A-10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE Pride Guide 1996

What began the annual gay and lesbian pride events?

by David Bianco

Many people know that the gay and lesbian marches, parades, and festivals that take place every summer across America and around the world commemorate the Stonewall uprising of June 28, 1969. But the idea of a gay event every summer actually goes back to the mid-1960s, to the "Annual Reminder" held every Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969.

The Annual Reminder was organized by the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), an umbrella organization of gay and lesbian groups in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The name came from "reminding" America that gays and lesbians did not share in the liberty the holiday celebrated.

The first Annual Reminder took place in 1965 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, as one of a series of demonstrations protesting government policies that considered gays and lesbians to be security risks, and unfit for both military and civilian employment.

While ECHO also picketed the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department in 1965, the Philadelphia protest became an annual tradition, with conservatively-dressed gays and lesbians marching a stone's throw from the Liberty Bell on Independence Day five years in a row.

Organizer Franklin Kameny, a long-time homophile activist and organizer of Mattachine Society-Washington, insisted that the women wear dresses and the men wear suits and ties. Protesters wore "Equality for Homosexuals" buttons and carried signs with slogans such as "Sexual Preference is Irrelevant to Federal Employment.”

The 1969 Annual Reminder came days after a series of clashes between police and gays in New York City, sparked by a raid at the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village. Most of the forty or so New York gays and lesbians

who had chartered a bus to join the Annual Reminder had "liberation" on their minds, not "equality."

The activists who wanted to maintain the decorum of previous Annual Reminders objected when a pair of lesbians were seen holding hands. Kameny tried to separate the pair, much to the dismay of the gay liberationists. Craig Rodwell, a New York activist who had proposed the Annual Reminder in the first place, was furious and led the New Yorkers in breaking the "rules" of the Annual Reminder. For the rest of the demonstration, the New York activists paired off and held hands in same-sex couples.

Rodwell engineered a resolution that passed at the November 1969 ECHO Conference to replace the Annual Reminder with a new, annual demonstration shifted a week earlier to commemorate "the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street." The resolution dubbed the New York City protest "Christopher Street Liberation Day" and urged other cities to form their own, parallel demonstrations on the same day.

The new protest was inspired by the broader goals and more confrontational tactics of the burgeoning gay liberation movement, in contrast to the public but polite protests of the homophile movement of the previous decade.

New York's first Christopher Street Liberation Day march was a part of a "Gay Pride Week" of activities including dances, political meetings, and an erotic art show. The march itself, on Sunday, June 28, 1970, visibly reflected the liberationist style, including shirtless, long-haired marchers, "Gay Power" signs, and open drug use. As with any march, crowd estimates vary widely, but perhaps five to ten thousand gays participated in the New York demonstration, with hundreds more in Los Angeles and Chicago.

The next year, the number of participants at the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago

FINALLY!! THE SUN'S OUT! THE PATIO IS OPEN! IT'S TIME TO HANG OUT AT THE HI & DRY! LUNCH... DINNER... JAZZ. JAZZ... ART WALK... JUST A COOL PLACE

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demonstrations grew sharply, and marches were added in Boston, New Orleans, and other cities. Since then, events have been organized in every major city in America, some of which have continued the march/ parade tradition, and some of which are more of a picnic or a festival. The issues most visibly represented in the pride events have varied widely, from opposing Anita Bryant in 1978 to supporting gays in the military in 1993.

But contemporary gay pride events still

draw on elements of both the bold but conservative Annual Reminder and the confrontational, celebratory Christopher Street Liberation Day. ♡

David Bianco, M.A., teaches gay and lesbian history and politics at the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education in West Hollywood, Calif. If there's anything about the history of gays or lesbians you've always wondered about, contact him through his Email address: AriBianco@aol.com.

Amendment 2 struck down

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not before the court and Colorado does not have a sodomy law on its books.

