Ain’t No Rain On The Pride Parade
If you were around Greenwich Village anytime during the end of June, chances are you caught glimpses of flashy colors, costumes and rainbow flags. Gay Pride festivities in New York span an entire week, with parties, parades, rallies, and festivals to celebrate and commemorate a landmark event in gay rights.
This year’s “Pride Week” was awe-inspiring not only in terms of the celebrations put on by the LGBT community, but also in the wider political context of this year’s festivities– especially the parade. With marriage equality a pivotal topic of contention between the gay community and conservatives, this year’s festivities were decidedly more pointed at the issues gays still face, rather than fun and frivolity. It was a widespread hope amongst the gay community that this year’s parade would sway some of the silent or indecisive voices on the issue of gay equality in their favor. The hope for change was even stronger this year than most; adding to the weight of the event was the 40 year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which took place on June 28, 1969, and spawned the Gay Rights Movement in The Village. The riots were, at the time, the gay community’s only response to continued police harassment and raids of known gay bars.
Many in the LGBT community see this anniversary as a bittersweet celebration. While they’ve been both fighting and celebrating for the past 40 years, their rights have been stalled. With no end to the marriage equality debate, many gays see this reluctance to extend these rights as yet another example of the “Separate but Equal” acts against blacks before the Civil Rights Movement.
But the fact of the matter is that since the days of Brown vs. Board of Education, this country has officially acknowledged that there can be no such thing as “separate but equal”. Civil unions do not give gays the same rights that heterosexual couples gain from marriage. At the time of this year’s Pride Celebration, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa were the only 6 states that recognized same sex marriage. This means just over 10% of the 50 US states have passed laws allowing gays the right to marry, and federal legislation has been at a standstill while the debate continues on either side. To make matters worse there are 29 states that have actively and aggressively banned it. The road to marriage equality is long, with no clear end in sight.
Today, Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June in remembrance of the Stonewall demonstration. The annual parade, which is consistently beautiful, fanciful, and crowded with out-of-towners who flock to the city every year to celebrate. The first Gay Pride marches took place in Los Angeles and New York On June 28, 1970, commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were later organized in other cities and continue to grow as the Gay Rights Movement advances.
