The Power of Radical Joy

Rainbows borne aloft in bubbles floated alongside me last Saturday as I compulsively danced through Pacific Pride Festival to beats being dropped by DJ Darla Bea. Majestic drag queens parted the crowd as they strutted across the sumptuous lawn of Chase Palm Park. Kids valiantly controlled themselves, or not, in the face of adorable alpacas and bunny rabbits. At the same time, the festooned furry participants in the Pride Pet Parade got their final touches before queuing up for the big event. Friends cheersed in the beer garden. The Santa Barbara Gay Men’s Chorus warmed up just off the main stage. Face painters brushed on unicorns, butterflies, and glam galore.

True to this year’s festival theme, “Out. Proud. Unstoppable,” the radical power of sheer joy reverberated throughout the festival in ear-to-ear grins, shouts of uncontrollable laughter, exuberant dancing, and the palpable sense of community.

Yet beneath this fantastical pageantry ran an undercurrent of sentiment that I can only analogize to the famous phrase of WWII submarine warfare: “DAMN THE TORPEDOS!”

Because even those living under the largest of proverbial boulders know that not only are LGBTQ+ rights under threat, but so are the very lives of the people who make up this community. From surging anti-trans laws to alarmingly high hate crime rates to continued attempts to repeal same-sex marriage, the LGBTQ+ community has withstood a blitzkrieg over the past two years. And it shows no sign of letting up.

To even a casual observer of history, this sadly comes as no surprise since tyrannical governments often attack this community first. As to why, there are two reasons.

The first resides in the positioning of the LGBTQ+ community as “marginalized,” the definition of which is inherent to the threat of the community. Because to be marginalized is, to put it quite simply, to exist on the margins of society and to be least protected by its laws, social norms, and ethical considerations. The margins are by definition the most vulnerable.

But so too are those who live on the margins, the vanguards of freedom. It is, and has always been, here where the limits to and definition of liberty are both tested and defined for all members of a society. Herein lies the other reason tyrants attack the margins first: to destroy the vanguards of freedom is to destroy the first, best defense of liberty for all.

Nowhere is this truism more aptly expressed than in the living legacy of Pauli Murray.

A Black person born a woman who at various times in their life identified as both she and he, and who had female romantic partners, Murray is a central, and all too unsung, architect of the rights that we today hold to be self-evident.

It was Murray, not Thurgood Marshall, who conceptualized the legal arguments that would win Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, ending school segregation. Ten years later, Murray authored the legal arguments that secured women’s equality in the workplace under the Civil Rights Act. Murray also mentored Ruth Bader Ginsburg, cofounder of the National Organization for Women, and served as an advisor to presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. To name a few of their many accomplishments.

Simultaneously, Murray occupied the margins of the margins, often describing both the sexism and racism they encountered from the classrooms of Howard University to the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. Yet, it was precisely because of this marginalized position that Murray viscerally understood the limitations of freedom for all and therefore had the capacity to define how these limitations might be expanded, or, when necessary, exploded.

Murray is far from an outlier in the LGBTQ+ community that has historically been one of Lady Liberty’s fiercest and most effective advocates. In 1968, drag queen and transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson played a pivotal role in the Stonewall Uprising that launched the modern gay rights movement, itself a crucial component of the larger 1960s liberation movements ecosphere. We would have no conception of social justice as we currently understand it without the rich contributions of poet, writer, and women’s liberation activist Audre Lorde. Nor could we even conceptualize Title IX or the freedom women and girls have to play sports without the fearless game Billie Jean King played both on and off the tennis court.  

Still, it is not these structural reforms that constitute the LGBTQ+ community’s greatest or most impactful contribution to American freedom. After all, one cannot pen revolutionary legislation or present precedent-setting arguments every day.

Instead, it is the common refusal to be anything other than they are and to love anyone other than they love, with the unstoppable resilience of joy that forms the bedrock of the LGBTQ+ community’s strength. It is without rose-colored glasses that I take this view. The moving AIDS Memorial Quilt on display at this past weekend’s Pacific Pride Festival was more than a testament to the movement’s incalculable sacrifice for their freedom.

But still, they blow bubbles, chase the perfect embodiment of glam, drop infectious beats, and dance nonstop. And, perhaps most awe-inspiring of all, they invite everyone to join them in this joy, in this strength, in this resilience.