At What Age Should You Attend a LGBT Pride March?

Wow, Hemant, bad advice.

If Teen Atheist wants to prove that she’s old enough, then sneaking out behind her parents back is just about the worst thing she could do. Her best bet would be to sit her parents down and explain to them that she does understand the issue, and exactly how she feels about it and why.

TA,
While it is important to show support to the GLBT community, it’s also very important (and more relevant to your life, I might add) to show your parents that you are responsible, smart, and caring enough to want to do this for the right reasons. Asking the questions that you asked shows that you are old enough to make this decision; discussing it with your parents as an adult will show them the same.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write about my dilemma, Hemant, and I appreciate the advice. And thank you also, Joe M, for your input.

I will probably be attending the march no matter what my parents say, but I will take the time to tell them, “I’m still going, and this is why…”

I’m also a bit curious why Teen Atheist (TA) asked her mom in the first place. I’m pretty sure she knew what answer was coming.

I had an idea of what she would have said, but I didn’t expect a flat-out “No.” Anyway, I still need permission from my parents whenever I go outside the house unaccompanied. Bad things happen when I break curfew.

I’ve never much understood the idea of gay issues somehow being inappropriate discussion around children. That seems to be the general consensus in my mostly-conservative town.

The focus of their misunderstanding is that they perceive the gay rights movement as somehow inherently sexual, and by extension inappropriate for minors. Absolute nonsense, of course, but that is the way their frail minds wrap the issue.

What the people in question are being discriminated against for is utterly irrelevant. Discrimination is horrible and wicked and must be expunged for our society to move forward.

Sorry if it offends anyone’s delicate sensibilities, but the greater good of human society is a bit more important than someone’s shut-in parents’ moronic prejudices and failure to cope with reality, and such people deserve no respect.

-k8

Teen Atheist, as a recently-out-of-teenhood-non-parent, I have to say, break all the rules and go. I used to work with a fascinating woman. She grew up in the 60s, and as a teenager, she went into Chicago and handed out papers promoting the Black Panthers. She was in on the fight for civil rights and women’s rights. She protested the Vietnam War. She was there, and she is such an interesting person to talk to. Anyway, the point is that she went ahead and broke all the rules about what nice white girls from good towns were supposed to do. When you are talking to young women just out of college in thirty years, are you going to want to tell them that you did nothing for gay rights? This is a fight that is as important as the ones my coworker worked for.

Your mother is a bigot. Plain and simple. She may be a nice person, and she might be a killer soccer mom and a fantastic business person and a great Monopoly player, but she is still being a bigot. I understand; my mother would have said the same thing to me if I wasn’t a self-centered little jerk at your age. I still love her, but I don’t look to her for moral guidance.

I am of the belief that it is more important to break unjust rules in a peaceful way then to stick to ones that are unfair. I like the idea of peacefully protesting, though I think that if you get caught and punished, that is fair. I wouldn’t judge you for choosing to avoid punishment while under your parents’ roof, though. Pretty much every time someone underage or otherwise still supported by their parents comes on this blog and asks if they should tell their parents something, I say that it is better to lie till you can get away than to face the consequences of being who you are while being supported by people who just don’t get it, and may punish you for it.

To sum up: I think you should go for it. You may get in trouble, and only you can decide if the punishment is worth the fight. Remember, you are a year away from being able to go to whatever the hell you want all the time. I also doubt your mother will see the light, so I would lie about where I was rather than try to reason with her.

Anyway, I still need permission from my parents whenever I go outside the house unaccompanied. Bad things happen when I break curfew.

Really? At seventeen I was allowed to go out and my parents weren’t terribly concerned about where I was going, as long as I was home by curfew. Of course, I also never tried to go anywhere interesting, and they usually knew where I was.

Claire and Jen: It’s a really conservative country, and by these standards, my parents are already relatively liberal for even allowing me to go out unaccompanied at all. Most of my friends don’t have the same liberty. I think these rules still apply until I start living on my own (ah, I can’t wait).

TA,

I’m a parent of younger children than you, so I might be over-reading subtext here, but I think your mom may be afraid. Whether bigot or not, she has little experience with any kind of gay community, and she may consider it a big risk to let her daughter go.

However, since you’ve already brought it up to her, going now on your own will be wrong and may damage what I hope is generally a good relationship with your mother. So I say, turn the table on her a little bit:

Invite her along.

Say let’s go together and try to have a better understanding of gay rights and marriage, etc. Do it to have an open dialogue, do it for family unity and do it so, if it is for whatever reason “dangerous,” she’s there to see no harm is done to a person she loves very much.

Who knows, maybe it will open her eyes up a bit. Hope this helps!

“Joe — If the parents would be willing to listen to a reasoned argument, I doubt this would be an issue in the first place.

I’m thinking most parents who wouldn’t want their child attending this sort of event don’t know much about why people attend it at all. They see the word “gay” and run like hell.

I think your solution is an ideal one, but it’s not very practical.

I’m all for a straight teen discussing with her parents why she should attend this rally. But that’s a long term discussion, probably not something that will change their mind immediately.

For what it’s worth, my parents and I have a very good relationship. But trying to explain to them why I work with atheist groups is futile. They’re just not interested in my reasons.”

Hemant,

The real win here is not being able to attend the event, it’s the potential for TA to be able to make the attempt to explain her views and make her parents understand the type of adult she is growing up to be.

