Originally appeared June 27, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.
As riots go, the June 1969 "Stonewall riot" was a fairly small affair. If we did not have a parade to commemorate it, it would probably not loom large in our collective memory.
But at some point, New York gays, delighted that some of them had stood up to abusive police, decided to hold an annual demonstration to commemorate that fact and promote gay pride.
We know how that came about.
Beginning in 1965, Washington gay activist Dr. Frank Kameny and New York's Craig Rodwell had organized a July 4th "Annual Reminder" picket at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as a reminder that gay Americans were deprived of fundamental human rights.
But in the fall of 1969, a few months after Stonewall, Rodwell, who by then had opened his Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, proposed that the "Annual Reminder" be changed to a New York "demonstration" commemorating gay resistance to be called Christopher Street Liberation Day.
His idea, he wrote, was to encourage gays and lesbians to "affirm our pride, our life-style and our commitment to each other. Despite political and social differences we may have, we are united on this common ground."
He also suggested that gay organizations around the country hold similar demonstrations on the same day: "We propose a nationwide show of support."
The idea spread rapidly. That first year, 1970, both Chicago and Los Angeles held similar marches. San Francisco held a "gay-in" in Golden Gate Park and finally started holding a parade in 1972.
Now virtually every large city and many small ones hold gay pride parades as gays in smaller and smaller cities take the initiative to become publicly visible in their home towns.
Some gays and lesbians criticize the parades, or affect to be "beyond all that." Maybe so, but it is important to keep in mind what the parades accomplish.
-- The parades are an opportunity to gain visibility and publicity for gays even when there is no specific grievance and political goal at stake. They are pro-active rather than reactive, gay-affirming, not gay-defensive.
-- The parades get the attention of politicians and the mass media (newspapers, television). Neither group would believe there are so many gays and lesbians if not for the parades. That forces them to take us more seriously when we do have an issue.
The Stonewall riot itself got six short paragraphs deep inside The New York Times but the first gay pride parade made the front page. Out of the closets and into the headlines.
-- The parades show the general public the fundamental normality of most gays and lesbians. Except for the occasional drag queen, most of the people in the parade look pretty much like their friends and neighbors.
Conservative gays and lesbians sometimes fear that men in leacher jock straps or go-go boys in day-glo bikinis harm "our" image. But except for religious zealots who dislike us anyway, spectators are probably more impressed that the men are healthy, good looking and in such good shape.
-- The parades give a wide variety of gay groups an annual chance to publicize themselves and push their members to be more open by participating in the parade
And the sheer variety of non-sexual gay interest groups has to impress anyone watching: from Presbyterians to softball leagues, from high school students to parents of gays, from interracial couples to political groups.
-- But most of all, the parades enable gays to see lots of other gays, more gays than they have seen anywhere else, more than they can imagine seeing. That can be enormously encouraging, inspiring and even deeply moving for many gays and lesbians.
It is, in fact, one of our chief "recruiting" techniques.
According to Nagourney and Clendinen's "Out for Good," that first march in New York started off from Greenwich Village with just a few hundred people. But as the marchers walked rapidly up Sixth Avenue they would recognize friends watching from the sidelines and urge them to join.
When march leaders reached Central Park and mounted a bluff overlooking the grassy Sheep Meadow area, they looked back "and behind them - stretching out as far as they could see - was line after line after line of homosexuals and their supporters, at least 15 blocks worth. ...
"No one had ever seen so many homosexuals in one place before. On top of the bluff, many of these men and women, who had grown up so isolated and alone, stood in silence and cried."
Notice the logic of the argument here. The parade is what is important, not the "riot." Stonewall was an excuse for the march, but the decision to have a march was the key element in producing the rapid proliferation of gay visibility and activism that followed.
Remember that the next time someone criticizes the parade. No gay person must ever feel alone again.