Embargoed pending publication in the “2010 Official Guide to Boston LGBT Pride” on June 3, 2010.
The Meaning of Pride
By Don Gorton
Don Gorton is a longtime gay activist and one of the Grand Marshals of the 2010 Boston Pride Parade.
In June 2010, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community is observing its 40th year of Pride. The theme of Pride Week in Boston is “From Riots to Rights: Celebrating 40 Years of Progress” and commemorates the improvements in quality of life for LGBT people achieved since that first Pride march in 1970.
The annual celebration of LGBT Pride traces its origins to the street protests which occurred June 28-July 2, 1969 in New York’s Greenwich Village—called the “Stonewall Riots” after the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, where they started. Movement pioneer Craig Rodwell, who founded the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, took the lead in organizing the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee (“CSLDC”) to commemorate the first anniversary of Stonewall in 1970. The celebration centered on the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, held in New York on June 28, 1970. Although they could not have known it at the time, the 1970 march would give rise to “LGBT Pride” worldwide, which millions celebrate each year.
One member of the CSLDC, Craig Schoonmaker, offers insight into how this international phenomenon got its start. Since most gay bars were mafia-owned at the time, CSLDC planned a weekend festival to go along with the parade, to give both New Yorkers and out-of-towners entertainment alternatives: dances, coffeehouse socials, college mixers, poetry readings, discussion groups, theater, and performance art. Rodwell suggested calling the activities “Gay Power Weekend.” The name had resonance: “Gay Power” had been Rodwell’s full-throated cry on June 28, 1969, heard throughout Sheridan Square as the first Stonewall Riot was gathering steam.
But Schoonmaker, who founded the group “Homosexuals Intransigent” at the City College of New York, thought a more festive title was in order. He proposed calling the bundle of events “Gay Pride Weekend.” CSLDC adopted the catchy phrase unanimously and without debate according to Schoonmaker. Why was the term “Pride” so unifying? Although Schoonmaker’s account gives no indication, I have a theory that might explain the serendipitous choice of a name.
In 1968, singer James Brown sparked a revolution in consciousness with his hit single, “Say It Loud! I’m Black and I’m Proud!” The Godfather of Soul’s call to self-affirmation was electrifying. The song marked a turning point in the civil rights movement as African-Americans increasingly embraced their cultural distinctiveness. This new ethos turned racism on its head by extolling the Black experience as a badge of honor.
James Brown’s civil rights anthem would have been very familiar to the members of CSLDC. Their goal was to spread the liberated consciousness of Stonewall to the oppressed masses of LGBT people trapped in closets full of fear and self-loathing. The notion that being gay or lesbian was something to be proud of—a shocking suggestion at the time— encapsulated the defiant spirit of collective self-affirmation that had the power to transform LGBT lives.
Although some dispute the link, history is clear that early gay and lesbian activists drew heavily on the experience of the African-American civil rights movement as they plotted social change. Without the template African-American activists had created, the cause of LGBT liberation could never have been viable as a mass movement of the oppressed themselves. It makes sense that James Brown’s bold concept of Black Pride would have been among the inspirational ideas the LGBT movement borrowed from African-American exemplars of self-empowerment.
It is easy to see why “Pride” eclipsed the clunky phrase “Christopher Street Liberation Day.” In one word, “Pride” captures the essence of LGBT liberation. It provides a succinct rationale for self-affirmation, fellow-feeling, and community solidarity. Defying homophobia, Pride imparts inner strength that has delivered us from a place beyond hopelessness. Pride vows that “We Shall Overcome,” with the flair and aplomb that are our distinctive character. We are good, worthy, and useful, and each one of us belongs as who we are (to paraphrase another topical song.)
The history of LGBT Pride shows how commemorations of the epochal Stonewall Riots must be as perpetual as French celebrations of Bastille Day or Jewish observances of Passover. As long as we can build strength by coming together in mutual affirmation, we must demonstrate both how far we have come and how far we are prepared to go to achieve our dream of full equality.
Yet it is not to Pride parades alone that we can attribute the extraordinary changes of the past 40 years. Attending a Pride event is akin to what gay historian Toby Marotta called “cultural activism.” Living openly as an out and proud individual and taking part in LGBT community life are ways in which everyone can contribute to our collective progress, but there is more we can do to make the world a more just and equal place. As early Gay Activists Alliance leader Arthur Bell famously remarked, it is not enough simply to “dance our way to liberation.”
We have come far in realizing equal rights because a critical mass has been willing to engage the political process. From voting with an eye to issues of LGBT equality, to actively supporting pro-equality candidates for office, and on to pressuring elected officials to take specific actions with letter-writing campaigns, lobbying efforts, media outreach, and street protests, each of us has a wealth of opportunities to further politico-legal progress toward greater equality. It is by enacting pro-equality legislation and policies and ending anti-LGBT laws and practices that we are best able to secure the gains that we celebrate this 40th year of Pride. We need political equality, not just social equality. Political activism is the true pathway “from riots to rights,” and the most fitting way to honor the legacy of the Stonewall Riots.
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