Pride Parades

Abstract

Pride Parades tells the story of Pride in two parts. In Part I, the author explores how gays and lesbians established the event in the early 1970s as a parade to affirm gay identities. Situating this story at its beginning in mid-1970, the book outlines the scene where approximately 5,000 gays and lesbians (and surely a handful of straight allies) marched through the streets of Manhattan, West Hollywood, and downtown Chicago in the first ever Pride events. The events were a curious mix of protest march and parade - more festive than a typical angry march but with more contention than a typical parade – and were the largest ever public gatherings of out gays and lesbians in history; moreover, these marches were so successful that immediately afterward participants started planning for the following year, thus heralding the beginning of the colorful tradition of Pride. In Part II, the text leaps to 2010 and examines contemporary Pride parades. Pride today communicates messages about queer sexuality and gender that run counter to the heteronormative code of meaning that privileges heterosexuality as natural and moral.