Pride Parade
A pride parade (also known as pride march, pride event, or pride festival) is an outdoor event celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events sometimes also serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Most occur annually throughout the Western world, while some take place every June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, a pivotal moment in modern LGBTQ social movements. The parades seek to create community and honor the history of the movement.[opinion] In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall. The events became annual and grew internationally. In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 - WorldPride NYC 2019, produced by Heritage of Pride commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with five million attending in Manhattan alone.
| Pride parade | |
|---|---|
| The Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots, which spawned the gay rights movement and pride parades around the world, | |
| Status | Active |
| Genre | Festival and parade |
| Frequency | Annually, often late June |
| Location(s) | Urban locations worldwide, incl. cities in the United States, Canada, Brazil, India and Japan |
| Years active | 52 |
| Inaugurated | June 27, 1970 in Chicago.
June 28, 1970 in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. |
Background
See also: Stonewall riots, and LGBT pride
In 1965, the gay rights protest movement was visible at the Annual Reminder pickets, organized by members of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis, and the gay men's group Mattachine Society. Mattachine members were also involved in demonstrations in support of homosexuals imprisoned in Cuban labor camps. All of these groups held protests at the United Nations and the White House, in 1965. Early on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, LGBTQ people rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to an assortment of patrons, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth.
First pride marches
On Saturday, June 27, 1970, Chicago Gay Liberation organized a march from Washington Square Park ("Bughouse Square") to the Water Tower at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago avenues, which was the route originally planned, and then many of the participants spontaneously marched on to the Civic Center (now Richard J. Daley) Plaza. The date was chosen because the Stonewall events began on the last Saturday of June and because organizers wanted to reach the maximum number of Michigan Avenue shoppers. Subsequent Chicago parades have been held on the last Sunday of June, coinciding with the date of many similar parades elsewhere.[Citation needed]
The West Coast of the United States saw a march in San Francisco on June 27, 1970, and 'Gay-in' on June 28, 1970 and a march in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970. In Los Angeles, Morris Kight (Gay Liberation Front LA founder), Reverend Troy Perry (Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder) and Reverend Bob Humphries (United States Mission founder) gathered to plan a commemoration. They settled on a parade down Hollywood Boulevard. But securing a permit from the city was no easy task. They named their organization Christopher Street West, "as ambiguous as we could be." But Rev. Perry recalled the Los Angeles Police Chief Edward M. Davis telling him, "As far as I'm concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers." Grudgingly, the Police Commission granted the permit, though there were fees exceeding $1.5 million. After the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in, the commission dropped all its requirements but a $1,500 fee for police service. That, too, was dismissed when the California Superior Court ordered the police to provide protection as they would for any other group. The eleventh-hour California Supreme Court decision ordered the police commissioner to issue a parade permit citing the "constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression." From the beginning, L.A. parade organizers and participants knew there were risks of violence. Kight received death threats right up to the morning of the parade. Unlike later editions, the first gay parade was very quiet. The marchers convened on Mccadden Place in Hollywood, marched north and turned east onto Hollywood Boulevard. The Advocate reported "Over 1,000 homosexuals and their friends staged, not just a protest march, but a full-blown parade down world-famous Hollywood Boulevard."
On Sunday, June 28, 1970, at around noon, in New York gay activist groups held their own pride parade, known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day, to recall the events of Stonewall one year earlier. On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first gay pride parade to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia.
That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged-that of our fundamental human rights-be moved both in time and location.
We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called "Christopher Street Liberation Day". No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.
We also propose that we contact homophile organizations throughout the country and suggest that they hold parallel demonstrations on that day. We propose a nationwide show of support.
All attendees to the ERCHO meeting in Philadelphia voted for the march except for the Matta chine Society of New York City, which abstained. Members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) attended the meeting and were seated as guests of Rodwell's group, Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN).
