Throughout history, homosexuals have faced violence and discrimination based on their sexuality. The gay pride movement was developed as a response to this oppression. The gay pride movement has fought many significant battles to secure legal equality for gays in the workplace, housing, marriage rights and child custody rights. It is important to understand the history and meaning of the gay pride movement to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past for a more equitable future.
History
The Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, New York are widely regarded to mark the beginning of the gay pride movement. On June 27, 1969, years of violent oppression and graft by corrupt police officials against homosexuals came to a head when gay patrons of the Stonewall Inn decided to fight back against their attackers. The crowd of homosexuals and supporters swelled as word spread and the police called in reinforcements. A chorus line of transvestites dancing and singing bawdy songs held their ground against police in riot gear, swinging billy clubs, as others pelted officers with coins in mockery of the extortion money police had been extracting from gays for years.
According to SocialistAlternative.org, protests and clashes continued for days. In the aftermath, members of the city's gay community established the Gay Liberation Front to begin addressing the oppression of homosexuals.
Annual Pride Parades
To commemorate the Stonewall Riots, gay rights groups began planning annual parades in cities with strong homosexual communities like New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. As new excuses to harass and abuse homosexuals continued to arise, from the McCarthy era witch hunts for Communists and "sexual perverts," to the insistence of members of the religious right that gays were responsible for AIDS, the urgency and dedication of the gay pride movement continued to grow. Annual gay pride parades became increasingly common in major cities throughout the world.
Symbols
Of all the symbols used by the gay pride movement, the history of the pink triangle used by the Nazis to designate homosexuals in concentration camps, is probably the most widely known. What many may not realize is that countless numbers of homosexual men were castrated as a sterilization technique in the camps, and that when the camps were liberated, homosexual men were not set free, as they were still considered to be criminals.
Another prominent symbol of gay pride is the rainbow flag. Developed by artist Gilbert Barker in 1978, each colored stripe was designated with a specific meaning for the pride movement. Activists and protesters who took to the streets after the assassination of Harvey Milk, San Francisco's first openly gay supervisor, marched with rainbow flags, helping to cement the symbol's meaningfulness to the pride movement.
Controversy
Annual gay pride parades in the big cities of America tend to involve flamboyant, highly sexualized theatrics that some find politically counterproductive. For example, in the 2009 article in the Root titled, "Where's the Pride in Pride Parades," the struggle for gay rights is compared to the struggle for racial equality. The article suggests the pride movement follow the example of Dr. Martin Luther King, who dressed in his conservative best and preached calm, non-violent resistance to prevent the use of racial stereotypes to dismiss the protests.
However, others feel that the fear of sexuality is inherent to the struggle, and respond with in-your-face sexuality during the parades as an act of defiance. "Pride is the single biggest party of the queer calendar. It is our Christmas, our Fourth of July and our Halloween all rolled up in one. It's the one day a year we get to take center stage and have ourselves a big old whoop-de-do," says Michael Thomas Ford in his SFGATE.com article titled, "A Condensed History Of Gay Pride."
Fear of Violence
Despite how people may view the theatrics of annual gay pride parades in America, the events have gained enough main-stream acceptance to remain peaceful. In many other parts of the world however, attempts to celebrate gay pride are still met with violence. For example, the gay pride events of 2010 in Minsk, Latvia and Lithuania were accompanied by bomb threats, intimidation and violent attacks on participants.
References
- San Diego Gay and Lesbian News: Gay Pride: Parades and LGBT Events Around the World Get Mixed Reactions
- The Root: Where's the Pride in Pride Parades?
- SFGate: A Condensed History Of Gay Pride
- SocialistAlternative: The Stonewall Riots
- Lambda: Symbols of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Movements
