I marched in the very first Gay Pride Parade, in June, 1970. At that time, the Gay Liberation Front, of which I was a member, called the march Christopher Street Liberation Day, and it was meant to commemorate the Stone Wall Inn riots, to be a protest against police violence against gay men and lesbians--and also to be a day of happiness, love, and fun. We could not get a permit from the City of New York for the march, and we were anxious the whole time about getting arrested, about being harassed by the cops (who now, often as gay and lesbian police officers accompany the parade), and also about being jeered and hassled by spectators. I remembered the spectators: they looked on amused, startled, shocked, and sometimes supportive at a large number of queer people openly marching up Sixth Avenue, the route of the first march.

I have now marched, walked, or just watched so many Gay Pride parades I can't count them, including a wonderful canal float parade in Amsterdam two Augusts ago, and parades and celebrations in Boston, New Orleans, Atlanta, just to name a few. But the parade I love the most is still the one in New York.

The first few moments of it, I have to work hard to keep from breaking into tears. So many years have gone by; so many men and women I know I will never be able to march in another parade; the whole wonderful continuity of it is very moving.

And it is also the only parade in all of New Yorkís many, many parades that is open to everyone. Anyone can march in New Yorkís Gay Pride paradeóno matter what your color, ethnic background, sexual or political affiliation, you can march, as long as you agree not to harm others or advocate harm. This is so unlike the famed St. Patrick's Day Parade, which still discriminates against glbt Hibernians, or even the Israel Day Parade, which declared that an openly gay presence in it was not welcomed.

I remembered the first meeting the Gay Liberation Front had to discuss having the march, and the debate about it. One of the big arguments against the march was that if we instituted it as an annual event, very quickly the bars would start funding floats for it and take it over. We didn't want the bars, which we thought of as Mafia holdings, to have a presence in the march--we had not thought about it as a parade yet. Now the bars, discos, and clubs have a huge presence in the parade, but so do many other groups, from gay and lesbian parents, to religious organizations, etc.

What we could not possibly see in 1970 was this huge rainbow of ourselves: that this parade has become so much of what the human race is about that it's really hard not to love it, simply as a spectacle of both the glbt world, and also New York at its most diverse.

Still, there are things that I'd love to see happen on Gay Pride Sunday, as well as just about any other Sunday of the year, and most of the other days as well. So here is my wish list for Gay Pride, pure and simple. What I'd like to see Gay Pride become and be, for me, as well as for many of us.

1) First, I'd like us all to smile at each other more. To recognize that all of the people involved in Gay Pride are what it's all about. It's not about drag queens sweating in wigs and heels, or muscle guys, or loud floats or whatever is coming down Fifth Avenue. It's about everybody there. It is not so much about being proud of yourself, as it is about being yourself.

2) I'd like for us to remember that what created this moment, this time, were not media celebrities--I've already seen my 80th Cher look-alike--but the men and women who put their lives on the line for us. Some of these people are still with us, and they are still doing it. It's easy to have gay pride in Manhattan or San Francisco, but how about gay pride in small-town Texas, where George Bush, Jr., is king and gay men and lesbians, if they are at all open, fear for their jobs and lives? Being open about being gay is still an act of courage in many places in this country, and world.

I'd like us to remember that.

3) I'd like all the multitudes of people who watch gay pride celebrations by the million to give a local glbt organization working hard for them just $5.00 a year. In an economic downturn, these organizations are struggling, and their base of support is not getting larger.

4) I'd like to know that the people who have pioneered the struggle for glbt liberation and who spent their whole lives in this struggle, who are now getting older, will not have to face poverty as Harry Hay and Morris Kight did. We need ways to recognize and support glbt pioneers.

5) I would like glbt kids to know that being gay is not about disco and Will & Grace, but about their own most quiet, tender, loving feelings. I'd like them to know that the options in their futures are not limited to hustling and homelessness. For a lot of gay kids forced to leave home--as I was at 17--this is their immediate future, and there's not a lot beyond that.

6) I would like gay pride to be substituted with gay love, and the recognition that we are a real part of humanity, and we have a history in it, and a literature and art. I sincerely believe that love is the only thing that changes the world, and gay love is vastly powerful. I would like to see that power used for all of us.

7) I'd like to see more people reaching out to forgotten gays and lesbians: people forced by fear to stay in the closets of orthodox religious groups; prisoners of conscious; and people who still are frightened of being what they are inside. Fundamentalist Christians often speak about "coming out for Christ." Well, I sincerely believe that Christ would have come out for all of us.

8) I'd like to see an end to the defensive smugness we have acquired that I see now on TV and in the media--the idea that because we are gay, we are "basically" superior to others. We're brighter, wittier, cuter, prettier, smarter, etc. I'd like to see that replaced with the idea that basically, we are like other people, but unique in our own way, as everyone is.

9) And finally, this Gay Pride Day, I'd like to see a genuine delight in being ourselves, a real happiness in our survival and closeness with the rest of the human race. I'd like to see more people hug each other and relinquish fear. This is what we wanted to see more than 30 years go on that first Christopher Street Liberation Day Sunday, and I'd be very proud to see it again and again.
 

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