The first pride my mother attended, she marched with me alongside the PFLAG float, holding a sign that read “I’m Proud of My Gay Child”.
I noticed she kept falling behind and running to catch up, nearly a whole float behind us. So finally, I stopped to see what was going on.
People kept pointing at her sign and cheering and then she’d proudly point at me, saying “they’re here!”
That was usually the point where at least one person burst into tears. And this is where my mom started lagging - because she’d stop, reach over the barrier, and hug them. Teenagers, twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings… they’d break down crying at the sight of a cishet woman proudly marching with her child in Texas, of all places. That she’d claim me and be proud of me. Because they couldn’t imagine their own family doing the same.
So she stopped and hugged them and told them she was proud of them, even though she had to race to catch up in the heat, even though they were strangers. And i like to think she made those young people’s lives a bit better.
So yes, cishets at pride.
I’d rather have a cishet grandma there than a gay cop.
ALT