Politics, parties and dancing

Boystown thronged for annual Pride Parade

07/01/2009 10:00 PM

By IAN FULLERTON
Contributing Reporter

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Pride ’09
In a marching whirlwind of color, sound and spirit, last weekend’s annual Pride Parade on the city’s North Side was celebrated en masse by a lively procession of activists, politicians, commercial entities and party-goers alike.
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Held in observance of a group that once struggled for acceptance, the 40-year-old LGBT rights parade saw virtually no group — minority or majority — unaccounted for last Sunday. An estimated crowd of 500,000 were in attendance, according to police sources.

The parade, held along Halsted, Broadway and Diversey in Boystown featured floats, performers and marchers from a wide range of organizations, including the Broadway Youth Center, the LGBTQ Association of the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Service Employees International Union.

Companies such as Google and NBC also marched in support of the LGBT community, and the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid team had a leading presence at the parade, with a float near the front of the pack.

Children, parents and faculty from Nettelhorst Elementary School joined in the procession, with a banner on one of their vehicles reading “School is out and so are my dads.” The grade school was the first of its kind to march in the history of the parade.

The celebration was also graced by a throng of political figures including Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (D-4th), Congressman Mike Quigley (D-5th) and State Representative Sara Feigenholtz (D-12th).

“We’d like to see civil unions passed,” said Brian Wolff, a supporter of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who had a float in the celebration. “Not necessarily church marriages, but we want to have anything else that someone who gets married is entitled to.”

One of the most elaborate floats in the parade was a two-story party-on-wheels presented by the Lake View East Festival of the Arts. The multi-sponsored float, decorated with abstract watercolor images of Abraham Lincoln, featured a DJ performing to a platform of dancers clad in silver bikinis, tuxedos and metallic Lincolnesque top hats.

The parade in Chicago was part of a nationwide commemoration of the New York City Stonewall riots, an incident involving a police raid on a Greenwich Village bar in 1969 that sparked a gay civil rights movement across the country.

While some came to party, others saw the celebration as an opportunity to spread awareness of pressing LGBT issues.

Members of the Gay Liberation Network held up signs calling for repeals to the Defense of Marriage Act, a bill regarded by some as a direct attack on the gay community.

“The main thing is to be treated as citizens, finally, in this country,” said GLN co-founder Andy Thayer.

He noted that, of the more than 1,300 benefits provided in tradition marriages, many are still not made available to same sex couples, even in states such as Massachusetts and Iowa, where gay marriage has recently been legalized.

Thayer also highlighted abstinence-only sexual education programs and violence against gay youth in schools as major hurdles for his community.

“Education about sexuality, so far as gay youth is concerned, has moved backwards over the past decade,” he said.
Solidarity politics, said Thayer, was key to the LGBT agenda moving forward.

“It’s important to remember that the gay community is heterogeneous,” he said. “If we as a minority want to win on these issues, the only way we are going to achieve that is to get solidarity from non-gay people.”

Thayer said the handful of gay and lesbian politicians in office today, such as Congressman Barney Frank, can’t be expected to carry all the weight.

“Change comes from regular folks getting involved, not expecting any politicians, gay or non-gay, to do it for us,” he said.

All struggles aside, the parade, for some, was simply a chance to celebrate what had been achieved.

“We dance for ourselves,” said Alan Miller, director of the Windy City Cowboys, who stole the show toward the front of the parade. Twenty strong, the men square-danced in matching flannels, jeans and cowboy hats, in-step with country music blasted from the back of a nearby truck.

The cowboys, now in their second year at the parade, normally dance at Charlie’s Bar, a gay country and western establishment in Boystown. Miller said the group often performs for the Illinois Gay Rodeo Association, who were represented a few floats back.

“We aren’t a political group,” said fellow cowboy Steven Kellert. “We’re just a bunch of gay guys who like to dance.”


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