Every year, the New York City pride parade becomes a bigger and wilder celebration.
Fifth Avenue was lined with rainbow-themed storefronts, and its street corners were packed with thousands of rainbow-clad spectators, craning their necks to see the 32,000 marchers in the 7 hour long parade. Several well known people joined in on this year’s march: Jazz Jennings, along with Syrian refugee Subhi Nahas and civil rights leader Cecilia Chung, was one of the grand marshals who took the lead, Hillary Clinton made a surprise appearance marching alongside Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, Edith Windsor, the plaintiff whose case overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, marched in under a rainbow umbrella, and even the cast of Orange is the New Black had their own glittery, orange float. Colorfully dressed drag queens dance their way through the march while other marchers throw beads and condoms into the crowd. Pride has come to resemble somewhat of a city-wide Mardi Gras celebration of queerness, except the queer community doesn’t exactly get to put on fun costumes and masks for a day, take them off, and forget about it until next year.
It’s important to remember that pride isn’t just a little party that never killed nobody. The first ever pride march took place on June 28th, 1970, exactly year after the police harassment incident that led to the Stonewall riots. 46 years later, the air is thick with solemnity throughout the celebration, the memory of Orlando fresh in everyone’s minds, proving that violence and discrimination against the LGBT community is far from over. Some find it hard to even think of the pride festival as a celebration. Cecilia Chung, a long time activist for HIV/AIDS awareness and LGBT rights, acknowledges that while we have made progress around same-sex marriage, there is still a lot to be done, telling the The New York Times, “I can’t really say ‘celebrating this pride’ because of all the things that have happened in Orlando…, we still have not found a cure for HIV, and the stigma and discrimination that gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender men and women are experiencing is just too much to ignore, and I think that for me, this is a time for us to remind ourselves why these marches happen year after year.”
This year’s pride march was the largest ever precisely because there was both so much to celebrate and so much to mourn. Same sex marriage is now legal and the Stonewall Inn was recently declared a state and national monument, but at the same time, 49 innocent people, mostly gay Latino men, died in a targeted shooting inside a gay nightclub. Though there was plenty of cheering and dancing, the parade began with an unplanned moment of silence as the owner and manager of the Pulse rode by in the lead float, and a group wearing white veils carried photographs of the victims of the Orlando shooting.
In light of the events in Orlando, several groups that marched in the parade also voiced their political opinions about gun control. A group called Gays Against Guns raised signs that read “NRA Stay Away,” and crowds cheered loudly as they passed by. The mass shooting at the Pulse occurred as a result of homophobia as well as the country’s laid back gun policy, which makes gun control an issue that is especially crucial to the safety of the LGBT community.
The incident in Orlando also lead to a heavier police presence at the march. That several officers were stationed at each barricade to ensure everyone’s safety is a bit ironic considering the historical hostility of New York’s police to its LGBT residents, and some people found this problematic. While we should not ignore this hostility, it is encouraging to feel that much of this hostility has transformed into support over the years. The NYPD were also one of the largest presences in the parade itself; its band marched while playing “YMCA,” members of the Gay Officers Action League raised signs that said “#NYPDOutandProud,” and a few officers that followed held a trans flag with the words “transgender officers serve with pride.”
Though the LGBT community has gained an extraordinary amount of acceptance, since the 60s and 70s, it’s important to remember that the history of gay liberation has been strongly whitewashed and that queer people of color face far more oppression, not only in the legal system but also in society as a whole. The shooting at the Pulse took place during the club’s Latin night, and accordingly, this year’s parade highlighted the Latinx LGBT community among numerous other racially, ethnically, politically and religiously specific groups. One of these was Muslims for Progressive Values, which drew attention to the simultaneous Islamophobia and homophobia that the Muslim LGBT community must face. At it’s core, pride is a celebration of diversity and struggle against society to “just be yourself.”
But nowadays, since the LGBT community and its values are widely accepted or as some say, “it’s cool to be gay,” it is all too easy for others to capitalize on this diversity and struggle, derailing the pride festival from its meaningful messages and its purpose as a liberating platform for LGBT expression. Though the massive scale of the New York pride parade is a wonderful sign that the hard work of LGBT rights activists has paid off, it also means that the celebration is now diluted with straight cisgendered attendees and corporations that use pride as an excuse to party or as a way to advertise their companies. That’s not to say that straight cis allies and corporations shouldn’t come and show their support, but showing support does not consist of trying on glitter and rainbows for a day or disrupting the parade’s beautiful display of LGBT diversity and passion by handing out free samples. Showing support means swallowing the bad with the good, as the LGBT community must always do. Showing support means appreciating the parade on an aesthetic level, but also making an effort to learn about the decades of marching and fighting that now allow us to wear glittery makeup and wave around rainbow flags without feeling scared or ashamed. Showing support means celebrating the progress that the LGBT community has made, but also learning how much progress there is to be made and using your privilege and power to help with this process, not only on pride day but every day of the year.
Many members of the LGBT community have refused to attend the pride parade in recent years, claiming that it has become too straight and too corporate. Pride has historically been the one time of year that LGBT people can proudly open up about their identities and be the center of attention in a positive way, and it’s saddening to see the spotlight stolen by those who may not empathize with the daily self-doubt that comes with being publicly queer, and who seek personal gain under the guise of LGBT support. Criticism of straight cis people and corporations doesn’t aim to deter them from attending pride events or exclude to people from the LGBT community, but rather to build a stronger network of allies that can participate in the compassion for others and appreciation of difference that the pride parade has always been about. True support from allies and corporations can make a touching difference in the LGBT community. So in years of New York pride celebrations to come, let’s make it bigger but also better, keeping in mind that pride is not just a party but a space for the silenced voices of the LGBT community to be heard. After all, it is called gay pride, so let’s keep it about the gays.
Note: I sometimes use “gay” in a colloquial sense, referring not to male homosexuality but to queerness in general.
Photos by Melissa Braccia and Monica Cruz