Meetings to organize the march began in early January at Rodwell's apartment in 350 Bleecker Street. At first there was difficulty getting some of the major New York organizations like Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) to send representatives. Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, Michael Brown, Marty Nixon, and Foster Gunnison of Mattachine made up the core group of the CSLD Umbrella Committee (CSLDUC). For initial funding, Gunnison served as treasurer and sought donations from the national homophile organizations and sponsors, while Sargeant solicited donations via the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop customer mailing list and Nixon worked to gain financial support from GLF in his position as treasurer for that organization. Other mainstays of the GLF organizing committee were Judy Miller, Jack Waluska, Steve Gerrie and Brenda Howard. Believing that more people would turn out for the march on a Sunday, and so as to mark the date of the start of the Stonewall uprising, the CSLDUC scheduled the date for the first march for Sunday, June 28, 1970. With Dick Leitsch's replacement as president of Mattachine NY by Michael Kotis in April 1970, opposition to the march by Mattachine ended.
The first marches were both serious and fun, and served to inspire the widening LGBT movement; they were repeated in the following years, and more and more annual marches started up in other cities throughout the world.[opinion] In Atlanta and New York City the marches were called Gay Liberation Marches, and the day of celebration was called "Gay Liberation Day"; in Los Angeles and San Francisco they became known as 'Gay Freedom Marches' and the day was called "Gay Freedom Day". As more cities and even smaller towns began holding their own celebrations, these names spread. The rooted ideology behind the parades is a critique of space which has been produced to seem heteronormative and 'straight', and therefore any act appearing to be homosexual is considered dissident by society.[opinion] The Parade brings this queer culture into the space. The marches spread internationally, including to London where the first "gay pride rally" took place on 1 July 1972, the date chosen deliberately to mark the third anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
In the 1980s, there was a cultural shift in the gay movement.[opinion] Activists of a less radical nature began taking over the march committees in different cities, and they dropped "Gay Liberation" and "Gay Freedom" from the names, replacing them with "Gay Pride".
Description
Gay Pride Parade in New York City, 2008
Many parades still have at least some of the original political or activist character, especially in less accepting settings. The variation is largely dependent upon the political, economic, and religious settings of the area. However, in more accepting cities, the parades take on a festive or even Mardi Gras-like character, whereby the political stage is built on notions of celebration. Large parades often involve floats, dancers, drag queens and amplified music; but even such celebratory parades usually include political and educational contingents, such as local politicians and marching groups from LGBT institutions of various kinds. Other typical parade participants include local LGBT-friendly churches such as Metropolitan Community Churches, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist Churches, PFLAG, and LGBT employee associations from large businesses.[Citation needed]
Even the most festive parades usually offer some aspect dedicated to remembering victims of AIDS and anti-LGBT violence. Some particularly important pride parades are funded by governments and corporate sponsors and promoted as major tourist attractions for the cities that host them. In some countries, some pride parades are now also called Pride Festivals. Some of these festivals provide a carnival-like atmosphere in a nearby park or city-provided closed-off street, with information booths, music concerts, barbecues, beer stands, contests, sports, and games. The 'dividing line' between onlookers and those marching in the parade can be hard to establish in some events, however, in cases where the event is received with hostility, such a separation becomes very obvious. There have been studies considering how the relationship between participants and onlookers is affected by the divide, and how space is used to critique the heteronormative nature of society.
Though the reality was that the Stonewall riots themselves, as well as the immediate and the ongoing political organizing that occurred following them, were events fully participated in by lesbian women, bisexual people, and transgender people, as well as by gay men of all races and backgrounds, historically these events were first named Gay, the word at that time being used in a more generic sense to cover the entire spectrum of what is now variously called the 'queer' or LGBT community.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, as many of the actual participants had grown older, moved on to other issues, or died, this passage of time led to misunderstandings as to who had actually participated in the Stonewall riots, who had actually organized the subsequent demonstrations, marches and memorials, and who had been members of early activist organizations such as Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance. The language has become more accurate and inclusive, though these changes met with initial resistance from some in their own communities who were unaware of the historical events. Changing first to Lesbian and Gay, today most are called Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) or simply "Pride".[Citation needed] Pride parades are held in many urban areas and in many countries where the urbanization rate is at least 80
Notable pride events
Main article: List of LGBT events
See also: List of largest worldwide LGBT events by participants
LGBT activists at Cologne Pride carrying a banner with the flags of 72 countries where homosexuality is illegal
Africa
Madagascar
MalawiEdit
On 26 June 2021, a community of the LGBT community in Malawi held its first Pride Parade. The parade was held in the country's capital city, Lilongwe.
