Pride ’98 report
My first gay pride parade… and I marched! Here are the photos and the story, in the form of correspondence that occurred between myself and a friend. This was first published on the web in August 1998.
I don’t know if this stuff makes the news nowadays, but you may have been aware that ’tis the season for gay pride celebrations. On Sunday, I met some friends in NYC and marched behind a Yale banner in the pride parade! The Yale group started out with 3 graduate students, 2 undergrads, and 3 alumni. As we marched though, more and more people joined. We started at 56th street, and by the time we got to 20th, there were about 30 people in our group! It was quite exciting, dancing down 5th Avenue cheered on by 1–2 million people (estimates I saw in the news).
There was confetti, ticker tape, the works. The number of people in the crowd responding specifically to Yale was surprising. Lots of alumni, I guess. Several other students we knew were watching; they hopped the barriers to come up for a chat and a hug, if not to join us.
Apparently, mayor Giuliani’s participation was the source of some controversy. Several fundamentalists in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral held signs criticizing him (that’s polite; essentially they were name-calling) for the new city domestic partner law. On the other political end, twenty people were arrested after chaining themselves together across 5th avenue to block his path. They were part of a group called “Take Back the March” that accuse him of doing too little, too late.
Giuliani defended his record on gay and lesbian rights and complained about the disruption of the parade. “You have the right to protest, make any point that you want to make, but you can’t go in the middle of a parade and block it because you decide that your point is more important than everybody else’s,” the mayor said. [Reuters]
The city block starting at St. Patrick’s Cathedral was apparently reserved especially for fundamentalist protesters, under police protection. There were about a dozen of them, and as many police, on the entire block. A pathetic presence, on the whole. Every other block along the 3.5 mile route was packed with support.
One of the protesters held a sign that said, “You’ll never get our children.” This was funny because the float directly in front of us belonged to the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which is the country’s first gay and lesbian youth group and operates a high school in NYC. On this float was a big, black, lesbian DJ who began chanting “Yo, we got yo’ children!” to the music as the 30 or so teenagers and others representing the Institute danced on all sides of the float.
We didn’t get to see the more interesting groups in the parade, since we were waiting on 56th street for an hour and a half while all the groups ahead of us filed out of other side streets. It was a little depressing during that time… we could hear music and announcements around the corner, but couldn’t see anything. (I did wander around a bit and managed to see the Dykes on Bikes, Dyke on a Trike, and the Times Squares, a gay square-dancing group.) We almost gave up on marching and took a train downtown to spectate. I’m glad we stuck it out though, because once we got moving, it was great fun.
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I’m glad to hear you had a good experience with the parade. The “you’ll never get our children thing” was hilarious. As if you kidnap some kid and say “be gay.” The ignorance of some people…
I have one question, though. As you know, I’m pretty damn open-minded. But there’s one thing I don’t understand—the point of these gay pride marches! It seems to me that the point should be to protest the differential treatment that gays receive today. However, whenever I see coverage of such events, they seem to be a mixture of marchers (like your group) and more outlandish folks (folks in leather), etc. It seems more like a parade for Carnival (Mardi Gras) than one for changing social views.
For instance, you mentioned Dykes on Bikes, etc. If the point is to gain acceptance, having the outlandish elements will turn away sympathetic reactions from the public who should be the target of the parade, i.e. you’ve failed to show that you’re people just like anyone else. All you’ve done is show that you’re a bunch of weirdos!
This can do nothing but hurt any chance of acceptance that gays can have. John Q. Public doesn’t want his child’s teacher to be someone who parades wearing nothing but skin-tight leather pants that outline their package. When they see elements like this on television, they can’t help but associate this with gays in general.
Anyway, let me know if I’m way off track in my thinking. Take care!
Hi Jason!
Ah yes. You’ve hit on the strange dichotomy of these things. I cannot defend it, but I can probably explain some of it, and at least share my insight.
It is about changing social views, I think, but there are more issues than “the differential treatment that gays receive today.” Think more historically… it’s also about breaking gender molds and about sexual liberation. Thus the drag queens, dykes on bikes, and the leather men.
Plus, quite obviously, not all gay people are united on what the ‘issues’ should be. The more mainstream activists want equal rights, anti-discrimination legislation, marriage, and the military. But some of the community has a more separatist bent and accuses these people of just trying to blend in with the hetero mainstream. John Waters, the film director, said something like, “I’m from an era in which escaping from marriage and the military were the good things about being gay.”
