Pride Month is rapidly passing and this weekend it’s Chicago’s turn to celebrate, so I thought I’d ponder the connections between punk rock and the LGBTQIA+ community.

First, I talk about Joe Strummer and the band’s support for the community, starting with “The Right Profile” from London Calling. “The Right Profile” is a song about the legendary but closeted actor Montgomery Clift. The song is clearly empathetic, but it focuses on Clift as a tragic figure, which, indeed, he was; but this shows how many allies viewed queer people back then — as sad, lonely people who led sordid lives as a result of societal pressure and rejection. However, Joe’s empathy and support for the community grew and evolved from there, to the point where, some twenty years later in “Diggin’ the New,” Joe celebrated LGBTQIA+ people not as tragic figures but just as people. And, notably, he embraced the trans community long before most straight, cisgender artists did.

But the connection between punk and the queer community is much more than a song or two. To that end, I refer to two fascinating pieces on LGBTQIA+ punk: Jayna Brown and Tavia Nyong’o’s 2020 NPR story, “Queer as Punk: A Guide To LGBTQIA+ Punk”; and Mark E. Moon’s 2022 article “Check Out These 10 Queer Punk Bands” from the Dallas Observer. 

More broadly, though, I talk about the way punk welcomed all comers, especially outsiders of every stripe — including LGBTQIA+ people. Though far from perfect, the world of punk rock gave so many of us who didn’t fit in anywhere else a time and a place to breathe, to be ourselves even if we didn’t know who or what we were. And that was and always has been especially important for queer people.

I also highlight some of the more influential queer and queer-supportive punk acts, like the Buzzcocks, the Slits, the B-52s, Tom Robinson, and the great Joan Jett. (By the way, the B-52s song I mention, “Dirty Back Road,” is from the Wild Planet album released in 1980).

Anyway, please give this week’s show a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. And remember, as Joe always said, “Without people, you’re nothing.”