LESBOMANIA Turning the corner
I was just thinking about my first pride parade. I can still recall the two cute young dykes who walked at the very front of the parade, smiling proudly and defiantly, holding up a large handwritten sign that flapped in the wind, "11th Annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade."
That was in 1980. Doesn't time fly? This year's parade is the 41st, so it marks my 30th anniversary of participating in this biggest, most visible, most flamboyant, most inclusive, most in-your-face-excuse-to-party of all our annual community events. Except for last year when I was in San Francisco for Pride Day ( and for the world premiere of the lesbian film Hannah Free at the Castro ) , and the year I was in Paris for EuroPride, I've attended—and usually marched in—every Chicago Pride Parade since.
That first year, I wasn't even sure I'd gotten the time and place right. I sat waiting on a bench a few blocks north of Belmont on Broadway, and nobody was gathering, much less staking out beach chairs and umbrellas along the curb like they do today. About 15 minutes after the official kickoff time, I saw the first sign of gay visibility: two handsome young men walking down the street together carrying pink balloons that said "GAY" on them. Suddenly, it became Magic Hour, and the air began to crackle with anticipation, as a smattering of same-sex couples appeared out of nowhere, like fireflies after sunset, along the parade route.
My plan was to watch the parade, and then when my cohorts from the lesbian newspaper Blazing Star came by, I'd jump in and march with them. This worked out well; my friends were near the end of the parade, so I got to see most of it before they arrived, about an hour later. As soon as I began marching, somebody handed me a placard to carry. It said, "Gay Civil Rights is Only The Beginning." Hey, that sure turned out to be true!
Someone near me was carrying a big photo of then-famous Anita Bryant, whose vile homophobic remarks had sparked a large gay protest in Chicago in 1977. She was still a right-wing anti-gay mouthpiece. Under the photo it said, "What she really needs is a good woman." Many people along the parade route got a huge kick out of that sign, took pictures of it, and shouted and laughed their approval. It was like some archaic form of HoYay.
How can I describe the homespun tone of the parades back then? There was more bravery, more anger, more paranoia, more risk, and of course far fewer people.The sing-along repertoire of the marchers included "If you're gay and you know it, clap your hands" and the old standby, "We are a gentle, angry people, and we are singing, singing for our lives." What we lacked in sophistication, we made up for in sincerity. There were no convertibles full of waving politicians. No government organizations. No national celebrities ( there were no openly LGBT celebrities anywhere, never mind straight celebrity allies, and the acronym LGBT wouldn't even be invented for years to come ) . No media floats for radio or television stations. No companies that wanted their products to be in any way associated, heaven forbid, with gay consumers.
There was no PFLAG yet. No Howard Brown. Dr. Ron Sable was in the parade; he was one of the few out gay doctors in the Chicago area. ( It would be three years before anyone had ever heard of AIDS, and seven years before Sable, who co-founded Cook County Hospital's AIDS unit, would run for political office. ) There was no LGBT Chamber of Commerce. No organizations for LGBT professionals, with the possible exception—I can't recall now—of librarians, who organized very early on.
People did imaginative things within their limitations. Some marched with signs around their necks like "Gay Lawyer" and also wore paper bags, with eyeholes cut out, over their heads—simultaneously hiding and protesting the fact that they had to stay hidden. These were the brave ones, who dared to march at all. People were genuinely and justifiably afraid of being found out and fired, or evicted, or shunned, or physically attacked. One woman constructed a life-size "closet" from big cardboard boxes she taped together, that said "Gay Teacher" on the front, and marched inside it with only her feet showing.
There were people who were afraid to even attend the parade, as if the mere act of watching it somehow "tainted" them as gay or lesbian. A few people along the route, believe it or not, asked who we were and what we were marching about—since they couldn't figure it out by looking at us, apparently—and were shocked speechless when we told them.
Yes ma'am, there were motorcycles. There were fabulous drag queens. There were leathermen. Some things don't change. Back then there were also lots of radical lesbians. There were little left-wing groups like the Revolutionary Socialists and the New American Movement. There were gay and lesbian groups that were forerunners of our modern political organizations, notably IGLTF ( Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force ) , and small social and artistic groups, and groups like the Lesbian Community Center, and probably a lot more that I don't remember. Mostly, it was bars. Though music has changed, and fashion has changed, and individuals have come and gone, buff young men gyrating on a fringed platform is emblematic of pride anywhere in time and space. And as we passed gay bars along the route, the crowds would swell, spilling out of the doors to cheer us on. ( Straight bars had not yet gotten into the spirit of the thing, even though their beer sales must have been better than usual that day. )
The route has changed since, but in 1980 the parade marched down Clark Street to Fullerton, then made a left turn into the park. That intersection was kind of a bottleneck, and had the largest crowds of people—many on the raised sidewalk next to the Chalet, and hanging over the balcony of the parking lot of the corner building, about two stories above street level. As we got near the turn, for no apparent reason, a great cheer began to swell among the big standing crowd, and banners were waved with a sudden burst of new energy; all us marchers cheered back, and there was a huge, surging roar of approval from marchers and spectators alike that seemed to amplify and echo off the walls of the tall apartment buildings. It was moving, inspiring, wonderful. A few people around me laughed or cried for joy.
I thought there had to be more than ten thousand people—maybe even as many as twenty thousand—gathered that day. A speaker at the rally in the park said that a half-million people were expected to be participating in pride parades across the country. A half-million! Wow! We were deeply impressed. ( Last year's parade attracted an estimated half-million people in Chicago alone. )
For those of us who have been gay rights advocates for twenty years or more, it's easy to feel like veterans of some historic cultural war of yesteryear, long since won. But that's wishful thinking, or worse, complacency. Though we've certainly turned a corner, and things have changed dramatically—we've achieved a great deal more than I'd even dared to imagine back in 1980—the struggle is far from over.
I've listened to the complaints about our parades: too commercialized, too mainstream, too straight, too gay, too outrageous, too conservative, too frivolous, too serious, too crazy, too naked, too crowded! I've heard this for years now, but in the end I have to say fuck it, honey; the more the merrier, the bigger the better, and hello and thank you for the product placement. I've heard arguments from contrarians and queer studies careerists about how the concept of pride itself is now "shameful" or backward or unnecessary, but I don't buy that intellectually smarmy, anti-activist, "post-gay" rhetoric.
Lulled by the comfort of all that's been gained over the years, it's easy to dismiss the fact that around the world, LGBT people are still suffering—persecuted, hiding, fearful, and even murdered—for being who they are and loving each other. We celebrate Pride Sunday not only to bask in our well-deserved victory over the closet and to engage in our unquenchable desire to party together, but also to honor the hopes and dreams and courage of still-silenced LGBT people everywhere. So I say: May our LGBT pride parades continue, to gaily march and strut and sing and dance and amuse and float and wave placards and shout and be out, until homophobia is once and for all wiped off the face of the earth.
Jorjet Harper is the author of Lesbomania and Tales From the Dyke Side. She was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1998.
