I love going to the [Gay] Pride parade every year. I think my first was probably in Chicago in 1978, nine years after the Stonewall riots that the parade commemorates--but who remembers that?--and probably seven or eight years after the first Pride parade in New York City.
Pride Parades are traditionally held in the summer, celebrating the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June, 1969, but Atlanta has held its Pride parade in October for a number of years now. The city’s most central park, Piedmont Park (a Frederick Law Olmsted design) is the preferred venue for all festivals, but the drought of recent years has stressed the grounds and has made it necessary to spread the festivals over a longer period of time. Pride tried a change of venue one year, but quickly accepted an October date and returned to Piedmont Park.
On the one hand, the Pride Parade is always the same parade--there are the
hot, boys wearing little more than their youth gyrating to the boom, boom, boom of dance music; there are the men in leather and the drag queens. On the other hand, the parade a way to take a quick read of what’s on the collective mind of the GLBTQ community. I can remember years when AIDS was the issue, and years when AZT as an AIDS treatment was. I remember the year Matthew Shepard was murdered. The parade is often defined by a topic. This year, the topic was marriage. Seems we’ve gotten ourselves stuck, using one word, “marriage,” for both a legal arrangement and a religious sacrament. We needed two words. Just as every child at birth is required by the state to be issued a birth certificate, all couples, of whatever persuasion, who want to enter into a legally binding union should be issued a certificate of civil union by the state. And just as that infant, may, as its parents desire, be baptized, so couples, if they wish the church (or the temple, or the synagogue) to bless their union, should have the option of getting married. But marriage is a fight that should be fought between celebrants and their respective churches. Legal equality should not be an issue, and should not be confused with “marriage.”
But enough on our misguided rhetorical strategies. Back to the parade. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a perennial presence, embodying both an insouciant disregard for authority and convention and an utterly serious dedication to social causes. As the Sisters themselves put it: “an order of 21st-century nuns
dedicated to the manifestation of cosmic joy through freedom of expression, charitable acts, community outreach, and social activism.”
In recent years, in addition to the Sisters, there has also been a contingent of angels at the parade. They are silent as they march, and I have watched them surround obnoxious homophobe “preachers,” the angels spreading wings to effectively wall the hate mongers off from the crowd. The dignity of this group, and the visual effect of the sun coming through their white costumes, never fails to move me to tears.
For an album of photos from the 2013 Atlanta Pride Parade,
click here. Photos can be viewed as a slide show by double-clicking the first photo in the album, then using the arrow keys in the upper left of the screen to scroll through.
