Some LBGTQ activists and community organizers have criticized the corporatization of Pride, as parades look to businesses for sponsorship to help with the financial demands of rapidly growing crowds. “I think Pride is a vehicle for LGBT groups to make the issues of the day heard both in their own community and in the wider civic community to which they belong,” Bruce reflects - adding that in recent years, campaigns for racial justice and transgender rights have become more prominent. During the summer of 2010, Bruce did contemporary research for her book, attending six different Pride parades across the U.S., including one in San Diego, home to the nation’s largest concentration of military personnel, where campaigning was concentrated on repealing the “ don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The early 2000s then saw greater campaigning for same-sex marriage. (President Barack Obama broadened the definition in 2008, when he issued a proclamation that the month of June be commemorated as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.) While the Stonewall anniversary had long provided the timing for annual Pride events, President Bill Clinton issued a proclamation in 1999 that every June would be Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in the U.S. Where in the 1980s, groups organized around the AIDS crisis, the 1990s saw greater media visibility for LGBTQ people in public life, leading to more businesses starting to come on board for Pride participation. To Bruce, Pride shows how the LGBTQ community has been able to consistently demand action and visibility around the issues of the day. “I really felt like I owed it to us, as in the queer ‘us,’ to start just photographing who I knew and who I thought was worthy of being remembered,” says Stellar, who has an upcoming digital exhibition hosted by Kapp Kapp Gallery, with 10% of proceeds going to support the Marsha P. By this time, Stellar had a large circle of queer friends and started making more photos of the community to document their every day lives. But as that decade got underway, the tone of the events shifted, as the tragedies of the AIDS crisis became central to actions and demonstrations.
Although the LGBTQ community had pushed back against police discrimination in several other smaller occasions in the late 1960s in cities like San Francisco and L.A., Stonewall cut through in an unprecedented way.īy 1980, Pride parades had taken place around the world in cities like Montreal, London, Mexico City and Sydney.
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The Stonewall Uprising took place over a series of nights at the end of June 1969. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter “That was the epicenter of the gay world,” he says of the early years of Pride. But, over the decades, Pride parades have evolved in a way that goes beyond the number of participants - and, having photographed five decades worth of them, Stellar has seen that evolution firsthand. In a year when large gatherings are prevented by the coronavirus and many Pride events have been cancelled or postponed, over 500 Pride and LGBTQIA+ community organizations from 91 countries will participate in Global Pride on June 27. in 1970, a year after the uprising at the Stonewall Inn that many consider to be the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ liberation movement.
That unstoppable spirit is now marking its 50th anniversary: the first Pride parades took place in the U.S. When people would taunt us, cars would drive by and spit at us, yell at us constantly, Marsha would be there, looking outrageous and glorious in her own aesthetic, and she would say ‘pay them no mind.’ That’s what the ‘P’ is for, is ‘pay them no mind, don’t let them stop us.’” “There were marchers too - very brave souls with signs, like Marsha P. “It started as a small social thing,” Stellar, now 75, recalls.