Pride calls for visibility and presence in the face of growing resistance.
The Kingston WritersFest invited individuals to The Screening Room for an engaging evening with Lambda-award-winning author Michael Rowe on June 12. The event focused on Rowe’s book Pride, which reflects on the 50th anniversary of Toronto’s first gay rights march.
Pride explores the past 15 years through eyes of Toronto Photographer Angel Guerra’s, who has captured the city’s Pride parade on a human scale. The 120 photographs showcase glimpses of the parade beyond typical media coverage. Guerra focuses on the small scenes and single participants, bringing forth themes of joy, strength, resilience, and most importantly love.
“As queer people, we’re currently living in a time of both terms of both tremendous progress and tremendous peril, where all our hard-won gains still exist at the pleasure of an increasingly hostile conservative electorate,” Rowe said.
Rowe and his partner are among the first gay couples in Canadian history to be legally married and were the first gay couple to be married in the United Church of Canada.
Rowe views the date of their legal marriage not as an anniversary to be celebrated, but rather as a long-overdue right they should’ve always had. Rowe and his partner celebrated a Holy Union ceremony in 1985, which he considers their actual wedding anniversary.
“I do not want this to be celebrated as our anniversary, because it’s not. This is our anniversary of us taking advantage of a right as queer people, that we should always have had,” Rowe said.
When it comes to celebrating Pride, Rowe believes it holds profound significance and responsibility, particularly for elder LGBTQ+ individuals to be present and visible during Pride parades. Rowe believes Pride provides a space for affirmation to those who might not otherwise receive it. Specifically for people who have just came out or are coming out later in life, offering them assurance of a supportive community.
“I am also still scrappy enough to think that it sends a really good message to the general public:’ Here are 250,000 people—do you really want to mess with us?'” He later added, “The people who hate us are absolutely bonkers.”
With Pride comes responsibility for Rowe.
He believes older LGBTQ+ individuals must be present and visible during Pride showing to the public LGBTQ+ people exist in all shapes, sizes, and ages. This visibility offers the younger generation a glimpse of their future, showing them that they can grow into healthy adults.
Rowe’s book Pride, was born out of his constant thoughts and worries about the future and what it holds for the coming younger generations and the kind of world they’ll be left in. With these worries in mind, Rowe reached out to Guerra, and together they set out to make a book that offers insight into LGBTQ+ resilience, love, and joy, allowing the community to celebrate LGBTQ+ people.
“I’ve been shooting Toronto Pride, with love, for more than 15 years. Pride is not only a tribute to where the 2SLGBTQI+ Toronto community has come from, it’s a celebration of its future—as well as a clarion call to protect the precious, fierce beauty that queer lives and community represents,” Guerra said.
Tags
book talk, Pride, The Screening Room
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