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Message from the Director: A Rose By Any Other Name
It wasn’t too long ago that our community embraced the word ‘gay’ as its own. Hungry for something less clinical than ‘homosexual,’ men and women alike gravitated to that moniker and took important ownership of the word. Finally the gay rights movement had not just some brave faces, but a name. Even more importantly, it had a unified front; a group of people fighting for equality under a banner that was all their own.
Eventually; however, we all got much more specific about the names we used to identify ourselves. A whole new acronym system emerged and for some, that built barriers within the community. More and more women were beginning to prefer the term ‘lesbian,’ while men more closely embraced the term ‘gay.’ Eventually we had ourselves whittled down to our own specific groups until eventually we even separated out the very people who helped spark our movement at Stonewall.
Now as we enter the 21st Century, it’s more important than ever that organizations like the Pride Center make our intentions clear. Bringing the Western New York’s LGBT community together through inclusion, partnership and trust is paramount to our mission. So even while we are faced with the dynamics of an ever-evolving language, with terms and definitions changing like a current, it’s our work that is important. After all, the names will come and go.
- Jim Ver Steeg, director of the Pride Center of Western New York.
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