Mauritius
As of June 2006, the Rainbow Parade Mauritius is held every June in Mauritius in the town of Rose Hill. It is organized by the Collective Arc-En-Ciel, a local non-governmental LGBTI rights group, along with some other local non-governmental groups.[Citation needed]
made to move the Pride March from June to the December Human Rights Week to coincide with related human rights activities such as World AIDS Day (December 1), Philippine National Lesbian Day (December 8), and International Human Rights Day (December 10). TFP organized the pride parades for two decades before the Metro Manila Pride organization would assume responsibility in 2016.
On December 10, 2005, the First LGBT Freedom March, with the theme "CPR: Celebrating Pride and Rights" was held along the streets of España and Quiapo in Manila, Philippines. Concerned that the prevailing economic and political crisis in the country at the time presented threats to freedoms and liberties of all Filipinos, including sexual and gender minorities, LGBT individuals and groups, non-government organizations and members of various communities and sectors organized the LGBT Freedom March calling for systemic and structural change. At historic Plaza Miranda, in front of Quiapo Church, despite the pouring rain, a program with performances and speeches depicting LGBT pride was held soon after the march.
In 2007, the first transgender women's group participated in the Metro Manila Pride March.
On December 6, 2014, Philippines celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Metro Manila Pride March with the theme: Come Out for Love Kasi Pag-ibig Pa Rin (Come Out for Love Because It's Still All About Love). The theme is a reminder of the love and passion that started and sustained 20 years of taking to the streets for the recognition and respect of LGBT lives as human lives. It is also a celebration of and an invitation for families, friends, and supporters of LGBT people to claim Metro Manila Pride as a safe space to voice their support for the community, for the LGBT human rights advocacy, and for the people they love and march with every year.
Singapore
Main article: Pink Dot SG
A pride parade known as Pink Dot SG has been held in Singapore since 2009 with increasing attendance amounting to the tens of thousands.
Taiwan
Taiwan Pride 2019, in Taipei
Main article: Taiwan Pride
Taipei hosts an annual Gay Pride Parade in October. Recently in 2019, the 17th Taiwan LGBT parade is the first gay parade after Taiwan 's same-sex marriage legislation, with attendances of over 200,000, which the largest such event in East Asia.
On November 1, 2003, the first Taiwan Pride was held in Taipei with over 1,000 people attending. The parade held in September 2008 attracted around 18,000 attendances. After 2008, the numbers grew rapidly. In 2009, around 5,000 people under the slogan "Love out loud" (Chinese: 同志愛很大). In 2010, despite bad weather conditions the Taiwan gay parade "Out and Vote" attracted more than 30,000 people. Other parades take place at cities throughout Taiwan in: Kaohsiung, Taichung, Tainan, Yilan, Hsinchu and East of Taiwan.[Citation needed] In 2022, 120,000 people participated in the Taipei Pride march.
discrimination. In 2008, Bulgaria organized its first ever pride parade. The almost 200 people who had gathered were attacked by skinheads[Citation needed] , but police managed to prevent any injuries. The 2009 pride parade, with the motto "Rainbow Friendship" attracted more than 300 participants from Bulgaria and tourists from Greece and Great Britain. There were no disruptions and the parade continued as planned. A third Pride parade took place successfully in 2010, with close to 800 participants and an outdoor concert event.[Citation needed]
Bosnia and Herzegovina
The first Pride parade in Bosnia and Herzegovina was held on 8 September 2019 in Sarajevo under the slogan Ima Izać' (Coming Out). Around 4000 people, including foreign diplomats, members of the local government and celebrities participated amidst a strong police presence. According to a 2021 study, the first LGBT+ Pride parade in Sarajevo led to increased support for LGBT activism in Sarajevo. It did not however diffuse nationwide.
