Backseat to a Beating

What a Teenage Ride Through Hate Taught Me About Pride

I had just turned sixteen when I became an unwitting bystander to a hate crime.

It was the mid-nineties and I spent my summer nights drinking and riding around with a small number of French-Canadian men on their motorcycles, feeling wild and reckless and just a bit dangerous. One guy, we’ll call him Dave[i], was living with my soon-to-be boyfriend. Dave and I were riding across the bridge that separated the Indigenous land from the settler part of town and then through the downtown core where the most fun and flamboyant parts of night life reveled, where fire-twirlers inhaled flames and hackey-sackers kicked and indie bands played; where the music of bars pounded out into the night and couples strolled through the park licking ice cream.

Suddenly, Dave stopped the bike, kicked down the stand and hopped off. “Fucking f*gs,” he said. “I’m gonna beat the shit out of them.”

I was aghast. Was he trying to impress me with his toughness? What motive could compel someone to stop their own journey to interfere violently with two others simply enjoying a night together, minding their own business?

It was the nineties and still long before “gay” fell out of vogue as a slur in common vernacular. The closet door was still firmly closed on most. The Church, which formed me, was unequivocal in its condemnation of the “sin” of homosexuality, and I hadn’t yet come to question either this moral conclusion nor the Church itself. But I was (and remain) firmly committed to the ideals of love and peace, and had not yet grappled with the incongruity of my childhood faith between these core teachings and the ramifications of their condemnations. I had never imagined this sort of unprovoked violence.

“What are you doing?” I protested. “Wait! STOP!” But Dave, big, 6’4” hulking Dave did not stop, did not look back. He charged off into the dark cover of the trees after the two young lovers. I was scared. I’m ashamed to admit I froze. I sat on the back of that bike while a hate crime seared trauma into the hearts and bodies of innocents.

I was still trying to wrap my mind around what was happening when Dave returned. I shifted backward on the tiny passenger seat as he threw his leg over, revved the engine noisily, and sped off in a whirl of testosterone and toxic masculinity.

I didn’t ride with Dave after that.

June is PRIDE month, and this week from far away I saw photos of this same park and same street in my hometown. Photos filled with bright rainbow flags, people marching, chins held high and smiles wide. Multicolored banners cheer the windows of businesses in the downtown core. Men, women, and children march right down the street where decades before, our motorcycle stopped, and two young men were beaten for holding hands.

And then I read the comments below the photos. Interspersed between strong voices of love I read:

“We need straight pride!”

“Why do they need to shove their lifestyle in our faces?”

“This is a family park; children shouldn’t have to see this.”

This ignorant push-back, though tempered by more charitable voices, perpetuates the hate that is channeled into violence. It seeks to suppress the hard truths that while hetero love has long been lauded, gay love has been punished. It pretends that loving someone who is more like you physically is a “lifestyle,” not romance, when there are really no important differences at all. It labels as perverse something beautiful, and in so doing, continues the prejudice that gives rise to violence from insecure men.

And this is why Pride month matters.

Because the same people who march today have endured beatings from men like Dave simply for holding hands, for sharing a kiss, for enjoying public spaces in the same ways that straight couples do. Because some who would march this month did not survive their attacks. Because people today still don’t recognize the right to this deserved equality. Because too many children internalize the verbal abuse that flows unfiltered around them, learning to self-loathe and sometimes, even to end their lives, pronounced immoral and unworthy of full participation in society by angry voices. Because the opposite of this dangerous, toxic shame is

Pride.

I am no longer willing to sit scared on a tiny backseat when homophobia exhales its odious breath, calling out impotent protests. I am no longer willing to align myself with those who willingly bring harm to my LGBTQ brothers and sisters. I don’t want to sit back and wait while trauma is instilled, so to pick up the pieces in psychotherapy in an avoidable aftermath. I stand loud and proud, defiant and strong in allyship. I will be here for you.

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[i] because that’s his name and when your name is Dave, you’re basically christened anonymous, and because Dave doesn’t deserve anonymity for this anyway