Gay Pride 2004

I can’t hear thanks to the wall of music and noise I was immersed in for five hours. My feet, ankles and knees are throbbing from standing all day and trying to dance on a moving float. I’ve got tan lines that will look odd if I wear anything other than a t-shirt. But I had fun.

Today was the annual Gay Pride march in New York City and the 35th anniversary of the riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village that started what is considered the modern day gay rights movement. For the fourth straight year I’ve been a participant, this year riding the float sponsored by my employer. I got hip to the float way of travel last year after two years of walking the 50-something blocks of the route.

It is officially a march and not a parade, although most fail to see the distinction. It has everything to do with city permits. Its origins date back to the year following the Stonewall rebellion when there was no such thing as gay rights of any kind. Getting a permit to “parade” would have been impossible, but because everyone is entitled to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, a permit allowing people to express their political point of view could be obtained. Thus it was and thus it has always been, a political march.

Whatever you call it, it is one of the largest gatherings annually held in the largest city in the country. An estimated 500,000 people participate and at least that many watch. It struck me the first time I marched that the throngs of people lined the length of 5th Avenue were cheering us simply for being gay and that’s a remarkable accomplishment when you consider that New York doesn’t give anybody anything. At least not without extracting a hefty toll. You usually have to land on the moon or win the World Series to get this treatment.

So when you consider again the origins of this “march”–an all too routine raid in 1969 by the NYPD against patrons at a gay bar simply for purposes of harassing and humiliating them, patrons who weren’t doing anything other than “being gay” at a time in history when it was illegal to be so–we have indeed flipped the script.

There was of course a very small handful of anti-gay protesters expressing their right to free speech. But among the half million spectators they were hardly noticed. Barricades surrounded St. Patrick’s Cathedral at 50th Street (Cardinal Egan didn’t even come out and wave). Perhaps it was to protect gay youth from the “avowed celibates” inside.

Laws that allowed police raids in the 1960’s (it was illegal for gays and lesbians to gather in any place where alcohol was served) weren’t erased from the books in NYC until the mid-70’s. In those days the masses of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people were closeted, afraid of losing their jobs, their home and their reputations in the community. Over the past 35 years there have been substantial gains, yet still a great deal more left to do.

The same homeless gay youth population that touched off the riots still face rejection from parents and life on the streets today. While courts rule that actions between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home are no one else’s business, a president wants to pass a constitutional amendment preventing consenting same gender adults from affirming their love through marriage. And while we spend billions on a war that was totally unnecessary, the millions needed to combat an increase in HIV infection among LGBT people of color goes wanting.

To affirm our right to “just be” the march must go on.