June Is GLBTQ Nude Pride Month!

Today is June 1, the very first day of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (GLBTQ) Nude Pride Month here at ReNude Pride. As I explained last year in my first post for the month of June, 2017, as a same gender loving (gay) man, I always combine the gay pride month with nude pride to create our own unique celebration. It’s a month the commemorate the fact that we’re both GLBTQ persons and we’re bare practitioners (naturists/nudists) and equally proud of both of those aspects of ourselves.

No matter how often we try, there just doesn’t seem to be ample opportunities to jointly combine our pride in being GLBTQ and being clothes-free. Despite our best intentions, either one characteristic or the other always becomes the primary focus of celebration and one becomes secondary, if it gets acknowledged at all. That’s one of the goals/missions of ReNude Pride – to proudly and openly rejoice in being clothes-free and gay.

Many historians recognize the June, 1969,  Stonewall Inn riots in Greenwich Village, New York City, USA, as being the birth of the modern-era GLBTQ movement for equal rights. It was, however, not the initial catalyst to instigate the struggle. There were groups, clandestine and loosely organized, in different countries, worldwide, that planted the seeds of equality for the GLBTQ community already in existence for years prior to Stonewall. The Stonewall Inn Riots were the one incident that ignited the spark of consciousness and freedom and opened the door for global exchange and cooperation between the GLBTQ peoples everywhere.

The rainbow flag that represents the GLBTQ community has achieved international acceptance and recognition. Designed by Gilbert Baker, it was first used in the San Francisco, California, USA, gay pride parade in 1978. The red band is always the top of the banner. The colors and their significance are listed here:

Red     life

Orange     healing

Yellow     sunlight

Green     nature

Blue     harmony/peace

Purple/Violet     spirit

Your blog author, draped in the rainbow flag, both bare and gay!

All of us know that our community and cultural pride is not exclusively limited to our wearing rainbow-themed insignia and waving rainbow flags. Pride isn’t external, it is internal. It’s about the identity that we all share as members of the GLBTQ population within our localities. provinces/states and countries. It is about the respect that we give to ourselves and to others, no matter to their sexual orientation.

Nor is our pride restricted solely to the month of June every year. Our pride is demonstrated in how we live our lives, day in and day out, every day of every year. It is how we treat one another and others. In order for us to live proud, we must also be proud – of our accomplishments and of our goals – of ourselves as well as the accomplishments and the goals of others.

In order us to succeed, we all need to succeed. Many of us live in nations where our rights and privileges are guaranteed by law. Not all of us are this fortunate. It becomes incumbent on each one of us to work together for the success of others so that we can all thrive in a world that is free of envy and jealosy, because they sow the seeds of mistrust and oppression.

Sometimes, we bare practitioners take advantage of our “dual nature” and use our nude bodies as a canvas to show the world our same gender loving and nude pride. This affords us the freedom of creativity as well as reaffirming our pride, our confidence and our solidarity in being able to express ourselves as being the person we truly know ourselves to be. We simply don’t stand around and “think” proud, we show ourselves and others that we are indeed proud and celebrate that fact. In essence, we have not only discarded the proverbial “closet” door, we’ve instead blasted it off the hinges and aren’t ashamed of letting others see us as ourselves.

Aaron, my spouse, and I have often discussed why so many people, particularly in the clothes-free (bare, naturist/nudist) community associate same gender loving bare practitioners as having only one purpose: wild sexual orgies where everyone does whatever they want to anyone they want without any restrictions. This is nothing more than their own homophobia emerging as a tool to fuel their marginalization and stigmatization of their own naturist/nudist brothers and sisters. A mirror of how the broader society often stereotypes the entire naturist/nudist community.

The same is true of the GLBTQ community when it judges the entire clothes-free  community as perceived sexual deviants consumed with hedonism. Neither label from either of those two groups, the GLBTQ or the naturist/nudist, fits or is realistic which burdens the dual community (both GLBTQ and bare practicing) into yet another role: that of ambassadors in bridging ourselves within the cultures which we self-identify.

We take pride in ourselves in that role, too!

Happy GLBTQ Nude Pride Month!

Naked hugs!

Roger/ReNude Pride