Pride parade held in New Year amid fears of losing freedoms
26 June 2022, 23:14
The last 12 months has seen the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children.
New York City’s annual Pride parade has taken place with glittering confetti, fluttering rainbow flags and newfound fears about losing freedoms won through decades of activism.
The annual marches in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere are taking place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signalled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognised in 2015.
“We’re here to make a statement,” said 31-year-old Mercedes Sharpe, who travelled to Manhattan from Massachusetts. “I think it’s about making a point, rather than all the other years like how we normally celebrate it. This one’s really gonna stand out. I think a lot of angry people, not even just women, angry men, angry women.”
The warning shot from the nation’s top court came after a year of legislative defeats for the LGBTQ community, including the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children.
As anti-gay sentiments resurface, some are pushing for Pride parades to return to their roots — less blocks-long street parties, more overtly civil rights marches.
“It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life,” Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City’s annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius’s, one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.
As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders.
“As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream,” Mr Clarkin said, “There was also something energising and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.”
New York’s first Pride March, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a spontaneous street uprising triggered by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.
San Francisco’s first march was in 1972 and has been held every year since, except during the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Celebrations are now global, taking place throughout the year in multiple countries, with many of the biggest parades taking place in June. One of the world’s largest, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was held on June 19.
In the United States, this year’s celebrations take place amid a potential crisis.
In a Supreme Court ruling on Friday striking down the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider its 2015 decision legalising same-sex marriage and a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalising gay sex.
More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas.
Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify.
According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment.
Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation.
