The Coronavirus Is Testing Queer Culture
Editor’s Note: This article is part of “Uncharted,” a series about the world we’re leaving behind, and the one being remade by the pandemic.
June is Pride month, and in a normal year, Pride means crowds. Parades make for colorful, moving pageants that can go for miles. Spectators swarm sidewalks in rainbow clothes or glitter-coated clothes or a distinct lack of clothes. Orbiting the main festivities are brunches, rallies, concerts, panel discussions, and film screenings thrumming at capacity. And for many, of course, the main attraction is the partying. Lines for bars circle city blocks. Huge outdoor concerts sell out months in advance. At sprawling warehouse raves, you can’t be sure whether the sweat on your back is your own.
Pride is, in other words, not made for social distancing.
Then again, neither are most of the enjoyable expressions of queer life year-round: the dance nights and book clubs and vacation spots at which people out of step with straight society suddenly fit in. In this way, modern Pride joyfully embraces what happened at the Stonewall Inn 51 years ago, when bar-goers fought against police attempts to keep them apart. (A sign currently posted outside of Stonewall, cheering on Black Lives Matter marchers, reads Pride Is a Riot.) Both before and after that event, LGBTQ community has often been defined by exactly what is now squelched by the coronavirus: the pleasure of assembly.
Queer gatherings are a rejection of queer isolation: of hiding in the closet, of believing oneself to be alone in one’s identity, of fearing that embracing one’s truth would result in physical harm. Historically, this defiance has been secretive, via underground drag balls, code-named coffee klatches, or darkened cruising spots. In recent decades, it’s often
