Gay Pride Parades Come Out of the Closet

Rainbow flags ruled this weekend as several cities across the country hosted large-scale gay pride parades marked less for their flamboyance and more for their acceptance in the mainstream.

San Francisco’s weekend-long gay pride celebration somehow morphed aspects of the Castro’s flamboyant counter-culture with elements of small-town Americana. Drag queens in eight-inch heels mingled with straight families eating shaved ice and funnel cakes.

"It's become much less radicalized. We're not such a stereotype any more. We're just one more facet of life in San Francisco. That's a good thing,” John McCue, a retired high-tech worker who sat in the shade with the Freewheelers gay car club, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In New York City, up to 500,000 revelers lined Fifth Avenue for their parade, which commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, generally considered the start of the gay rights movement. On June 28, 1969, patrons at a West Village gay bar resisted police who raided the club. Violent protests broke out in the days that followed as demonstrators gained sympathy and support throughout the world.

In a sign of how much times have changed in four decades, New York Governor David Patterson marched in the parade and stated his support for a same-sex marriage bill, which is also backed by NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a lesbian who addressed the crowd.

Chicago’s parade drew a half-million revelers and nearly 240 participants, including the debut of a coalition of families from a Chicago public school. One wagon filled with kids from Nettelhorst Elementary School was topped with a sign that read “School is out and so are my dads.”

"Twenty years ago, this was a very solitary event," David Sinski, who watched the action from a GLBT community center, told the Chicago Tribune. "You'd come along with like-minded people. But now there are so many straight people, politicians, corporations, youth groups. Now there are so many things that just aren't questioned. It's much more of a celebration."