Europe
Southeastern Europe
The first southeastern European Pride, called The Internationale Pride, was assumed to be a promotion of the human right to freedom of assembly in Croatia and some Eastern European states, where such rights of the LGBT population are not respected, and a support for organizing the first Prides in those communities. Out of all ex-Yugoslav states, at that time only Slovenia and Croatia had a tradition of organizing Pride events, whereas the attempt to organize such an event in Belgrade, Serbia in 2001, ended in a bloody showdown between the police and the counter-protesters, with the participants heavily beaten up. This manifestation was held in Zagreb, Croatia from June 22–25, 2006 and brought together representatives of those Eastern European and Southeastern European countries where the sociopolitical climate is not ripe for the organization of Prides, or where such a manifestation is expressly forbidden by the authorities. From 13 countries that participated, only Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Latvia have been organizing Prides. Slovakia also hosted the pride, but encountered many problems with Slovak extremists from Slovenska pospolitost (the pride did not cross the centre of the city). North Macedonia and Albania also host Pride Parades with no major issues arising, mainly due to the protection from police. Lithuania has never had Prides before. There were also representatives from Kosovo, that participated apart from Serbia. It was the first Pride organized jointly with other states and nations, which only ten years ago have been at war with each other. Weak cultural, political and social cooperation exists among these states, with an obvious lack of public encouragement for solidarity, which organizers hoped to initiate through that regional Pride event. The host and the initiator of The Internationale LGBT Pride was Zagreb Pride, which has been held since 2002.[Citation needed]
Croatia
See also: LGBT rights in Croatia § LGBT prides and other marches
First pride parade in Croatia was held on 29 June 2002 in Zagreb and has been held annually ever since. The attendance has gradually grown from 350 in 2002 to 15.000 in 2013. Pride parades are also held in Split (since 2011) and Osijek (since 2014).[Citation needed]
Denmark
The Copenhagen Pride festival is held every year in August. In its current format, it has been held every year since 1996, where Copenhagen hosted EuroPride. Before 1994 the national LGBT association organized demonstration-like freedom marches. Copenhagen Pride is a colourful and festive occasion, combining political issues with concerts, films and a parade. The focal point is the City Hall Square in the city centre. It usually opens on the Wednesday of Pride Week, culminating on the Saturday with a parade and Denmark's Mr Gay contest. In 2017, some 25,000 people took part in the parade with floats and flags, and about 300,000 were out in the streets to experience it.
The smaller Aarhus Pride in held every year in June in the Jutlandic city of Aarhus.
Estonia
The Baltic Pride event was held in Tallinn in 2011, 2014 and 2017
Greenland
In May 2010, Nuuk celebrated its first pride parade. Over 1,000 people attended. It has been repeated every year since then, part of a festival called Nuuk Pride.[Citation needed]
Iceland
First held in 1999, Reykjavík Pride celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2019. Held in early August each year, the event attracts up to 100,000 participants – approaching a third of Iceland's population.[Citation needed]
Ireland
The Dublin Pride Festival usually takes place in June. The Festival involves the Pride Parade, the route of which is from O'Connell Street to Merrion Square. However, the route was changed for the 2017 Parade due to Luas Cross City works. The parade attracts thousands of people who line the streets each year. It gained momentum after the 2015 Marriage Equality Referendum.[Citation needed]
Italy
Italian lesbian organisation Arcilesbica at the National Italian Gay Pride march in Grosseto, Italy, in 2004
The first public demonstration within the LGBT community in Italy took place in San Remo on April 5, 1972 as a protest against the International Congress on Sexual Deviance organized by the Catholic-inspired Italian Center of Sexology. The event was attended by about forty people belonging to various homophile groups, including ones from France, Belgium, Great Britain's Gay Liberation Front, and Italy's activist homosexual rights group Fuori! [it].
The first Italian event specifically associated with international celebrations of Gay Pride was the sixth congress of Fuori! held in Turin in late June 1978 and included a week of films on gay subjects. Episodes of violence against homosexuals were frequent in Italy, such as in the summer of 1979 when two young gay men were killed in Livorno. In Pisa in November of that year, the Orfeo Collective [it] organized the first march against anti-gay violence. Around 500 gay and lesbian participants attended, and this remained the largest gathering of the kind until 1994.
