Pride for me is very personal. As a 19-year-old marshaling that first Pride in 1970, none of us could have imagined what it would be like 54 years later and how that Pride would change America and the world.
That first Pride was called “Christopher Street Gay Liberation.” Often historians simply say that the march was celebrating the first anniversary of Stonewall. While that is true, there is so much more. We were also taking pride in the community we had created in that one year, and in the fact that, despite our differences, we had united as a community.
Stonewall and Pride are often seen as singular events, but in reality, they are connected by that first year.
Before Stonewall, pretty much 99.9% of us were in the closet. You couldn’t find more than 100 people in the nation to stand for our equality. Stonewall was the spark of a new movement, and from the ashes of Stonewall came the Gay Liberation Front. Its first priority was to ensure that Stonewall never happened again, which translated to liberating Christopher Street. We accepted our identities and created a community by serving its needs. We established the world’s first trans organization and youth organization. We also offered legal and medical information on the street almost every night. We demonstrated against the police at their station, protested against media bias, and fought for visibility and government accountability to our community.
Then, on that first anniversary, we celebrated the pride in what we had achieved.
From those 100 out activists before Stonewall, we became 15,000.
The following year, we were tens of thousands across the nation.
The year after that, we were hundreds of thousands.
Today, Pride is celebrated around the world by millions.
This is a very special year. It’s 55 years since Stonewall, and it’s bittersweet for those of us who have been there from the beginning. We’re amazed at what we helped create and disheartened by the disunity in our community.
My message to our community this Pride is to take heart in one of the Gay Liberation Front’s slogans from 1969: We should be out, loud and proud. And this year, when celebrating Pride in your city, you should also be united.