A pride parade (also known as a pride event, pride festival, pride march, pride protest, equality parade, or equality march) is an event where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and their allies celebrate LGBTQ social and self-acceptance, achievements, legal rights, and pride. The events sometimes also serve as demonstrations for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Most occur annually throughout the Western world, while some take place every June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, which was a pivotal moment in modern LGBTQ social movements. The parades seek to create community and honor the history of the movement.
In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall. The events became annual and also grew internationally. In 2019, New York and the world celebrated the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 - WorldPride NYC 2019, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with five million attending in Manhattan alone.
Background
In the 1960s and 1970s a surge of public demonstrations in the US focused on civil rights, anti-war movements, and early LGBTQ+ rights activism. One of the first demonstrations for the cause of gay and lesbian rights was a 1965 "homophile march" by the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis outside the White House, highlighting discrimination in federal employment and advancing LGBTQ+ equality.
Also in 1965, the gay rights protest movement was visible at the Annual Reminder pickets, again organized by members of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis, and the gay men's group Mattachine Society. Mattachine members were also involved in demonstrations in support of homosexuals imprisoned in Cuban labor camps. Early on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969, LGBTQ people rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City.The New York Times, June 29, 1969 The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar which catered to an assortment of patrons, but which was popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, transgender people, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth.
First pride marches
As the movement became more radical in the late 1960s, particularly after the Stonewall Uprising, they were called Gay Liberation or Gay Freedom marches which emphasized demands for full equality and liberation.
On Saturday, June 27, 1970, the Chicago Gay Liberation organized a marchChicago Tribune, June 28, 1970, p. A3 from Washington Square Park ("Bughouse Square") to the Water Tower at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago avenues, which was the route originally planned, and then many of the participants spontaneously marched on to the Civic Center (now Richard J. Daley) Plaza. The date was chosen because the Stonewall events began on the last Saturday of June and because organizers wanted to reach the maximum number of Michigan Avenue shoppers.
The West Coast of the United States saw a march in San Francisco on June 27, 1970, and 'Gay-in' on June 28, 1970 and a march in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970.The San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1970 In Los Angeles, Morris Kight (Gay Liberation Front LA founder), Reverend Troy Perry (Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder) and Reverend Bob Humphries (United States Mission founder) gathered to plan a commemoration. They settled on a parade down Hollywood Boulevard. But securing a permit from the city was no easy task. They named their organization Christopher Street West, "as ambiguous as we could be." But Rev. Perry recalled the Los Angeles Police Chief Edward M. Davis telling him, "As far as I'm concerned, granting a permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers." Grudgingly, the Police Commission granted the permit, though there were fees exceeding $1.5 million. After the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in, the commission dropped all its requirements but a $1,500 fee for police service. That, too, was dismissed when the California Superior Court ordered the police to provide protection as they would for any other group. The eleventh-hour California Supreme Court decision ordered the police commissioner to issue a parade permit citing the "constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression." From the beginning, L.A. parade organizers and participants knew there were risks of violence. Kight received death threats right up to the morning of the parade. Unlike later editions, the first gay parade was very quiet. The marchers convened on Mccadden Place in Hollywood, marched north and turned east onto Hollywood Boulevard. The Advocate reported "Over 1,000 homosexuals and their friends staged, not just a protest march, but a full-blown parade down world-famous Hollywood Boulevard."
On Sunday, June 28, 1970, at around noon, in New York gay activist groups held their own pride parade, known as the Christopher Street Liberation Day, to recall the events of Stonewall one year earlier. On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first gay pride parade to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia.Sargeant, Fred. "1970: A First-Person Account of the First Gay Pride March." The Village Voice. June 22, 2010. retrieved January 3, 2011.
