What's with gay pride parades? I don't get it.?

Question

I have no problems with gay people, gay marriage, etc. but I don't see how these parades help their cause. If anything, it just pisses the conservatives off. Is this the point?

Answer 1

The point is the same as having an Irish cultural festival or a Hmong community event. The point is to get together with other people who are similar to you and have an awesome time with them. There are Irish parades for St. Patricks day, I know we have a Chinese New Year's parade for Chinese people where I live too. And as John Stewart once said, New York is a "parade based economy" with different ethnic and cultural celebrations all the time. Hell even the veterans get their own parade on memorial day! I was in the band in high school and we had a homecoming parade just to show off our own high school culture and pride.

The point of the parade is to have fun, show of the culture in question (be it gay culture or Polish culture), and remind the rest of the community that you exist. That in and of itself will piss off conservatives. And that is not my problem. Pride parades are a chance for me to hang out with friends and show off my gayness to some nice spectators. Just the same as any other parade.

Answer 2

The first parade was a response to the Stonewall Rebellion at a tavern in New York City, where after numerous raids where police beat gay patrons unmercifully, the patrons of the Stonewall in fought back, and several police officers, the same who had abused gay bar patrons in the past were injured.

Since then, gay people have celebrated Stonewall each year by Gay Pride celebrations. It's a way of saying "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." While the Stonewall Rebellion was ill conceived, and many more people could have been hurt, it did mark the beginning of an era when gay men and women were no longer easy targets for bully cops.

Parades today sometimes lean a little to the silly side, with hairy bearded men in dresses, boys dancing on floats wearing half a speedo, drag queens and dykes on bikes. But there are also groups like PFLAG, the supportive parent and family organization, and health related organizations, as well as supportive political figures which give important support to the gay community.

Answer 3

It's about unity, community, solidarity, and also to kind of show people that you CAN be out and the world won't end. For one day out of the year, in one part of the city, there's more of "us" than there are of "them" and you aren't constantly looking over your shoulder and afraid because if something DOES happen, there's an entire crowd of people to stop it (maybe that's naive of me, but whatever). Some of them tend to get overly, shall we say, "glitzy". It's the most frequent complaint I've heard from WITHIN the gay community. In my city, though, there's really not too much of that. A couple drag queens from the local club, and then just a lot of local religious groups, school groups, or other GLBT (or GLBT friendly) groups with a little festival with booths set up afterwards. Kind of a chance to see what resources are going on, and to try to get people interested in the political end.

That having been said, it's really important for me because of the history behind it. The first gay pride parade (and the reason they're all in June) was on the one year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots; The Christopher Street Day Parade in NYC. The following year, San Francisco had one in which Elder Troy Perry of the Metropolitcan Community Churches was on hunger strike for gay rights. This is important stuff that, sadly, tends to get left out and forgotten.

Answer 4

They should be better reported. Have you attended a gay pride? Look at the audience. The vast majority of people are normal looking. Yet all the media wants to show is an ugly fat drag queen or some freako with earings all over their body. I don't think that all straight people are represented by gothic s&m bondage types and I hope that you would give gay people the same benefit of the doubt.

So maybe some of the floats are a little over board. We get one day to have a little fun. The rest of the time we live in a straight world. We arn't trying to make anyone gay. We can't. Someone is born gay or they are born straight. Nothing you or I can do will change someones orientation. Someone can either come to terms with themself or they can cower in shame and go into denial.

Give us a break on our one day a year. And realize that the vast majority of us are normal people.

Answer 5

Gay Pride parades aren't intended to advance the gay cause, whatever that is. It's just an excuse to have a party for gay people and to decorate floats. Just about every gay parade is held where gay people live, so it's not political -- it's not like when Catholics march through Protestant neighboorhoods.

Answer 6

I remember when gays had no rights at all. When I came out at 14 we had virtually none.

Holding parades will not piss the Right off anymore than they are. The fact we exist and refuse to vanish keeps them at a high boil.

For years we lived in NYC. NYC has several hundred pride festivals and marches -- 2 of them, total, are connected to the gay community; the other over 400 are related to other minorities and ethnic groups.

With the Right, if you say you are gay you are flaunting it in their face. If you don't say anything you are trying to deceive them. If y ou hide it totally (I disapprove of that) then you trying to seduce their children by getting close to them. If we hold parades we are being obscene, if we don't we are cowards -------- understand, the Right hates gays. On the other hand 20 years of parades and public relations have changed the perceptions of moderates so that overall we now enjoy majority support for equal rights, majority support for domestic partnerships, and nearly equal support for gay marriage -- with HIGH levels of support among younger people.

It does help, and more than anything else that is what pisses the Right off -- they even think all the gays in the world are in a single conspiracy -- which is laughable, most gays aren't even out.

Regards,

Reynolds
http://www.rebuff.org
[e-mail]

Answer 7

Gay Pride parades have long gone off their intended track and have unfocusedly fizzed into a hazy scene of embarrassment for the mature gay community.

Today's Gay Pride parades have participants who wildly vent out to dysfunctional degrees their "resentments" of others who negatively view them and/or their "lifestyle". Yes: they DO go overboard....and the whole Gay Pride mission gets a shot in the foot.

However, given the wild ones I've seen, it amazes me they really don't understand why even the mature gay people view them as "freaks".

Answer 8

It's a way of showing that gay people are here and make very valid contributions to society. I have seen members of the police force marching in the parade, holding hands with their partners, same with the fire department, teachers, doctors and many other professionals.

It is not done to annoy anybody, but instead it celebrates the fact that gay people are demanding respect and that we will not tolerate abuse and hatred.

Answer 9

For exactly the same reason Irish march on st Patrick's day ..ex vets march ext ...to show solidarity for there cause

Its not up to you to like it or not ...just avoid it people march all the time and unless there doing it on your front lawn why should it fuss you too much?

Live and let live, ime sure there will be a sad old farts march someday you can carry a flag if your good ....lol

HAPPY PRIDE MARCH BABE!

Answer 10

what's with St Patricks day parades....
are they just trying to piss off icelanders