2023-06-26 02:31:06
A crowd participates in the LGBTQ+ Pride march on Sunday, June 25, 2023, in New York City. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/APAnMarie Rodgers, right, and Jennifer Kanenaga kiss during the LGBTQ+ Pride parade on Sunday, June 25, 2023, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)Noah Berger/APFrankie Grande addresses a crowd during the LGBTQ+ Pride parade on Sunday, June 23, 2023, in New York City. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of effusive people danced to disco music on the streets of New York City Sunday as bubbles and confetti rained down on them, and other revelers from Toronto to San Francisco cheered at the climax of the LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
Boisterous New York crowds walked and danced down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, cheering and waving rainbow-colored flags to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riot, in which a police raid on a gay bar sparked days of protests and put into marches the modern movement for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
While some people cheered, many were aware of the growing conservative movement once morest it, including new laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender children.
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“I’m trying not to be too political, but when it goes once morest my community, I feel very, very upset and very hurt,” said Ve Cinder, a 22-year-old transgender woman who traveled from Pennsylvania to participate in the biggest act of the Country Gay Pride.
“I am afraid for my future and for my trans brothers. I am scared by how this country has considered human rights, basic human rights,” she complained. “It’s crazy.”
Parades in New York, Chicago and San Francisco are some of the events taking place this year, orchestrated by some 400 Gay Pride activist organizations across the United States, many of them specifically focused on the rights of transgender people. .
One of the grand marshals of the New York parade is non-binary activist AC Dumlao, chief of staff for Athlete Ally, an activist group for LGBTQ+ athletes.
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“The advancement of the transgender community has always been at the center of our events and programs,” said Dan Dimant, spokesman for the organizers of the New York Gay Pride parade.
The San Francisco parade, another of the largest and best-known LGBTQ+ celebrations in the United States, drew tens of thousands of people to the city on Sunday.
The event, led by the lesbian motorcycle group Dykes on Bikes, featured dozens of colorful floats, some of them with forceful messages once morest the wave of anti-transgender laws in congresses around the country.
Organizers told the San Francisco Chronicle that this year’s theme emphasized activism. The country’s first drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger, participated in the parade.
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“When we walk through the world more authentic and more fabulous, we inspire everyone,” Drollinger said at a pre-show breakfast.
Along Market Street, House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam Schiff were seen strolling together.
In Chicago, a brief rain shower at the start of the parade did not deter attendees, who took shelter under awnings, trees and umbrellas.
“A little rain can’t stop us!” Brandon Johnson, the city’s newly elected mayor, tweeted.
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On Saturday, First Lady Jill Biden took part in the Gay Pride parade in Nashville, Tennessee, telling the crowd “loud and clear that you are a part, that you are beautiful and you are loved.”
Many other cities held their biggest events a few weeks ago, including Boston, which hosted its first parade following a three-year hiatus that began with the COVID-19 pandemic, but which lasted until 2022 because the organization that used to run it quit. dissolved in the face of criticism for excluding racial minorities and transgender people.
A key message this year has been for LGBTQ+ communities to unite once morest dozens, if not hundreds, of bills being considered in Congress across the country.
Lawmakers in 20 states have moved to ban gender-affirming care for children, and at least seven others are considering doing the same, making the transgender community feel more urgent to act, according to advocates.
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“We are under threat,” organizers of the Gay Pride event in New York, San Francisco and San Diego said, in a statement that was also signed by some 50 other LGBTQ+ organizations across the country. “The various dangers we face as LGBTQ community and Gay Pride organizers, while differing in nature and intensity, share one common characteristic: they seek to undermine our love, our identity, our freedom, our security and our lives.”
Associated Press writers Juan Lozano in Houston; Erin Hooley in Chicago; Trân Nguyễn in Sacramento, California; James Pollard in Columbia, South Carolina; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, NJ; Trisha Ahmed in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
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