My Comments To The Fairfax Co. Board

Last week I had the honor of accepting the Pride proclamation from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors at their June meeting, a tradition I started in 2013 with then Dranesville supervisor John Foust. At the time gay marriage was still illegal in Virginia and nationwide. Only Arlington and Alexandria had (I believe) done this before. That year one supervisor — Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) vacated the room ahead of the proclamation. After doing the same in 2014, a friend shared that one of his staffers explained the supervisor drinks too much Diet Coke during the meetings, and simply had to excuse himself. No further explanation has been provided.

At this year’s meeting, new Dranesville supervisor James “Jimmy” Bierman said he looked forward to another 100 years of pride proclamations, but also to the day that they aren’t necessary. He and Chairman Jeff McKay had many other wonderful things to say, but space is short, so watch at tinyurl.com/FCPM24. Below are my comments.

“Thank you to all of our esteemed supervisors. My name is Brian Reach. I was born in Fairfax Hospital, my mom was born in Alexandria Hospital, my grandfather was born on the kitchen table in Clifton. I am very much an old Fairfax County boy, and I grew up here knowing that this was a different area than perhaps the rest of the state, at least at the time… this was a friendlier place.

“But there wasn’t a lot of proof of that, and when I started NOVA Pride… 14 years ago, there had never been a pride festival in Northern Virginia, there wasn’t any organization creating a community that was organized and could do stuff. Gay marriage was illegal in Virginia, and it was illegal nationwide.

“When I started this organization, it was because I believed that there was more under the surface supporting us than people could see. And I had faith in that, and I think that that has been — in the last 10, 11, 12 years — really proven correct.

“And we’ve seen this huge pendulum swing. We wanted, when we started NOVA Pride, to have A Pride Festival, and part of doing that was bringing the community together so that people who had common interests could start new organizations, more local organizations. In a county with well over a million people, there needs to be more localization, so we wanted to spawn more, not just here but across Northern Virginia.

“So when I worked with Supervisor Foust to create this proclamation, to make it happen for the first time, we then took it a step further, and I wrote every jurisdiction in Northern Virginia… and it took a while to get everyone to adopt it, to understand the importance of it.

“Understanding that same-sex marriage, sexuality, gender… this isn’t about sex. This is about dignity. This is about not losing your job or your home because of something that has nothing to do with anybody else.

“And I will say that it does take the entire community, because none of us are sharing our sex lives in our day-to-day lives. When everyone goes home, they don’t have the same experiences. What matters is consent between adults and that’s really all we need to worry about.

“What does matter, that we all do need to enforce, as a community, is treating each other better. To treat each other with respect and to think, when we meet someone, first, ‘how are they treating me right now?’ — not ‘what have I heard about them?’ It doesn’t matter. How we treat each other is all that matters.
“And this matters. It may seem superfluous by some, especially if you’re in a liberal area where you feel the support, and you think this doesn’t matter. It matters to somebody.

“It matters to somebody in Springfield District that their chair is empty for the twelfth year in a row. That silence is deafeningly loud. And if it is still an issue of drinking too much Diet Coke, I hope that supervisor will see a urologist — I have, I’m a cancer survivor and know how important that is — but it is hard after 12 years to maintain that excuse.

“So now we have ten pride festivals in Northern Virginia. Gay marriage is the law of the land. Ten years ago it wasn’t. Ten years ago we were just starting this, here, in the room. This paved the way for a whole lot by breaking the silence, to allow people to speak and to say ‘I’m here. I’ve been here the whole time. I’ve been here working, going to school, being your neighbor. It’s not really that scary, is it?’

“And people realize, it really isn’t. And a lot of those things being said about us aren’t true, and objectively now proven false by our visibility.

“So, if I have one request of the community… things have changed, but not everything. For the past five years, every year more bills… are introduced across the country attacking primarily kids — trans kids, queer kids — that have the highest rates of suicide, depression, anxiety we’ve ever seen. They’re the ones being attacked. Not society at-large by them; by them existing. We’ve always been here. We’ve always been here.

“So, thank you for accepting us, but if I have one request of the community, it’s to not be silent. Even if it’s polite discrimination — even if it’s quietly leaving the room — don’t be silent. Stand up for a better community, because it’s not mean to be actively enforcing better behavior.

“Thank you very much for this gesture. Thank you for all of you who stayed in the room for this; it is really important. I hope the people of Springfield will do better, but regardless this is a time for celebration.

“And for those of you who are still on the fence: most people that were around 20 years ago were not in the same place. Our community — just like a far longer history with the African-American community, where it’s been 159 years since Juneteenth.

“It’s been ten years here since gay marriage was very much illegal, on every layer, but what’s important is — when someone comes around — we celebrate that. We don’t attack them for who they used to be — they’re usually the most welcoming people to talk about their past selves and say ‘I was wrong.’

“So we’re always here. The door’s always open. The seats are always there for people to sit down and be part of a better community that includes everyone.

“So thank you for being a part of that, and I look forward to 100 more years.”