Later, a system of "national Pride" observances designated one city to hold the official events, starting with Rome in 1994. Starting in 2013, the organization Onda Pride organized additional events, and in 2019 events were organized in 39 cities nationwide.[Citation needed]
streets along the local participants. Law was enforced with nearly a thousand policemen.[Citation needed]
The city also hosted the event in 2013 and 2016 gathering around 3 thousand participants each year.[Citation needed]
The 2019 Baltic Pride was held on June 4–9 in Vilnius. An estimated 10 thousand people marched through the central part of the city.[Citation needed]
Netherlands
Amsterdam's pride parade is held in its canals
Main article: Amsterdam Gay Pride
In Amsterdam, a Pride Pride has been held since 1996. The week(end)-long event involves concerts, sports tournaments, street parties and most importantly the Canal Pride, a parade on boats on the canals of Amsterdam. In 2008 three government ministers joined on their own boat, representing the whole cabinet. Mayor of Amsterdam Job Cohen also joined. About 500,000 visitors were reported. 2008 was also the first year large Dutch international corporations ING Group and TNT NV sponsored the event.[Citation needed]
The Utrecht Canal Pride is the second largest gay pride in the country, organized annually since 2017. Smaller Pride parades are organized in many larger cities across the country.[Citation needed]
Poland
Warsaw Pride in 2006
Main article: Equality marches in Poland
The oldest pride parade in Poland, the Equality Parade in Warsaw, has been organized since 2001. In 2005, the parade was forbidden by local authorities (including then-Mayor Lech Kaczyński) but occurred nevertheless. The ban was later declared a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (Bączkowski and Others v. Poland). In 2008, more than 1,800 people joined the march. In 2010 EuroPride took place in Warsaw with approximately 8,000 participants. The last parade in Warsaw, in 2019, drew 80,000 people. Other Polish cities which host pride parades are Kraków, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańsk, Toruń, Wrocław, Lublin, Częstochowa, Rzeszów, Opole, Zielona Góra, Konin, Bydgoszcz, Szczecin, Kalisz, Koszalin, Olsztyn, Kielce, Gniezno, Katowice, Białystok, Radomsko, and Płock.[Citation needed]
Portugal
Pride march in June 2023
In Lisbon, the Pride Parade, known as Marcha do Orgulho LGBTI+, has been held every year since 2000, as well as in Porto since 2006. In 2017, Funchal hosted their first Pride Parade.
municipality or the government.
On June 28, 2015, police in Istanbul interrupted the parade, which the organisers said was not permitted that year due to the holy month Ramadan, by firing pepper spray and rubber bullets.
United Kingdom
Lesbian Strength March 1983, UK
There are five main pride events in the UK LGBT pride calendar: London, Brighton, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham being the largest and are the cities with the biggest gay populations.[Citation needed]
Pride in London is one of the biggest in Europe and takes place on the final Saturday in June or first Saturday in July each year. London also hosted a Black Pride in August and Soho Pride or a similar event every September. During the early-1980s, there was a women-only Lesbian Strength march held each year a week before the Gay Pride march. 2012 saw World Pride coming to London.[Citation needed]
Starting in 2017, there is a Pride parade for the city's Black community that takes place the day after the main Pride parade, at the Vauxhall Gardens. In February 2018, the charity Stonewall announced that they would support Black Pride instead of the main Pride parade.
Brighton Pride is held on the first Saturday of August (apart from in 2012 when the event was moved to September due to the 2012 Olympics). The event starts from the seafront and culminating at Preston Park.
Liverpool Pride was launched in 2010, but by 2011 it became the largest free Gay Pride festival in the United Kingdom outside London. (Liverpool's LGBT population was 94,000 by mid-2009 according to the North West Regional Development Agency.
Manchester Pride has been running since 1985 and centres around the famous Canal Street. It is traditionally a four-day celebration held over the August bank holiday weekend.[Citation needed]
Birmingham Pride usually takes place during the final Spring bank holiday weekend in May, and focuses on the Birmingham Gay Village area of the city, with upwards of 70,000 people in attendance annually.[Citation needed]
Pride events also happen in most other major cities such as Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
The March kicks off the Brisbane Pride Festival.
Perth's Pride March was established in October 1990, by the newly formed WA Pride Collective (now WA Pride).
Melbourne's Pride March, now part of the Midsumma Festival (1989-), was established in 1996. The event sees over 5000 participating in the Parade, and 20,000 lining Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.[Citation needed]
Adelaide's Pride March was established in 2003, on the anniversary of their first Pride March in 1973. Since then, the Adelaide Pride March has opened the annual Feast Festival.
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