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" June is almost over, and with it National LGBT Pride Month, but there are still Pride events throughout the summer and into autumn (San Diego Pride in July, Oakland Pride in August, Las Vegas, Austin, and Orlando Pride in September, etc.). If you haven&amp;#039;t been to a Pride parade or festival yet this year, there&amp;#039;s still time. If you&amp;#039;ve never checked out a Pride event, I highly recommend it. And if the closest one that hasn&amp;#039;t happened yet is a few states away, you can make a road trip out of it. In fact, my favorite Pride ever was the time my partner and I road-tripped to Albuquerque to ride on the queer poetry float in the parade. To be clear, I&amp;#039;m not a die-hard Pride adherent. I don&amp;#039;t even go every year. It&amp;#039;s usually hot, it&amp;#039;s always crowded, and there are too many smokers. (My partner hopes that all the major cigarette companies donate to the National Organization for Marriage this year so that queers will boycott them.) However, despite the progress that&amp;#039;s been made in recent years and especially in the past year, the ability to come together as a supportive and accepting community is still necessary. It&amp;#039;s increasingly popular to talk about LGBT rights as though the battle has already been won. Pride has definitely become more mainstream \u2014 Coors Light was the title sponsor of my hometown Pride last weekend, and my mom worked one of the beer booths. Meanwhile, it seems like more states legalize gay marriage every week. The 10th Circuit striking down Utah&amp;#039;s marriage ban may open the door for more reversals in the coming weeks, including one in Colorado \u2014 in fact, Boulder County has already begun issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. According to Freedom to Marry, Inc., nearly half the population of the United States now lives in an area that offers some form of legal protection for same-sex couples and their families. Although gay marriage is far from the last battle the LGBT community will have to fight to achieve real equality, it&amp;#039;s easy to read it as a sort of barometer of societal opinion \u2014 as more people have supported marriage equality, civil rights and protections for LGBT people have become more commonplace. It&amp;#039;s no wonder, then, that more and more often I hear people questioning whether we still need events like Pride. It was one thing when there was no other place where queer people could be their authentic selves, but these days \u2014 with a gay bar on every other block and a lesbian book club in every trendy coffee shop \u2014 it might feel a bit redundant. But things are still far from rosy for many LGBT people. I represent one of the most privileged facets of the queer community \u2014 white, educated, cisgender, comfortably middle-class \u2014 and I still struggle with living in a world where straight is the default and my queerness is invisible. I rarely (if ever) fear for my safety or my livelihood, but I still encounter casual homophobia in my day-to-day life and sometimes go days or weeks without ever speaking to another queer person besides my partner. For many other LGBT folks, the struggle is much more pressing \u2014 especially for bisexual people, transgender people, and queer and trans people of color. Progress marches forward, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean there aren&amp;#039;t still millions of us living in poverty, alienated from our families, staying closeted for the sake of our careers, dealing with the threat or reality of violence, navigating HIV stigma, and more. Pride doesn&amp;#039;t cure any of those things, but it&amp;#039;s a reprieve. At its best, it&amp;#039;s a day or an evening or a weekend when you can be authentically yourself, when you can be confident of not hearing hurtful words thrown around carelessly, when you can wear what you want and present yourself however you feel comfortable, and dance and wave signs and smile at strangers to your heart&amp;#039;s content. Even when I find it a little overwhelming (loud music! Expensive food! So many rainbows!), there&amp;#039;s still a sense of relief that goes along with being surrounded by queer people. In my daily life I&amp;#039;m always prepared for the necessity of defending or explaining myself, my relationship, the words I use, the way I see the world. At Pride, that expectation is gone, and I feel a little lighter. The crowd at Denver Pride was the most diverse group of people I&amp;#039;ve seen all year, an impressive mixture of ages, genders, ethnicities, and body types. People wore everything from bikinis to tuxedoes, encompassing every conceivable subculture and style of dress. Couples held hands on the sidewalk without glancing around first to see who was looking. Queer parents pushed babies in strollers, puppies romped in the grass, drag queens walked impressive distances in eight-inch heels, and my heart grew three sizes. I hardly paid attention to any of the onstage acts; I was more interested in watching the crowd, seeing the way people interacted in the absence of shame or fear. I even saw a group of lesbians having the following conversation, a textbook example of processing, right out on the sidewalk in front of everyone: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t hate you, Amanda,&amp;quot; one of them said as I passed. &amp;quot;I just don&amp;#039;t think that you think that I&amp;#039;m good enough for Stephanie.&amp;quot; My people! Even in its current, more mainstream incarnation, Pride is still radical in its creation of safe, queer-friendly space for people from all walks of life. So often, in our everyday lives, queer people must choose between being visibly different and therefore outsiders, or blending in and ignoring what makes us unique. As long as there is social pressure to prove that we&amp;#039;re &amp;quot;just like everyone else&amp;quot; - and I doubt that&amp;#039;s going away anytime soon \u2014 the opportunity to revel in our differences will be a much-needed vacation. No matter how socially accepted LGBT people become, we will still need events like Pride to be together, to celebrate how far we&amp;#039;ve come, and steel ourselves for how much is left to do. Follow Lindsay on Twitter. RELATED: My Life as an Invisible Queer 13 Things Not to Say to Your Lesbian Friend The 13 Best Things About Being a Lesbian The Lawyer Who Brought Down DOMA Is Amazed by How Far Marriage Equality Has Come 9 Beautiful Photos From the Largest LGBTQ Wedding in North America Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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