I think TA came up with the real ideal solution, tell her parents that she is going to go and explain why. At least she will be giving her parents the benefit of the doubt and taking a more mature outlook on the situation.

I’m sorry, but advising her to lie to her parents and just go with no explanation will simply cause more problems for her than the alternative, as it would be a complete slap in the face to her parents which would, in all probabliity, be punished.

Insulting the girls parents… nice! Do you have any Yo’ Mama jokes to go with that or are you tapped for childishness today?

When I was your age, I lied to my parents, hopped a Greyhound thanks to NOW sponsorship and headed to Washington to march in at a Pro-Choice Rally. It was a very hard thing to do, and guilt about lying combined with resentment that I had to do so made the trip that much more arduous.
Being dishonest to family feels horrible because you have grown up respecting their beliefs as your own until you were old enough to make your own decisions. But you can respect someone and not agree with them. And sometimes, these things must be done. Standing up for what you believe is part of becoming an adult. Standing up for what you believe against those you love is often the rite of initiation. I wish you the best in your endeavors.

Insulting the girls parents… nice! Do you have any Yo’ Mama jokes to go with that or are you tapped for childishness today?

I don’t mind. I’ve said far worse things about them. 😛

Hm. This reminds me of something I read about Dear Abby (the advice columnist, in case anyone doesn’t know) years ago. She said that if someone asked her something like “Should I have pre-marital sex?” or “Should I attend an orgy?” she would tell them no. She told an interview that this was because if they had to ask someone’s permission, they weren’t ready for it. Which strikes me as quite reasonable. And that was my first thought when I saw Teen Atheist’s dilemma and question. If you have to ask, you aren’t ready to go.

So, Teen Atheist, especially since you have told us you live in a conservative country, and you are bound by pretty strict curfew limits, I would say you should stay home — this year. I’m a gay man myself, *and* an atheist, and I do think it’s great that you feel strongly about injustice. You have a good point that your presence would be valuable, but under the circumstances, they’ll have to get along without you this year. So, go next year, or whenever you are in a position to make this decision for yourself. Meanwhile, work on your mother. Talk to her reasonably. Introduce her to your gay friends if you can. I had similar problems with my mom at your age, by the way. She kept changing the rules. We had some squabbles over that. I moved out on my own at 19, not in a huff, just to be closer to college.

As for your basic question, “At what age should you attend a GLBT Pride March?” I would say that it could be at any age, and US pride parades include all ages, including infant children of GLBT parents. In this context, we could also ask at what age it’s okay to tell your parents that GLBT pride is boring and stupid, and you’re not going to go, and they can’t make you. 😎

Standards are different in this country, Chaim Krause. My friends actually envy me for being allowed out of the house on my own at all. I’m known as the “independent one.” (Mind you, we do go to the mall a lot, but they’re usually driven there by the parental units.) Crazy, eh? Breaking curfew results in getting the third degree on “You could have been raped/mugged/killed/lying in a ditch somewhere!”

And yes, I can’t wait to move out.

[Edited to add] I have read some more comments and see you are not part of the “western world”. I don’t believe in “cultural relativism”. If women don’t have equal rights that’s not fair, no matter where you live. If being 18 and still being considered a child is “relative” to anything I would say it is relatively ignorant to think so.

It goes back to that old saying, “As long as you’re living under my roof…”

How do you think things are ever going to change if everybody just stays home at age 18 instead of changing things?

People go to college and move out, that’s how.

ETA: Perhaps our standards may also differ because my friends and the people I went to school with are all middle- to upper-class (read: sheltered).

Julie: Wow, living in a small predominately Christian Third World country, I don’t know if I would step out to support gay rights as a teenager.

TA: That’s why I think it’s more important for me to go; the gays, lesbians and transgendered people in this country need as much support as they can get because they’re a smaller crowd.

Absolutely, but is your safety in danger? Seriously. Even in NY and LA, the fundies show up at gay pride with their silly signs, but it’s not really threatening. But is there going to be some threat to your physical safety? If so, I’d say stay home this year and go next year.

If there’s no threat to your safety, then I’d still be a little wary of telling you to go. I kind of agree that if you still have to ask, then you might just have to accept the reality for now that you’re not ready to do everything you want to do in life. And that’s why having an adult mind in a teenage body totally fucking blows. I remember, sort of. To be honest my crazy hippy parents let me go anywhere and let my boyfriend spend the night, so maybe I never really had to deal with any nonsense. Maybe that’s why I would be wary of telling you to disobey your folks; if my parents didn’t let me do something, there was usually a reason that involved my safety. So even if your mom is totally on the other side of the belief spectrum, she’s still your mom and probably doesn’t want to see you get bashed over the head with a “God hates fags” sign, you know?

I’m surprised I’m the only one bringing up safety concerns. I mean, people who hate gays are serious motherfuckers. Let’s face facts. They can get violent and FAST.

If I’m off base about your physical well being, then my apologies. But I think you need to save that brain for greater things–stay away from rock throwing dogmatic freaks.

That’s great. I’m glad you had fun. 🙂

Richard: Already have. 🙂

I am a Christian. This is not an easy question. The age would depend on the person. Pride needs to move into a conservative area. Parties are fun but we need to have better values as a group. We need to show these values at Pride.