Lambda director Kevin Cathcart said of the dissent, "Scalia's harsh and ugly words may have helped push the majority to six of nine justices his tone, his use of the German term Kulterkampf to the allegation that gay people are disproportionately wealthy and influential-echos what is plain in the content of the dissent: his opinion is on the extreme political right and outside of the mainstream of this country. We are celebrating signs that, on gay equality, the center is with us."

The effect on Issue 3

The impact of Romer will most immediately be felt in the city of Cincinnati, whose Issue 3 initiative banning legal protections for gays was appealed to the Supreme Court in conjunction with the Colorado amendment. The ballot initiative campaigns in both cities were filled with the same "No Special Rights" rhetoric the Supreme Court rejected as illegitimate 'animus,' and the similarity of the two campaigns was no coincidence: Colorado for Family Values contributed $390,000 of the $525,000 spent by its ally anti-gay forces in Ohio to pass Issue 3.

The Supreme Court must still decide whether to hear the Cincinnati case, or whether to send Equality Foundation v. Cincinnati back to the Sixth District federal appeals court in Cincinnati to be reconsidered in light of the Romer decision.

"Cincinnati's amendment is a clone of Colorado's and we expect the court to send it, dead on arrival, to the Sixth Circuit," said Patricia Logue, managing attorney for Lambda's Midwest regional office in Chicago, and co-counsel on the case along with

Lambda's Suzanne Goldberg, the ACLU of Ohio, and attorneys Alphonse A. Gerhardstein and Richrad Cordray.

Gay rights legal advocates across the country recognize that the "constitutional shield" the Supreme Court just gave gays establishes historically powerful precedent. The legal victory "will affect all cases involving discrimination against lesbians and gay men," predicted Beatrice Dohrn, legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "Directly and indirectly, this week's 6-3 ruling works a profound change in the battle for civil rights by stating that the Constitutution forbids singling out lesbians and gay men for discrimination," she said.

"Romer hits home in Utah, where the legislature made a law based on dislike of a gay-idenitifed group," says Jon Davidson of Lambda's Western Regional Office.

"Romer reinforces arguments that government cannot empower private prejudice by letting it decide basic civil rights," added Lambda lawyer Patricia Logue, who is currently challenging a custody decision against a lesbian mother in Illinois.

"Romer should help undermine Tennessee's defense of [its sodomy law] and aid challenges to other sodomy prohibitions, particularly in the six states that prohibit only same-sex sexual conduct," predicted Lamda attorney Suzanne Goldberg.

Gay rights activists stress, however, that even though gays now have new legal tools to use in future court challenges, many important battles are far from over. Suzanne B. Goldberg of Lambda cautioned that "While we are elated with the ruling, Americans should understand that in Colorado and 40 other states, lesbians and gay men remain without statewide anti-discrimination protections. This ruling simply leaves us free to continue to fight for anti-discrimination laws in our states cities and towns." ♡

TO HANG OUT PBS to air Audre Lorde film

HI & DRY IN 2207' W. 11th 621-6166 IN TREMONT

Just in time for Pride month, PBS's Point of View series will be showing a film by about the late poet and gay rights activist Audre Lorde.

A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde is a moving portrait of this fiercely passionate American visionary who believed that "liberation is not the private province of any one particular group."

Lorde died of breast Audre Lorde cancer in 1992, leav-

ing behind over a dozen poetry collections, six books of prose and a rich legacy of her work for the civil rights of lesbians, gays and African Americans. She was the founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and a professor at Hunter College in New York City. She was mentor to generations students and activists who were inspired by her example.

Over the last two years of her life, Lorde collaborated to make the film with filmmak-

ers Ada Gay Griffin, one of her former students, and Michelle Parkerson, a writer and filmmaker from Washington D.C.

The film will air in Cleveland on WVIZ channel 25 at midnight June 18, in Columbus at 10:00 pm on WOSU, in Cincinnati on WCET at 11:30 pm June 21, Toledo on WGTE channel 30 at 10:00 pm on June 18, and possibly in Bowling Green on the PBS station as well. Check your local listings for possible changes.