This document provides a history of LGBT Pride, including key events and the evolution of Pride parades and celebrations. It discusses early activism like the Annual Reminders pickets in Philadelphia in the 1960s. It covers the Stonewall riots in 1969, seen as sparking the modern LGBT rights movement. It outlines the first Pride marches in 1970 in New York and other cities to commemorate Stonewall. It describes how Pride expanded globally in subsequent decades and how events have grown to celebrate LGBT identity, culture, and progress toward equal rights. It shares photos and descriptions of modern Pride events in various US cities to illustrate the present-day celebrations.
4. MESSAGE FROM THE BOTTOMOLOGIST
• Students,
• From coast to coast, and all around the world, the LGBT community celebrates pride in June. We
throw fabulous extravaganza celebrating our right and will to be different and not conform.
• Teaching unconditional love and acceptance to the world. After many victories in marriage equality,
this year is the year to be proud. This blogumentary will not only dissect the ideology behind pride.
But remind us of how much we’ve progressed as a community and a society.
• This year show your pride in who you are. Celebrate life and your freedom of expression. And
keeps showing them that we are here, queer and we can care less if they get use to it!
-The Bottomologist XoXo
5. Historical background
Gay equality activist Barbara Gittings picketing Independence Hall in 1965
Activists promoting
lesbian rights at Athens Pride 2012 in Greece
Pride precursors
Main article: List of LGBT actions in the United States prior to the Stonewall riots
6. Annual Reminders
The 1950s and 1960s in the United States was an extremely repressive legal and social period
for LGBT people.
In this context American homophile organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis and the
Mattachine Society coordinated some of the earliest demonstrations of the modern LGBT rights
movement. These two organizations in particular carried out pickets called “Annual Reminders”
to inform and remind Americans that LGBT people did not receive basic civil rights protections.
Annual Reminders began in 1965 and took place each July 4 at Independence Hall in
Philadelphia.
"Gay is Good"
The anti-LGBT discourse of these times equated both male and female homosexuality with
mental illness. Inspired by Stokely Carmichael's "Black is Beautiful",
Gay civil rights pioneer and participant in the Annual Reminders Frank Kameny originated the
slogan "Gay is Good" in 1968[2] to counter social stigma and personal feelings of guilt and shame.
7. PRIDE MOMENT: WRATH
We asked Wrath from VS Men what
Pride means to him! See what he
said below:
8. Christopher Street Liberation Day
See also: Stonewall riots
Early on the morning of Saturday, 28 June 1969, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning persons rioted following a police raid
on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar at 43 Christopher Street, New York City. This riot and further protests and rioting over the following nights
were the watershed moment in modern LGBT rights movement and the impetus for organizing LGBT pride marches on a much larger
public scale.
On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first pride march to be held
in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in
Philadelphia.[3]
"That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the
larger struggle in which we are engaged-that of our fundamental human rights-be moved both in time and location.
We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous
demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age
regulations shall be made for this demonstration.
We also propose that we contact Homophile organizations throughout the country and suggest that they hold parallel demonstrations on
that day. We propose a nationwide show of support.[4][5][6][7]
All attendees to the ERCHO meeting in Philadelphia voted for the march except for Mattachine Society of New York, which abstained.[4]
Members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) attended the meeting and were seated as guests of Rodwell's group, Homophile Youth Movement
in Neighborhoods (HYMN).[8]
9. Meetings to organize the march began in early January at Rodwell's apartment in 350 Bleecker Street.[9]
At first there was difficulty getting some of the major New York organizations like Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) to send representatives. Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred
Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, Michael Brown, Marty Nixon, and Foster Gunnison of Mattachine made up the core group of the CSLD Umbrella Committee (CSLDUC). For initial
funding, Gunnison served as treasurer and sought donations from the national homophile organizations and sponsors, while Sargeant solicited donations via the Oscar
Wilde Memorial Bookshop customer mailing list and Nixon worked to gain financial support from GLF in his position as treasurer for that organization.[10][11] Other
mainstays of the organizing committee were Judy Miller, Jack Waluska, Steve Gerrie and Brenda Howard of GLF.[12] Believing that more people would turn out for the
march on a Sunday, and so as to mark the date of the start of the Stonewall uprising, the CSLDUC scheduled the date for the first march for Sunday, June 28, 1970.[13] With
Dick Leitsch's replacement as president of Mattachine NY by "Michael Kotis" in April, 1970, opposition to the march by Mattachine ended.[14]
Brenda Howard is known as the "Mother of Pride", for her work in coordinating the march. Howard also originated the idea for a week-long series of events around Pride
Day which became the genesis of the annual LGBT Pride celebrations that are now held around the world every June.[15][16] Additionally, Howard along with fellow LGBT
Activists Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) and L. Craig Schoonmaker are credited with popularizing the word "Pride" to describe these festivities.[17] As LGBT rights
activist Tom Limoncelli put it, "The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them 'A bisexual woman named
Brenda Howard thought it should be.'" [18]
There was little open animosity, and some bystanders applauded when a tall, pretty girl carrying a sign "I am a Lesbian" walked by. – The New York Times coverage of Gay
Liberation Day, 1970[19]
Christopher Street Liberation Day on June 28, 1970 marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots with an assembly on Christopher Street and the first Gay Pride
march in U.S. history, covering the 51 blocks to Central Park. The march took less than half the scheduled time due to excitement, but also due to wariness about walking
through the city with gay banners and signs. Although the parade permit was delivered only two hours before the start of the march, the marchers encountered little
resistance from onlookers.[20] The New York Times reported (on the front page) that the marchers took up the entire street for about 15 city blocks.[19] Reporting by The
Village Voice was positive, describing "the out-front resistance that grew out of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn one year ago".[21]
10.
