Pride parades march on with new urgency

NEW YORK » Pride parades kicked off in New York City and around the country Sunday with glittering confetti, cheering crowds, 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 took place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signaled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognized in 2015.

“We’re here to make a statement,” said 31-yearold Mercedes Sharpe, who traveled 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 going to stand out. I think a lot of angry people, not even just women, angry men, angry women.”

Thousands of people — many decked in pride colors — lined the parade route through Manhattan, cheering as floats and marchers passed by. Organizers announced this weekend that a Planned Parenthood contingent would be at the front of the parade.

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the top court ruling a “momentary setback” and said Sunday’s events were “an opportunity for us to not only celebrate Pride, but be resolved for the fight.”

“We will not live in a world, not in my city, where our rights are taken from us or rolled back,” said Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay mayor, and the first Black woman to hold the office.

In San Francisco, some marchers and spectators held signs condemning the court’s abortion ruling. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rode in a convertible holding a gavel and a rainbow fan, said the large turnout was an acknowledgement that Americans support gay rights.

“Even in spite of the majority on the court that’s anti our Constitution, our country knows and loves our LGBTQI+ community,” she told KGO-TV.

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 the 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’, 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,” Clarkin said, “there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.”