Celebration and defiance mix at gay-pride parades
NEW YORK — Celebration and pride mixed with defiance in New York City on Sunday as throngs of people crowded the streets, rainbow flags waving, for the annual gay pride march, which was one of a number of LGBT events in cities around the world.
Tennis legend Billie Jean King was one of the grand marshals, along with transgender advocate Tyler Ford and civil rights organization Lambda Legal. The event, and others like it around the country, commemorated the riots that erupted in response to a police raid at a New York gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in June 1969.
Onlookers and participants in New York noted those origins at Sunday’s event, which was both a celebration of the diversity of LGBT culture and a statement against anti-LGBT policies promoted by President Donald Trump, such as the Republican president’s attempt to ban all transgender people from serving in the military. They also spoke out against policies aimed at other communities, like immigrants and minorities.
Elected officials, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, were among those attending the march.
Before it started, Mr. Cuomo unveiled a New York statememorial to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that honors victims of intolerance. Placed in Hudson River Park, it has nine boulders with pieces of glass installed in them that can act as prisms.
Mr. Cuomo formed the commission to come up with a memorial after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that left 49 people dead.