As I was preparing for a guest lecture I'll be giving in a First Year Studies course next month, I found this essay I wrote several years ago. It is my response to a young man who asked the Commission for LGBT People at UT (which I served on at the time) why we felt it necessary to celebrate LGBT History Month. He went on to ask if we also thought UT should observe Non-LGBT History Month.
Americans tend to celebrate those who have contributed to our society. We celebrate Washington’s birthday, Lincoln’s birthday. We have Columbus Day and Constitution Day. We also schedule time to raise awareness of issues, causes, or movements and thus events like World AIDS Day, Breast Cancer Month, Labor Day, and Dance Marathon were created. Sometimes we create events just for the warm fuzzy feeling—thus we have Bosses Day, Father’s Day, Book Month, and SEC Player of the Week.
I believe any acknowledgement of a positive contribution to society is appropriate. Not that I think of myself as a great patriot, but one of the privileges of living in the United States is the freedom to choose.
Celebrating a particular group doesn’t diminish the contributions or significance of other groups. Does celebrating my birthday make your birthday any less important or eventful? And observing a day/month/event doesn’t necessarily mean you support or don’t support the underlying cause. For instance, I consider myself a pacifist, yet, I respect Veterans Day which pays tribute to the contributions of military personnel. In fact there is an extremely long list of things I don’t support, but I do support the right of others to pay tribute to what is important to them as long as it does not harm others.
Some people may feel it is absurd to celebrate ideas different from their own views, but as for me I feel celebratory, so hats off to George Washington, Jane Addams, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Ben Franklin, Amelia Earhart, Thomas Jefferson, Maya Angelou, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, David Ho, Rosa Parks, Breast Cancer Survivors, Laborers, Bosses, Fathers, Mothers, Teachers, and Librarians everywhere…
