Proud to Be One of Those "People With Pride"

When QSaltLake editor Seth Bracken asked me to answer a few questions for the gay paper's Pride issue, I figured turnabout was fair play -- after all, Bracken was nice enough when I grilled him for a City Weekly "5 Spot" feature in February.

As it turns out, I'm very proud indeed to have been included, in QSL's "People With Pride" feature, among such admirable folks as PFLAG-Ogden President Allison Black, Utah State University LGBTQA resource coordinator Maure Smith-Benanti, Utah Pride Center transgender youth program coordinator Rose Ellen Epstein and Volunteers of America-Utah media-relations veep Zach Bale. These people do so much untiring and important work for the LGBT community that I fear my own little erratic scribblings fade into insignificance. (And, for that matter, how could such a one as I ever compare with the great Princess Kennedy?)

Now, I'm a constant worrier. And, after I filled out Bracken's questionnaire, I became concerned about one of my answers -- specifically, about some grammatical issues that it brought up. In fact, I even sent in some corrections, which QSaltLake was kind enough to accept after the fact.

"QSL: What does this year’s Pride theme, Live. Love. Pride., mean to you?"

"BB: I am 100 percent in favor of living, and loving, and priding. Except, well, 'priding' isn’t really a word, is it? I mean no offense to the committee, but the thing that bugs me is that 'to live' and 'to love' are both verbs, so stringing them together with 'pride' – which, standing alone like this, is usually a noun – produces a weird, jangling, anticlimactic effect. I would have preferred the triple-noun construction 'Life. Love. Pride.' But, hell: It’s June! The weather is glorious! And, it’s Pride, the most wonderful time of the year! So why should I quibble? We should live, and we should love, and we should be as proud as all get-out. Pride is the antidote for shame, which is why the anti-LGBT people fear it so much: Pride defuses the most powerful weapon in their hateful arsenal."

Well, of course, later I realized that "priding" is a perfectly good word -- as in "Aunt Bea felt guilty for excessively priding herself on the tartness of her pickles." But, after Bracken had been so good about accepting my earlier correction about how "pride" isn't always a noun, I decided to just let it go. I think my point was that the verb "to pride" is transitive, requiring an object; whereas "to live" is intransitive, and "to love" is ambitransitive. Sigh. Grammar is so cruel sometimes.

I also feel obligated to point out that, despite what QSL says, I am not currently an "Associate Editor at City Weekly." [Note: The misattribution has now been corrected in the online edition.] Although I maintain close ties to City Weekly, and I consider my years on staff at CW -- first as copy editor, then as assistant managing editor -- as some of the happiest in my career, I left the staff in 2009 to become a freelance writer.

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