gay mouth in hope.

Now, I’m gonna dance. I’m gonna use my “Love is Love” hand sanitizer. I’m gonna light my delicious gay candle. Time to party.