My friend Nat here at Michigan alerted me to the message for Pride Week here at the University of Michigan for 2008: "Be Safe. Be Healthy. Be Proud!" I spent the bulk of my evening last night dishing over wine with Nat and another friend Maxime about this fucked up conflation of health and pride.

It used to be that we -- LGBT people, that is -- could be proud for our history or our queer sensibilities. Perhaps gay men might even be proud that, as a community, we have higher rates of volunteerism than any other community. But post-AIDS, funding for LGBT resources on campuses and for youth has become so conflated with funding for HIV/AIDS and suicide prevention that it's impossible to tease the two apart anymore. Today, we're left with the kind of bland / moralizing messaging that we see below in the poster for this year's Pride celebrations at Michigan: "Use a condom!!! Don't kill yourself!!! Yea, be proud!!!!"

We should call out this kind of BS messaging when we see it. This isn't about queer liberation or organizing in the interests of LGBT people. This is again about constructing the image of a good queer who's both "safe" and healthy." Likewise, this kind of rhetoric is easily used in demonizing / moralizing attacks on our communities that straight folks (and conservative gays) see as "unsafe" or "unhealthy." Unprotected sex. Drug use. Promiscuity. S&M. Under this kind of "healthy pride" regime, these and other practices get equated with being ashamed of our sexuality and inherently evil / bad / wrong.

It's not just Michigan that is stricken with this kind of health / pride promotion. LGBT youth groups everywhere have become dependent on HIV prevention / health promotion funding that makes their curricula focus heavily on using condoms and not killing yourself. Even 10 years ago, when I started attending Time Out Youth in Charlotte, North Carolina, this shift had already begun. We need to reject firmly this kind of organizing. It obscures what Pride should really be about: our histories, our communities' resiliency, our history of organizing and movement building, and our spirit for progressive social change.

If you want to teach HIV prevention, great. In fact, that's totally fabulous! But don't try to sneak it in under the auspices of Pride. That's just fucked up.