NYC, San Francisco and other US cities capping LGBTQ+ Pride month with a mix of party and protest
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The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reaches its rainbow-laden crescendo as New York and other major cities around the world host major parades and marches on Sunday.
The festivities in Manhattan, home to the nation's oldest and largest Pride celebration, kick off with a march down Fifth Avenue featuring more than 700 participating groups and huge crowds are expected.
Marchers will wind past the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar where a 1969 police raid triggered protests and fired up the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The site is now a national monument.
In San Francisco, marchers in another of the world's largest Pride events will head down the city's central Market Street, reaching concert stages set up at the Civic Center Plaza. San Francisco's mammoth City Hall is also among the venues hosting a post-march party.
Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada, are among the other major North American cities hosting Pride parades on Sunday.
Several global cities, including Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo, held their events earlier this month, while others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November.
The first Pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
Pride celebrations are typically a daylong mix of jubilant street parties and political protest, but organizers said this year's iterations will take a more defiant stance than recent years.
The festivities come days after the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark June 26, 2015, ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that recognized same-sex marriage nationwide.
But Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have sought to roll back LGBTQ+ friendly policies.
Since taking office in January, Trump has specifically targeted transgender people, removing them from the military, preventing federal insurance programs from paying for gender-affirmation surgeries for young people and attempting to keep transgender athletes out of girls' and women's sports.
The theme for the Manhattan event is, appropriately, 'Rise Up: Pride in Protest.' San Francisco's Pride theme is 'Queer Joy is Resistance' while Seattle's is simply 'Louder.'
'This is not a time to be quiet,' Patti Hearn, Seattle Pride's executive director, said in a statement ahead of the event. 'We will stand up. We will speak up. We will get loud.'
Among the other headwinds faced by gay rights groups this year is the loss of corporate sponsorship.
American companies have pulled back support of Pride events, reflecting a broader walking back of diversity and inclusion efforts amid shifting public sentiment.
NYC Pride said earlier this month that about 20% of its corporate sponsors dropped or reduced support, including PepsiCo and Nissan. Organizers of San Francisco Pride said they lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast and Anheuser-Busch.
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Christopher Colwell of Valparaiso, Indiana, teared up a bit as his grandmother sang with her church choir during Northwest Indiana Pridefest earlier this month, calling the moment a haven of acceptance in a state and nation that's become increasingly hostile to queer men like him. The grandson and grandma briefly embraced after her performance on a stage adorned with rainbow-colored balloons and a giant Pride flag. 'I can't stand the current climate in this state. It don't represent its people anymore,' said Colwell, 25, at the June 8 event at Riverview Park in Lake Station. 'I have a really poor outlook on the country as a whole.' 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In northwest Indiana, organizers had to scramble to find new sponsors: An interfaith coalition of local churches and synagogues teamed up to raise events funds, each committing about $1,000 to $2,500, along with several steadfast local businesses, Peksenak said. 'Since November has been a really rude awakening,' the pastor added. 'There is a general sense across the whole community that, oh wait, freedom isn't linear. We can lose ground. And we actually have to work and engage to make sure that doesn't happen.' To stay or leave? Colwell said he has no plans to leave Indiana, despite the rhetoric and policies of many of its officials. He cited his supportive local family and friends as part of his reason for staying. Reister added that she loves her northwest Indiana church and much of the greater community, which share her commitment to LGBTQ freedoms and safety. While state laws can differ vastly, Casey of the Movement Advancement Project noted that the lived experience of individual LGBTQ folks and their loved ones can often vary by community, neighborhood or sections of a state. Prejudice still exists in states with pro-LGBTQ policies; states with fewer protections might have cities or municipalities with thriving LGBTQ resources and legal safeguards, he added. 'There is absolutely a polarization in the policy environment for LGBTQ people right now,' said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. 'But I would be hesitant to characterize any state as clearly pro-LGBTQ or anti-LGBTQ. Because on the one hand, many states have really strong policy elements but still have local or regional elements that might not be quite so supportive.' The opposite can also be true: Redfield recalled recently speaking at an event in Indianapolis, where she noticed that even the roadside billboards grew more progressive as she left rural areas of Indiana and headed into the more liberal-leaning capital. There, she received a warm reception with engaging conversation about LGBTQ issues. But discriminatory language by politicians and anti-LGBTQ policies can translate to real harm for individuals, including affecting their mental health, she said. 'Right now, we have this exacerbation of official language that is dismissive … of LGBTQ experiences and in some cases outright exclusionary,' she said. 'Our research does show that anti-LGBTQ policy debates can have a real, measurable negative impact on mental health.' There can be an enormous emotional cost 'that comes from having your right to marry being debated or whether you have a right to exist or not being debated — or whether you can play sports or whether you can access a bathroom,' she added. A Williams Institute survey of roughly 300 transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse American adults released in May found that nearly half have already moved or wanted to move to 'more affirming places' within the United States, while 45% of those polled desired to leave the country. Most of the respondents cited anti-LGBTQ policies as the reason for wanting to move. This is a troubling trend to Casey. 'It's easy for a lot of people to think, 'Well you should move somewhere else where the laws are better,'' he said. 'While that obviously makes sense in a way, the larger point is that people shouldn't be forced to choose between the place that they call home and their rights or protections.' But he says that's the quandary facing many LGBTQ folks and their loved ones nationwide, particularly in much of the South and Midwest. 'Those are choices that our politicians are making to force those sorts of really impossible life decisions for so many people,' he said.
