Pride

Pride

Noel Laflin

6-16-17

July 2, 1978 - L.A. Gay Pride March

We carried signs decrying the bigotry of Anita Bryant and John Briggs.  But I was careful to hold my sign directly in front of my face when passing TV cameras.  My boyfriend warned me that the last thing I needed was to be spotted on the six o’clock evening news marching in the L.A. Gay Pride Festival of 1978.  It would end my career, he said.  And if the Boy Scouts of America didn’t fire my ass afterward, Bryant and Briggs would see to it, he added, only half joking.  To lighten the mood, after concluding that joyous, liberating march, we went to dance.

When I came out to my parents a little over a year later, after having just been fired from the BSA for being gay, I remembered Tom’s words.

The L.A. Gay Pride Festival of 1980 was a lot more carefree, however, as I no longer avoided the TV cameras.  I was out to both my family and new employer.  Neither gave a good god damn about where I marched or with whom I danced.

But by the end of the decade, however, Pride festivals around the world took on a much more somber tone.

 

AIDS quilts on display, just outside the large dance venues, saw to that.

In the early nineties I would lie in bed and make notations in the margins of a worn, childhood bible, writing the names of friends and former loves that had died.  I did not want to forget their faces.

I stopped the late night practice after writing Tom’s name in the margin on Christmas Eve, 1992.  I put the bible away.

Despite the times, the festivals continued to draw me in, however, as it was the one place that I could keep track of old and new friends alike, celebrating the fact that we were still alive, and toasting the memory of those who were gone.  And although I no longer felt the need to march, there was still a desperate need to dance.

I have not been to a festival for quite some time now – I leave that to a younger crowd, many of whom are just coming to terms with their own identity and pride of being.  I remember that time well. Supreme Court decisions and a tsunami-like shift in public acceptance toward LGBT folk over the last decade have also eased my desire to march, as I once did in my youth.

But I am glad that the tradition still carries on, as there is always dancing afterward.