Gay proud

Activist L. Craig Schoonmaker championed the term, explaining that while not everyone has power, anyone can have pride—a sense of self-worth that can drive change and reject stigma. Smaller marches also took place that day in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. Marches and parades also took place that June in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Over the years, gay pride events have spread from large cities to smaller towns and villages worldwide—even in places where repression and violence against gays and lesbians are commonplace.

But they captured the attention of local media as well as national LGBTQ+ publications, and activists were determined to capitalize on the riots’ visibility. Some early organizers now decry the commercial influence and corporate nature of Pride parades—especially when those corporations make donations to politicians who vote against gay, lesbian and transgender rights.

Gay Pride events are nonetheless seen as vital protests against repression and isolation in places such as Serbia, Turkey and Russia, where Pride parades have been met with antigay violence.

(2017, June 9). Subsequent demonstrations continued for several days, with hundreds of New Yorkers coming out to express solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.

Commemorating Stonewall
The Stonewall Riots might have fallen into obscurity, remembered only by participants.

It’s an understanding that people should be proud and not ashamed” (Zaltman 2015).

For Native New Yorker Anthony Zullo and others who recall Stonewall and the early Pride events, it’s thrilling to see millions of people turning out—proud and not ashamed--to marches across the country and around the world. Library of Congress.

The Start of a Movement?
In subsequent years, the Stonewall riots would increasingly be remembered as the catalyst for the modern gay rights movement. https://www.history.com/news/how-activists-plotted-the-first-gay-pride-parades

Mattson, Grejor. But how many truly understand the origins of Pride and its significance for the movement for LGBTQ+ equality?

The Origins of Pride
The first Pride celebrations took place during the last week of June in 1970 as part of a one-year commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, an uprising of LGBTQ+ patrons and supporters at the Stonewall Inn.

The Stonewall Inn was a club in the West Village of New York City that welcomed gay patrons at a time when the New York State Liquor Authority did not give licenses to establishments that served a gay clientele.

In spite of these payoffs, the police conducted a raid at the Stonewall Inn, entering with a warrant in the early hours of June 28, 1969.

People did not have power then; even now, we only have some. (2019, June 12).

Years later, Schoonmaker summed up his reasoning—“The poison was shame, and the antidote [was] pride.” At the time, people were “very repressed, they were conflicted internally, and didn’t know how to come out and be proud. Activists seized the opportunity to commemorate Stonewall at its one-year anniversary, and subsequent Pride celebrations perpetuated its memory.

2015. In subsequent decades, organizations kept up the fight against anti-LGBTQ+ bias in everything from housing and job discrimination to schoolyard bullying and hate crimes, achieving key victories along the way.

In the meantime, annual Pride celebrations continued to spread, becoming milestone events in the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals around the world, as well as opportunities for activists to raise awareness and press for equality.

History of June’s recognition as LGBT Pride Month. History.com. While the momentum for acceptance grew, progress was gradual. The Allusionist.