"Gay Pride" and I. Today is "Gay Pride Day" in New York City, where the term originated. I know. I originated it.
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In spring 1970 I was part of the committee organizing the first "Christopher Street Liberation Day March" to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. I had lived in New York since 1965 but happened to be out-of-state at the time of the Riots, visiting my sisters in Bellflower, California and attending a summer session at Long Beach State. While there I tried to establish a chapter of Homosexuals Intransigent!, a student organization I had formed on April 1, 1969, almost three full months before the Stonewall Riots, at the City College of the City University of New York. So I was, alas, nowhere near the Stonewall, a bar I had been a regular customer of since its opening, when the Riots erupted.
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By November 1969, however, I was back East, attending a meeting (the last, as it turns out) of the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations in Philadelphia, at which the Student Homophile League of NYU proposed that our various groups join to establish an annual march to celebrate Stonewall.
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In those days, demonstrations by "homophile" groups (the favored term for what are now called "gay and lesbian" or "lesbigay" organizations) ordinarily imposed a dress code on demonstrators to maintain decorum: jacket-and-tie for men; skirts and blouses or sweaters for women. As head of a student group some of whose members may not have owned a sports jacket or tie, I offered an amendment that the March should not have a dress code. I had no idea - none of us had - that the simple absence of a dress code would lead some degenerates to think that grotesque outfits or total nudity would be appropriate for a march intended to inspire self-esteem in gay men and lesbians. Had we known that, I hope we'd have proposed some guidelines for attire. But we didn't anticipate that some marchers would disgrace themselves by strutting about in leather codpieces - and nothing else - or in drag, so took no precaution against that happening.
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Alas, the consequence is that every year, vicious, antihomosexual media zoom in on the weirdos and weirdettes and ignore the overwhelming preponderance of normally dressed and normal-acting gay people at these events.
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In any case, the plan was to hold the March starting at noon on the Sunday of the weekend closest to the date of the Riots. We wanted to involve people from many surrounding cities, not just New Yorkers, many of whom would have to come in the day before because of time constraints. So we asked all New York-based organizations to hold special events that weekend to draw in people and give them something to do other than spend their time in what were then often Mafia-owned bars. To draw all those events together, we wanted a catchy name by which to publicize the specialness of the weekend as to make more people want to participate.
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The first proposal was from "the other Craig", the late Craig Rodwell, a long-time activist I had met years before thru the Mattachine Society, the granddaddy of New York organizations, and in whose apartment I believe it is that we met that week. Craig R. proposed "Gay Power Weekend". I didn't like that. It was too strident, too other-oriented, concerned with making an impression on straight people. I wanted something more positive, inward-looking, celebratory, so suggested "Gay Pride Weekend". Jerry Hoose (of, I believe, the Gay Liberation Front) seconded the motion. And without debate the proposal was adopted. "Gay Pride Weekend" it would be. Next order of business.
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That's all it was at the time, just one item to take care of before the March. No biggie. But it turned out to be an enormous biggie.
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Because even if gay people have no power, they can have pride, and that will make a difference in their lives. And if they feel pride in themselves and their nature, they won't take crap from anybody.
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Before Stonewall homosexuality was, as Oscar Wilde's lover called it, "the love that dare not speak its name", deeply associated with shame and self-loathing. In the decades since, homosexuality has become a positive orientation intimately and unbreakably linked to "pride". That little linguistic link has made a huge impact on the lives of gay (and lesbian) people internally and been a motive force of consequence in producing social and legal change. And I'm the guy who proposed it, 34 years ago.
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We don't always know the origin of terms in popular use. We do know the origin of "Gay Pride". I coined it in spring 1970 for a weekend of events surrounding the first march commemorating the Stonewall Riots. Now you know.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:16 PM