“Pride Comes in Many Colors”

Chapter Four continues the comparison of contemporary Pride parades from the previous chapter, focusing on the differences between the various expressions of Pride across the United States. While pursuing a common model of cultural change, each parade promotes visibility, support, and celebration using symbols and messages adapted to their local cultural contexts. When the level of tolerance varies, so too does the expression of identities defying the heteronormative cultural code. Additionally, through their variation Pride parades deal differently with the three identified issues – visibility, support, celebration - that began in the phenomenon’s early years. With still unsettled debates, Pride parades wrestle with provocative displays, commercialization, and maintaining a sense of purpose amid the festivity.

“We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It!”

Chapter Three describes the similarities and differences among contemporary Pride parades. While varying greatly in size and local cultural climate, Pride parades have in common the messages of visibility, support, and celebration of LGBT identity. As a cultural protest, Pride parades deliver these new cultural meanings through both the words of participants' signs and slogans and their actions of cheering, dancing, and staging such a parade. The promotion of these meanings are mainly outside-in as opposed to an inside-out model of cultural change. By sharing common messages, signals and symbols, the celebrations act as expressions of a shared cultural movement and solidarity.

“Unity in Diversity”

Chapter Two investigates the expansive success of Pride celebrations following the initial events of 1970. After introducing the new and exciting Pride events, the phenomenon grew in size and crystallized in form within the next decade. As more and more people participated in their events, Pride organizers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago balanced the interests of activists, entertainers, businesses, and unaffiliated gays and lesbians. Seeing successful Pride marches in these cities, community leaders in Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, and Detroit held their own events. As the phenomenon grew, organizers and participants faced questions over representation, commercial influence, and frivolity that are still debated today. In this chapter, the author describes how Pride established itself in its early years as an annual parade promoting visibility and acceptance of the gay and lesbian (and later bisexual and transgender) community.

“We Are Family”

Chapter Five extends beyond the protest aspect of Pride, examining the lively and communal characteristics of the celebrations. Pride parades are not just about challenging cultural stigmatization, they are also about building LGBT community by having fun together. Parades bring the small, sometimes hidden LGBT segment of the population together both physically and emotionally and give many a welcome release from everyday hostile culture. In Chapter Five, the author shows how Pride’s central messages of visibility, celebration, and support work simultaneously to challenge external power and foster community.

From “Gay Is Good” to “Unapologetically Gay”

Building on ideas introduced in the introduction, the author delves deeper into the history of Pride in Chapter One. Exploring the first Pride parades in major cities across the United States, the author examines archival newspaper reports and personal interviews with participants at these first events. In doing so, the author shows how the participants initiated the model of protest that characterizes Pride today by targeting cultural, rather than political change. With a focus on the parades of New York and Los Angeles in 1970, this chapter outlines the beginning of Pride as a moment of elation and celebration but also a significant historical moment of protest; by marching through the public streets, refusing the censor their gay identities, the participants challenged and destabilized the heteronormative cultural code. These initial marches thus acted as catalysts for more Pride celebrations, initiating the tradition of Pride.

Conclusion

The author concludes this book by looking to the future of Pride. Over forty years since the first Pride events, the Pride phenomenon continues to grow. Every year established parades grow larger and new parades are founded. At the same time LGBT people find greater cultural acceptance as the stigmatization of homosexuality and gender transgression lessens. As their object of protest dissipates, will Pride parades go the way of St. Patrick's Day events–benign celebrations of caricatured identity–or will they continue to push boundaries? By looking to what Pride parades tell us about collective protest for cultural change, this conclusion answers this question.

Introduction

Opening with a brief examination of a contemporary Pride parade – along with its associated assets and challenges, such as religious protesters disrupting the celebration of queer identities – this chapter introduces the idea of Pride as an (unconventional) image of protest. The author argues that despite its festive and celebratory aspects, Pride is an effective tactic to illicit social change by targeting cultural ideas and norms rather than the state, which is typically the target of traditional political protest. Defining terms such as heteronormativity and Pride, the author begins to trace the history of Pride parades from their conception in the early 1970s to the contemporary celebrations occurring across the globe.