Guest Opinion: Pride is how we steer a terrified world

Thirty years ago, I left a career in glossy magazine pages to help stop my community from dying. Fear killed gay men while political leaders looked away – or laughed. So, we did what we do. We got together in groups, stood up, invited the cameras, and said, “Nah. We’re not disappearing.”

Look around you. Breathe. Feel that San Francisco spirit – resilience, mischief, calm in chaos.

That’s Pride at its core. It was never just glitter. It was never just a street parade. It was always a sacred “fuck you” to shame and fear, to our perpetrators – and a living, vibrant “yes” to the power of coming together, of celebrating the very thing that holds us together: community.

Maybe this invention of ours – Pride – is exactly what the whole trembling world needs right now.

A handful of billionaires and their cronies are using the smartest tools ever made – social media and artificial intelligence – to keep the world panicked and obedient.

Fear sells.

Fear dismantles tribes.

Fear locks the future in the hands of men with no plan but profit.

Fear votes.

We queer people have a secret weapon: we know how to survive fear.

In a world hypnotized by fear and rage, Pride is a living experiment in trust. It’s joyful oxytocin at a time when the algorithm wants more and more dopamine. It’s felt consent in the flesh, not just words on a screen.

What if right here in San Francisco, Pride 2025, we had all the ingredients needed to push that oxytocin out into the world – and watch it spread at the speed of memes.

Think about it: the rainbow flag invented in the city now waves from apartment windows in Warsaw, Poland; parliament buildings in Delhi, India; and is tattooed on shoulders from Rio to Tokyo. That signal started here. The rainbow crosswalk at Castro and 18th streets, once a debate in the Bay Area Reporter, continues to pop up in cities all over the world. The Folsom Street Fair started in the city and inspired street fairs across the planet for kinksters eager to feel like they belong. We do these things for Pride. Without realizing it, they end up inspiring a planet.

So, yes, the world is watching us. 

Here’s an idea: Let’s take the power of community and ratchet it up one more notch.

With a simple, short ritual. Let’s call it the eye-gazing ritual. Here’s how it works.

 
Find a stranger.

Ask for consent to connect.

Place a hand on each other’s heart.

Lock eyes. Breathe. Count to nine.

Separate. Whisper, “Thank you. For the benefit of all beings.”

Have someone film it. Tag it @fbabsignal. Drop it. Flood the feeds.

That’s it. Nine seconds to break the dopamine loop. Nine seconds to remind your nervous system that humans are neither your enemy nor just something to consume. More than that, nine seconds to put online and give humans a queer trick for feeling safe in a world of manufactured rage.

Imagine the parade TV emcee on the set along Market Street stopping the biggest public event, in the most populous state of the country, and inviting every one of us to take nine seconds to simply feel into one another again. Eye-gazing as a radical act.

You might cry. You’ll no doubt laugh. You might make out. You will definitely feel something.

Our way of saying: We do consent here. We do care here. We come together as architects of community to heal our world here.

Montesquieu, the French baron who inspired the Federalist Papers, might have been queer. Who knows? He didn’t actually call for killing kings. He said, calmly, “People suffer. I’ve come up with a system for the benefit of all beings, not just the rich like me. It’s a democracy.”

Let’s make San Francisco Pride 2025 the birthplace of a new signal. Not just for LGBTQ people – for everyone craving a tribe again; everyone living in fear they might be the next target of a machine that eats up and spits out human prey. Let’s inspire everyone living under authoritarian thugs hungry for a future where calm, trust, democracy and consent are not just myths.

Let’s watch it show up on heat maps across the planet, the way the Irish did as they flew @hometovote from all five continents to proudly make sure marriage equality and abortion rights were written into their constitution.

Gather. Laugh. Dance. Do the ritual. Record it. Share it. Show the world your laughter, your tears, your hugs. Give the world a living “fuck you” to fear and a living “yes” to one another.

When the last confetti are being swept up in Civic Center late Sunday night, the few hundred men who have always dragged the rest of us into violence and war will say, “Oh shit. This is not how history was supposed to go.”

We’ll answer with a shrug and a smile, “Too late. We just rewrote it.”

Greg Rowe-Pasos, a gay man, is a self-exiled San Francisco-trained marriage and family therapist, artist, writer, filmmaker, and former journalist. After living and working 18 years in the Castro, he moved back to the French countryside where he continues to see clients in California via telehealth. His essay "Enjoy the Shade" will appear this fall in an anthology of writings by queer elders, “Spirits Queer, Spirits True.” Read more of his writing at substack.com/@fbabsignal