11. Spread
On the same weekend gay activist groups on the West Coast of the United States held a march in Los Angeles and a
march and 'Gay-in' in San Francisco.[22][23]
One day earlier, on Saturday, 27 June 1970, Chicago Gay Liberation organized a march[24] from Washington
Square Park ("Bughouse Square") to the Water Tower at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago avenues, which
was the route originally planned, and then many of the participants extemporaneously marched on to the Civic
Center (now Richard J. Daley) Plaza.[25] The date was chosen because the Stonewall events began on the last
Saturday of June and because organizers wanted to reach the maximum number of Michigan Avenue shoppers.
Subsequent Chicago parades have been held on the last Sunday of June, coinciding with the date of many similar
parades elsewhere.
The next year, Gay Pride marches took place in Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, West Berlin, and
Stockholm.[21] By 1972 the participating cities included Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, Washington D.C., Miami, and
Philadelphia,[26] as well as San Francisco.
A year later there was at least fifteen hundred. By two years later, to the extent that a count could be made, it was
twenty-five hundred."[28]
12. Similar to Kameny's regret at his own reaction to the shift in attitudes after the riots, Randy Wicker came to
describe his embarrassment as "one of the greatest mistakes of his life".[29] The image of gays retaliating
against police, after so many years of allowing such treatment to go unchallenged, "stirred an unexpected
spirit among many homosexuals".[29] Kay Lahusen, who photographed the marches in 1965, stated, "Up to
1969, this movement was generally called the homosexual or homophile movement.... Many new activists
consider the Stonewall uprising the birth of the gay liberation movement. Certainly it was the birth of gay
pride on a massive scale."[30]
15. 1980s and 1990s
In the 1980s there was a major cultural shift in the Stonewall Riot commemorations. The previous loosely organized,
grassroots marches and parades were taken over by more organized and less radical elements of the gay community.
The marches began dropping "Liberation" and "Freedom" from their names under pressure from more conservative
members of the community, replacing them with the philosophy of "Gay Pride" (in the more liberal San Francisco,
the name of the gay parade and celebration was not changed from Gay Freedom Day Parade to Gay Pride Day Parade
until 1994). The Greek lambda symbol and the pink triangle which had been revolutionary symbols of the Gay
Liberation Movement, which is headed by were tidied up and incorporated into the Gay Pride, or Pride, movement,
providing some symbolic continuity with its more radical beginnings. The pink triangle was also the inspiration for
the homomonument in Amsterdam, commemorating all gay men and lesbians who have been subjected to
persecution because of their homosexuality.
LGBT Pride Month
I call upon all Americans to observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and
everywhere it exists. – Proclamation by U.S President Barack Obama, May 31, 2011[31]
16. The month of June was chosen for LGBT Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of
June 1969. As a result, many pride events are held during this month to recognize the impact LGBT people have had in
the world. Brenda Howard is known as the "Mother of Pride", for her work in coordinating the first LGBT Pride march,
and she also originated the idea for a week-long series of events around Pride Day which became the genesis of the
annual LGBT Pride celebrations that are now held around the world every June.[15][16] Additionally, Howard along with
fellow LGBT rights activists Robert A. Martin (aka Donny the Punk) and L. Craig Schoonmaker are credited with
popularizing the word "Pride" to describe these festivities.[17] As LGBT rights activist Tom Limoncelli put it, "The next time
someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why [LGBT] Pride Month is June tell them 'A bisexual woman named
Brenda Howard thought it should be.'" [18]
On several occasions, the President of the United States has officially declared a Pride Month. First, President Bill Clinton
declared June "Gay & Lesbian Pride Month" on June 2, 2000.[32] Then, in 2009,[33] 2010,[34] 2011,[31] 2012,[35] 2013,[36]
and 2014[37] President Barack Obama declared June Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.
Google marked any LGBT-related search results in June 2012 with a rainbow colored pattern underneath search
results.[38]
18. Pt 2. Pride Events!
Pride has all sorts of events that make pride hot! This portion of the blogumentary visits
prides across the nation. We will bring out the colors of the rainbow and share what pride
is like in different parts of the country.
XOXO
29. FINAL MESSAGE
LGBT Pride is not just a big party where all of the kids get together and have
fun. It is a celebration of acceptance and self-expression.
Those who have participated in such events, know the magical feeling of
being apart of a movement that has changed our society for the better.
While we are different we deserve to be loved, honored and respected.
We all want to have the freedom of self-expression.
Prideology is the study of pride. Until next year XoXo
30. CREDITS
A very special thanks to the following:
Carl Anthoni – IAMD - CEO
Wrath – Adult Entertainer and Model – VS Boys/ VS Men
Tigger – Adult Entertainer and Model – VS Boys/ VS Men
Jin Powers- Adult Entertainer and Model – VS Boys/ VS Men
Christopher Jarrett – Bottomology – CEO and The Bottomologist.
The Bottomology Family XoXo
Happy Pride 2014!