Moreover, part of the ‘outlandish’ element is historical… they were the ones who really initiated the modern movement. Without them, most of us scientists, politicians, and business people would still be deeply closeted. This makes sense; in the closet, we could ‘get away with’ being ‘respectable’ members of society. It’s uncomfortable to the point of being psychologically damaging, and unfair in the sense of human rights violation, but we could get by.
Now consider the people who could not get by, who needed and managed to escape the mainstream and find comfort in gay bars, sex fetish clubs, and chiffon dresses. These were the people being continually harassed by police, denounced by politicians, and campaigned against by Christian scum like Anita Bryant.
The big breakthrough, by all accounts, started the night Judy Garland died. (I can’t explain any specific causal relationship, but many columnists will gladly pontificate about it.) It was June 27–29, 1969, outside the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street in New York City. Drag queens began throwing rocks at the police, and three nights of violent rioting ensued.
Arguably, a similar thing happened with the modern feminist movement. The 1950s woman was not liberated by any means, but by ‘standing by her man’ she could ‘get by’. The ones who could not ‘get by’ with the status quo were lesbians, and so they had the impetus to start the movement. The mainstream feminist leaders, once they got started, first had to divorce themselves from the lesbian element to make any progress.
When I was a kid, my mother used to say, “I’m not a feminist, but…” and then go on to state (in mild form) one of the tenets of 1970s feminism. The disclaimer at the beginning was commonly used by women like my mother; it’s a euphemism for “I’m not a lesbian, but…”
(For a somewhat less reductionist history, consult any book by Randy Shilts, especially The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.)
So, much of the idea of the pride parade is to celebrate and commemorate the movement. And one can hardly do that without wigs, leather, and Harley-Davidsons.
Nevertheless, I have to bet the mainstream activist organizations do get frustrated with it. They are out there trying to convince John Q. Public that we make fine school teachers and Boy Scout leaders. And, as you noted, a display like this doesn’t seem to help!
On the other hand, maybe it’s not that detrimental. With the very recent explosion of positive gay portrayal in the media (even in just the last three years) and the huge numbers of us more conventional, boring people coming out of the closet, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for John Q. Public to continue believing that all gay people like to dress like Diana Ross and molest children. Nowadays, when he sees all the outlandishness of a parade on the evening news, he’s thinking that his kid’s queer English teacher and his wife’s flaming hair dresser are downright normal in the grand scheme of things!
Lastly, a pride march without the ‘colorful’ elements would be B-O-R-I-N-G, which is to say, not gay.
When asked why we need a Gay Pride Festival or Parade, my response is that it isn’t so much gay “pride” as it is gay “absence of shame”—a shame foisted on us for millenia by judgmental heterosexuals—a shame that we as GLBT have too often bought into—shame at being different, shame at being somehow “perverted,” and so on. This is our way of telling the straight community that there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed about in being GLBT. We literally rejoice in not having to be ashamed anymore. And if we get a little carried away in our celebrations and offend a few delicate sensibilities, well, it’s nothing compared to what heterosexual society has done to us over the years!
What makes homosexuality so special to parade it?
It’s a legitimate question. Personally, I think part of the point is that it’s not special. New York has literally scores of parades and festivals celebrating nationality, ethnicity, or religion—different aspects of one’s identity. Examples: St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Greek Independence Day Parade, Sikh Cultural Society Parade, Turkish-American Parade, Martin Luther King Parade, the “Salute to Israel” Parade, etc. (And that’s just a sample of events from January to May!)
Sexuality is just another aspect of one’s identity. So in that sense, the pride parade is no different from any of these other events. What makes it special to (some) gay folks, though, is that it’s an opportunity to come out and show pride, for people who spent a good part of their lives concealing their identity.
Of course, we must remember the astute words of Margaret Cho: “I’m not gay, I’m just slutty. Where’s my parade?”
salut tout le monde! hi everybody!
Great event above all in the USA. Do not never be ashamed of what you feel, ok? venceremos… salam sobre todos los seres. @love@
e-mail me please
I would think it would be cool to have another rally sometime and let me know when and i’ll be there!
Hello Chris! I’m a graduate of the Class of ‘79, and I’m about to put out a Yale Gay Alumn (GALA) newsletter for 2005 Pride. I would love to use one of your pix (one that has the banner, and showcases that SHIRTLESS HUNK), but I would never think of using w/o permission.
Please email me and let me know if that’s okay (full credit will be given).