Chicago gay pride parade glows in its growing acceptance - Gay community's parade celebrates its 40th anniversary

Chicago gay pride parade glows in its growing acceptance - Gay community's parade celebrates its 40th anniversary
By Rex W. Huppke
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
June 29, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-gay-pride-parade-29-jun29,0,6022615.story


Gay pride marched Sunday in Chicago, noisy and joyous. It was the crash of marching band cymbals, the megaphoned whoops of celebration, the sirens, the car horns and the ground-shaking roar of Harleys straddled by leather-clad women unabashed.

It was smiling faces striped in rainbow colors, sweaty brows turned to face a cool summer breeze, women hand-in-hand, men kissing men, children on the shoulders of straight parents, dazzled by the flags and shimmering floats and dancers that filled North Halsted Street.

Pride was remarkable on Sunday, tens of thousands drawn together to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a parade that, when it first happened, was barely a parade at all.

Those in Chicago's first gay pride parade in 1970 were just a bold but loosely organized stream of activists and drag queens who marched the sidewalk along North Halsted Street, shouting and vamping for gay rights.

They did it again the next year and the next. People driving past would gape, a few might cheer from storefronts.

But each year it grew.

Now the parade consumes the street with color and sound. The sidewalk is for spectators, so many that metal barricades are linked together to keep them at bay.

Often lost in the carnival atmosphere is the reason those first women and men stepped out of the closet when it was dangerous to admit you were anything but straight.

The first gay pride parades -- here and across the country -- came the year after the Stonewall riots of 1969, when gays and lesbians stood up to New York City police outside a Greenwich Village bar, birthing the gay rights movement.

Sunday's parade displayed the cumulative impact of that movement. The traditionally flamboyant floats of bare-chested men and near-bare-chested women were flanked by floats carrying straight politicians and gay and lesbian police officers, church groups and, for the first time, a coalition of parents -- gay, straight and lesbian -- from a Chicago public school.

The parade now pulls the curtain back on Chicago's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community and shows its diversity: Republicans and Democrats; Christians and atheists; buttoned-down businesspeople and outlandish artists.

David Sinski gazed down at the river of humanity on North Halsted Street from the third-floor balcony of the Center on Halsted, a GLBT community center, the very idea of which was once impossible to imagine.

"Twenty years ago, this was a very solitary event," said Sinski, 46. "You'd come along with like-minded people. But now there are so many straight people, politicians, corporations, youth groups. Now there are so many things that just aren't questioned. It's much more of a celebration."

Nettelhorst Elementary School parents marched near the front of the parade, leaving behind a wave of bubbles. One kid-filled wagon was topped with a sign that read: "School is out and so are my dads."

Veterans marched, some in full uniform.

There were straight parents with gay kids and gay parents with straight kids and an undeniable sense that, at least in this swath of Chicago on this day, people could be wholly themselves.

Cynthia Lafuente, embraced by a girlfriend from Texas, felt that way: "We can just be free. No worries, no judgments."

Nikki Carlton came out when she was 16. She's now 52 and drove in from Glen Ellyn not so much to see the floats and dancers but to immerse herself in the spirit of the parade: "This shows there's growing acceptance. I think, over the years, this has widened people's eyes about us. They see us as people, as not threatening. They come here and realize we won't turn them gay."

Over three hours, nearly 240 entrants followed the parade route, cheered on by crowds that clogged sidewalks and jammed the balconies of apartments above. At times multicolored confetti rained down and colorful beads were tossed about and balloons drifted off.

Pride was noisy and joyous on Sunday, messy and unpredictable, colorful and exhausting, 40 years old and going strong.

rhuppke@tribune.com