State LGBT leaders weigh in: After 40 years, has Pride run its course?

I’ve come to think of Pride Weekend as a celebration of the achievements and struggles that each of us that identifies as GLBTQ has endured. When you sit to watch the Ashley Rukes Pride Parade or visit Jean Tretter in the history pavilion you are witnessing a world of hurt that is finally coming full circle in just allowing us as a group to organize such an event. Yes, it has it’s cheesetastic moments with naked men in barrels running about and drag queens leaving glitter in their wake, but anyone who has ever been frightened to say out loud who they really are knows that this one weekend a year is just for them.

Gay prides have definitely not run their course…

There’s still so much value to the communities they serve.

Take, for example, Pine City, Minn., whose gay pride has now inspired two otherwise-isolated, rural Minnesota communities (Willmar and Brainerd) to begin to form a pride community for the first time. If one loses the meaning behind pride, I’d encourage them to visit one of these rural prides to understand their value.

If for no other reason…

…every year there are new people of all ages coming out and coming to Pride for the first time. It’s a big welcome to the clup party. Everyone under 40 think back to your first pride.

Well, go Pride!

But, er, 400,000 people?

They really expect one in ten adult Minnesotans – 1/5 of the entire metro, a bigger crowd than all of Minneapolis – to turn out for it?

I’m sorry, Andy, but that figure doesn’t pass the stink test.

Organizers put the estimate at 450,000. It’s a big magnet event for gays, lesbians and supporters across the upper midwest. Third biggest in the country.

Huh. Won’t be able to buy a damn mojito anywhere.

Actually Mitch, the Minneapolis Fire Department gives those numbers to the Pride committee. It’s based on their observations that they make while making their inspections of the park during the 3-day event.

I do fully understand the concern that maybe pride has lost its way from its original radical roots. However, one cannot observe pride in this way. If pride were to remain true to its roots, it would be a yearly riot – nobody wants that. The mere fact that the festival has gone from a violent riot against oppression, to a joyful parade, where gays, lesbians,bisexuals, transsexuals and others, including many straight people, like myself, attend in support of one singular cause; is truly e testament to what the festival is all about, and it is a tribute to those of the past who most certainly dreamed of a world (although still very flawed, but in comparison, not so much) where gays were less marginalized and more accepted.

I know that there are still problems, but there is no reason to concentrate on those for one weekend that is supposed to be about celebrating accomplishments. And by being marginalized for all this time, there has been a greater unity in the community, which all comes to a head at pride. Personally, I don’t think that people of homosexual persuasion fully appreciate the communities that have come from the marginalization.

I just started writing a new book today regarding a matter of personal envy toward gay communities across the country. As a straight male, I’ve been a staunch supporter of gay rights for many years, and hence attend pride every year. And what I leave with year after year is a matter of envy of the unity within the community either through parades and celebrations, or through simple matters of symbolism. I see none of this in straight communities. When there are rallies or anything along the lines in straight communities, it’s usually about anger amongst one another or about outsiders, often gays. When I enter mainly gay communities, I see unity, money, people who look and smell nice, clean streets, rainbows everywhere, clean parks, and so on. When I enter straight communities (my own is one of few exceptions, as it costs far too much to live here) I don’t see this same sense of community and unity. You don’t see it in any other minority communities either.

I guess, yearly at pride, I feel as though I’m home, and again, I’m straight. For a while it confused me as to why I felt this way. Until I finally understood it two years ago, and it was everything I just said. I’m not trying to shamelessly promote my book here, it’s just a message that I’ve wanted to get out since then. And in this way it pertains to pride, namely the parade, because instead of bitching about how it’s lost its original intent, one should look at the fact that it has as a testament to how far it’s gone. Personally, I prefer pride with a smile. If you want violent looting and violence, go to a straight community. It’s here all year round.

I think Pride can be all of the positive things others have mentioned without being a huge, corporate, consumerist festival of capitalism. There is no reason for every radio station in town to be in the parade, except for their own self-promotion. There is no reason for major corporations to have huge tents handing out free samples of their products except for their own self promotion.

Once upon a time only queer organizations and queer-owned businesses were willing to pay for a Pride booth. It was a wonderful, political, joyous community event whether it was your first or your twentieth. It could be again, if only queer organizations and businesses were allowed to be in the parade or to have booths.

Yes, Pride has evolved, and I pine for the days when there was a political ramification for coming together. Why couldn’t it continue to evolve to include a march for our basic queer rights? That is what has been missing in my desire to attend Pride [this year I went to one Queer Takes film @ Walker, and that was my level of participation]. Ultimately, each of us gets to choose how we participate, so it’s up to the individual to make the celebration hir own. I would like the option to celebrate ~ AND ~ make a difference.

I’ve been going to our Pride Fest for years and I’ve seen the evolution from the small gathering of a few groups sharing potluck meals and gay owned and operated businesses promoting their wares and services and asking the community to support them, to the huge event that it is today. There was a time when those corporate sponsors wanted nothing to do with us, much less acknowledge they had glbt employees who were not treated equally in the workplace. Now, thanks to the changes we have effected with our protests, our lobbying, our marches, as well as our annual Pride celebration, those same corporations have glbt employee groups with their own events and activities. They offer same-sex couples health coverage and welcome us at their events. Within these companies, and many other places, we’ve been heard, we’ve been taken seriously, and these are just some of the results of all the work we’ve done so far.

We still have a long way to go though. There are plenty of reasons to still be just as radical as we ever were. That said, I still think, in the midst of all that work that so many of us do to further our campaign for equality, it’s important, even necessary, to take the time and effort so many of us put forth to celebrate who we are and what we have accomplished, to welcome the new ones to the fold, to honor those who have gone before, to give hope to those still living with fear, to look to the future and what we have yet to do, and to be enlivened and invigorated by coming together at Pride Fest each year as the diverse family and friends that we are and have become during our struggle together.

I’m with Marty redWing on this one. It’s gotten waaaaay to commercial and corporatist. Unless Target is willing to get in the human rights trenches with us and fight for marriage equality, I just stand back and say “Meh. It’s about granite counertops and self-important politicians” (with a few positive exceptions).

And Leigh is quite correct to point out that in fact many of our LGBT brethren/sistren (and transen?) are economically marginalized during this commercial hoopla.

As I read about the tragic way that the Fort Worth, TX, police decided to commemorate the Stonewall riot of 1969, I think twin Cities Pride has become totally irrelevant to liberatoin and is just another ill symptom of our national shift from being citizens to just being consumers.

Time to revolt! I hear that San Francisco Pride has allowed a “commercial free” zone there (at the instigation of the radical faeries). I like that idea.

I suppose that I too miss the quaint old days of pride and the Queer only space. I certainly do lean much more toward the sentiments of Red Wing, Eureka, and the Revolting Queers. I don’t place my hopes in the outcome of much that occurs at the MPLS Pride festival. I am inspired by the spread of liberation that occurs in the growth of pride events in ever smaller communities across the country. Indeed around the world. See Pine City Pride. Being a small town boy that fact brings me great joy. I am not fool enough to believe the hype created by all the commercial vendors or that the sheer scale of MPLS Pride gives no momentum to those smaller communities. As far as politics are concerned I must confess it takes much more for me to feel or see political inspiration at 46 than it did at 22. If people are uncomfortable with what is offered as a contemporary Pride Celebration be it in MPLS or anywhere else then alternative proposals need to be made and taken seriously. This is a different generation organizing the MPLS Pride Celebration in 2009 than it was in 1985. It couldn’t be otherwise.