Results: Show Your Pride -- June Is Pride Month

In 1969, a police raid on a gay club in New York City sparked the Stonewall Riots, an uprising that kicked off the gay liberation movement and inspired other cities to organize their own demonstrations of pride. Each June since, these annual marches have been staged across the country to celebrate how far the fight for equality has come—and highlight how far it has yet to go. Do you join in any Pride celebrations?

Pride celebrations are not about a special day for being LGBTQ, nor is it held to separate the LGBTQ community from everyone else. Actually the Pride celebrations are very inclusive and chance for everyone to get together and celebrate how closer to an equal society we are all getting, but also to think about the steps we need to take to be even more so. Are you one of those people who feel there should not be a Pride celebration, and if you are, maybe this graphic will make you understand just why these celebrations ate necessary?

This June, I will be attending the Pride celebrations in Tel Aviv, Israel, which I am very excited about. Israel is the only country in that part of the world where gay pride is celebrated, and the many visitors who come from overseas have a great time and firm up the city's reputation as the Gay Capital of the Middle East, and perhaps, one of the Gay Capitals of the World. Besides Canada and the U.S. holding any gay pride celebrations, do you know of any of these other international gay pride celebrations?

One of my favorite performers, Florence + The Machine (whose concert I just recently took my mother to for her birthday) has a song called June which was her tribute to the horrible Pulse Nightclub shooting in June 2016, in Orlando, where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting inside the gay club. During her concert she asked the audience to put their arms around each other, tell a stranger you love them, and sing the song with her, while she wrapped herself in the rainbow flag. Don't you think the world would be a better place if we all just accepted each other for who we are, and stopped all the judging and hatred?