With June designated as LGBT Pride Month, some people are celebrating a little day of pride of their own: Heterosexual Pride Day. The hashtag #HeterosexualPrideDay started trending on Twitter early Wednesday morning, with some people calling for fairness and tolerance in celebrating sexuality.
According to the website Who Said It First, @_JackNForTweets gets "credit" for creating #HeterosexualPrideDay today.
Opponents of the Heterosexual Pride Day concept say it mocks oppression faced by members of the LGBTQ community, while some supporters say the day is meant to celebrate being straight and is not meant to be offensive.
However, attempts to emphasize heterosexuality have occurred before now. In fact, there is a nonprofit Facebook page entitled Heterosexual PRIDE.
Some people for years have been asking why there isn't a Straight Pride Day, or a White History Month. "But now that people of color and LGBT people and women are being recognized as equal and important parts of society, some feel their world slipping away," blogged David Badash on New Civil Rights Movement.
"Enter Donald Trump and his supporters."
One Facebook user, Rachel Eyre, posted the following analysis: "When I saw #HeterosexualPrideDay trending on Twitter this morning, my immediate reaction was one of shock, disbelief and finally anger. I couldn't work out whether the creators of the hashtag were being ironic or sincerely believed such a date is needed -- and indeed, I can't decide which is worse."
Doing a quick search online, Eyre said she learned that far from being a 2010s backlash, straight pride has been kicking around since the 1980s.
"It was coined by social conservative groups who claimed that it was an 'appeal to ridicule,' saying that heterosexuals don't have marches, parades etc. It's been endorsed by the likes of the White Aryan Resistance, Ku Klux Klan and more recently Vladimir Putin. All lovely, friendly people you want to be affiliated with," she stated.
Whether it's being done to be satirical or there is earnest belief in it, Eyre said a heterosexual pride day is not needed.
"Straight people have never been discriminated against by all the major religions. They have never been imprisoned or executed for their sexuality. They have never been correctively raped or forced to have a sex change. They have never been murdered for who they are. They have never been disowned by their family, sent to a cure facility or fired from their jobs. They have never spent their entire lives being told what they feel is wrong, abnormal or sinful. Until you can produce compelling evidence to the contrary, you have no need for a Heterosexual Pride Day," concluded Eyre.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month is observed each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. The Stonewall riots were a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States. According to the Library of Congress, in 1994, a coalition of U.S. education-based organizations designated October as LGBT History Month. In 1995, a resolution passed by the General Assembly of the National Education Association included LGBT History Month within a list of commemorative months.
