The month’s celebration of LGBTQ Pride reached the rainbow crescendo on Sunday.
While pride celebrations usually weave politics and protest alongside colorful pageants, this year’s iteration took a clear rebellious attitude as Republicans led by President Donald Trump tried to roll back LGBTQ-friendly policies.
The theme of the Manhattan festival was appropriately “Rise: Pride of Protest.” San Francisco’s pride theme was “Queerjoy is resistance,” but Seattle was simply “voiced.”
Lance Brammer, a 56-year-old Ohio teacher, attended the first Pride Parade in New York and said he felt “verified” as he marveled at the country’s oldest and largest size, the vast size of the city’s celebrations.
“The climate we have politically makes them seem like they’re trying to abolish the entire LGBTQ community, especially the trans community,” he said, wearing a vibrant, multi-coloured shirt. “And if they think they’ll do it with all the people here and all the support, it shows they have a fight before them.”
In San Francisco, Xander Briere said the LGBTQ+ community is fighting for survival in the face of sustained attacks and changing public sentiment, especially against transgender people.
“We’re rolling our watches slowly. It’s so sad and scary,” says a program specialist at San Francisco Community Health Center. “The world feels like we hate us now, but this is a celebration of the resistance to show the world that we are here, a beautiful community of history.
The Manhattan parade was a group of over 700 people greeted by a massive crowd, down Fifth Avenue.
The Rolling Celebration passed Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, where a 1969 police attack sparked protests and fired the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The first Pride March, held in New York City in 1970, marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. This site is currently a national monument.
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s Marcher, another host of the world’s biggest pride event, headed down California City’s Central Market Street for a concert stage set up at Civic Center Plaza. Denver, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada, were among the other major North American cities that held the Pride Parade on Sunday.
Several cities around the world, including Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo, hosted events earlier this month, while others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November.
Since taking office in January, Trump has specifically aimed at transgender people, removing them from the military, preventing federal insurance programs from paying for young people’s gender-affirming surgeries, and trying to keep transgender athletes out of girls and women’s sports.
“We have to see. We have to be together. We have to fight. We have to fight. Our existence is about to be erased,” said Jahnel Butler, one of the San Francisco Parade’s community grand marshals.
Peter McLaughlin said he had lived in New York for years but never participated in the Pride Parade. A 34-year-old Brooklyn resident said she felt forced to be a transgender man this year.
“Many people don’t realize that making people live is not taken away from their experience. For now, it’s important for us to show us just people,” McLaughlin said.
Gabriel Megan, 23, of New Jersey, was granted same-sex marriage nationwide a few days after the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court landmark on June 26, 2015. He said he felt it was important to appear at this year’s celebration as he passed the sentence in Hodges.
Manhattan also hosted the Queer Rebate March, a recent activism-centric event, announced in recent years, amid concerns that more mainstream parades have become too corporate.
Margins holding signs that include “Care-affirming Gender Saves Life” and “Apartheid Pride” are heading north from the city’s AIDS Memorial towards Columbus Circle near Central Park.
Among the other headwinds facing gay rights groups this year is losing corporate sponsorship.
American businesses have reeled back in support of Pride Events, reflecting the wider gait of diversity and inclusion efforts as they change public sentiment.
NYC Pride said earlier this month that around 20% of corporate sponsors had reduced or reduced support, including PepsiCo and Nissan. Organizers for San Francisco Pride said they lost support from five major corporate donors, including Comcast and Anheuser-Busch.
