Proud of Pride

re: "Don't overdo it" (BP, PostBag, June 29, 2023) 

Dear editor,

Ellis O'Brien seems not to understand the many values of Pride Month. The LGBTQ+ community is proud both of their achievements and of who they are. Both testify to great progress. In mere decades, within my own life time, we have done much to reduce the suffering of fearful LGBTQ+ people desperately seeking some honest human contact while living a lie under constant threat of family rejection, of being thrown into prison, of losing a job, of being poofter bashed for sport, and so on. This is cause for celebration. 

Look at the United Kingdom's disgusting treatment of Alan Turing, for example. Having substantially helped them win the Second World War, the law of the land and its lawful executors forced him in 1952 to choose between prison or castration for the crime of loving another man in perfect accord with how nature had created them. It is only because of the protests, parades, and other efforts of proud LGBTQ+ people over recent decades that England realized very lately how morally repugnant its homophobic laws always were, so much so that in 2021, Turing was put on the £50 note, the highest honour that can be bestowed on an English woman or man. That is serious progress well worth the celebrating for a month. No one, however, forces you to participate or even to watch the celebration.

There remains, nonetheless, much to be done. In countries like Thailand, LGBTQ+ citizens are still denied equality before the law: same-sex marriage is still denied Thais who love someone of the same sex. In other places, the traditional hatred and intolerance sedulously fanned by toxic myths inherited from ancient despotisms continues to suppress, imprison, silence, stigmatize, and even kill those who would love and live each other differently to the majority or differently to the prurient commandments of fanciful deities, including those of the communist or fascist faiths. 

Pride Month in Australia, Thailand, the US and elsewhere sends a message of hope to those yet suffering in places like Russia, Uganda, the Arab nations, China, and other benighted places still under the sway of traditional darknesses. This alone is an sufficient reason for a colourful celebration of Pride Month. 

Let me assure Mr Ellis that, in the meantime, I am perfectly happy for him to hold a Straight Pride month. Why wouldn't I be? I must, however, correct a small but understandable misunderstanding. Unlike the despotic deities with their ideologies pushing hate and intolerance for millennia, I do not claim to be omniscient, however confident Mr Ellis be that I am. To claim such would be a whopper right up there with every other such claim that has ever been made by the zealots pushing their own one, true arbiters of objective reality and all things moral as determined by whatever patriarchal society of inflexible, ruthless, conformity birthed them to pillar their own position of self-satisfied men lording it over others: over their women, their children, their goats, their darker skinned neighbours, their poorer, their infidels, their witches, their fallen, and so on.

Pray tell, Mr Ellis, what exactly are you planning to celebrate in your Straight Pride month? What messages will you be sending? Please send the brochure. 

 Felix Qui 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on July 1, 2023, under the title "Proud of Pride" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2602958/tips-on-staying-calm