All attendees to the ERCHO meeting in Philadelphia voted for the march except for the Mattachine Society of New York City, which abstained. Members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) attended the meeting and were seated as guests of Rodwell's group, Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN).Duberman, p. 227
Meetings to organize the march began in early January at Rodwell's apartment in 350 Bleecker Street.Nagourney, Adam. "For Gays, a Party In Search of a Purpose; At 30, Parade Has Gone Mainstream As Movement's Goals Have Drifted." New York Times. June 25, 2000. retrieved January 3, 2011. (Archive) At first there was difficulty getting some of the major New York organizations like Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) to send representatives. Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, Michael Brown, Marty Nixon, and Foster Gunnison of Mattachine made up the core group of the CSLD Umbrella Committee (CSLDUC). For initial funding, Gunnison served as treasurer and sought donations from the national homophile organizations and sponsors, while Sargeant solicited donations via the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop customer mailing list and Nixon worked to gain financial support from GLF in his position as treasurer for that organization.Carter, p. 247Teal, p. 323 Other mainstays of the GLF organizing committee were Judy Miller, Jack Waluska, Steve Gerrie and Brenda Howard.Duberman, p. 271 Believing that more people would turn out for the march on a Sunday, and so as to mark the date of the start of the Stonewall uprising, the CSLDUC scheduled the date for the first march for Sunday, June 28, 1970.Duberman, p. 272 With Dick Leitsch's replacement as president of Mattachine NY by Michael Kotis in April 1970, opposition to the march by Mattachine ended.Duberman, p. 314 n93
The first marches were both serious and fun and served to inspire the widening LGBTQ movement; they were repeated in the following years and more and more annual marches started up in other cities throughout the world. In Atlanta and New York City the marches were called Gay Liberation Marches, and the day of celebration was called "Gay Liberation Day"; in Los Angeles and San Francisco they became known as 'Gay Freedom Marches' and the day was called "Gay Freedom Day". As more cities and even smaller towns began holding their own celebrations, these names spread. The rooted ideology behind the parades is a critique of space which has been produced to seem heteronormative and 'straight', and therefore any act appearing to be homosexual is considered dissident by society. The Parade brings this queer culture into the space. The marches spread internationally, including to London where the first "gay pride rally" took place on 1 July 1972, the date chosen deliberately to mark the third anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
In the 1980s, there was a cultural shift in the gay movement. Activists of a less radical nature began taking over the march committees in different cities, and they dropped "Gay Liberation" and "Gay Freedom" from the names, replacing them with "Gay Pride". The term "Gay Pride" was claimed to be coined either by Jack Baker and Michael McConnell, an activist couple in Minnesota, or by Thom Higgins,McConnell Files, "America's First Gay Marriage", binder #7 (MEMORANDUM for the record), Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, U of M Libraries. another gay rights activist in Minnesota.McCONNELL FILES, "Full Equality, a diary", volumes 1a-d (FREE: Gay Liberation of Minnesota), Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, U of M Libraries.
West Asia had its first pride march in 1993 in Israel. The pride march has grown to over 250,000 participants by 2019. In 2017, the first pride march week in the Middle East was established in Lebanon.
The oldest LGBT community center in South Florida Pridelines has been a partner of Miami Beach Pride for more than a decade.
In Southeast Asia, the first pride march was celebrated on June 26, 1994, when 30-50 individuals marched in Quezon City in the Philippines. Less than three decades later, the government rejected an equality legislation, sparking the largest pride march in Southeast Asia, where over 110,000 people in 2023 marched in Quezon City in support of the SOGIE Equality Bill.
East Asia saw its first pride march on August 28, 1994, when a march was held in Tokyo in Japan. The largest ever pride march in the region was held in 2022 when over 120,000 people marched in Taiwan to support equal rights.
The first pride march in South Asia was held on July 2, 1999, in the city of Kolkata in India.
Timeline of first pride marches This table provides a chronological timeline of the established public Pride marches and parades globally. While many countries had earlier private gatherings, indoor festivals, or small-scale protests, this list prioritizes the first instances of organized, high-visibility street demonstrations specifically identifying as Pride.
Established Country Per year Total 1970 1 1 1972 1 2 1973 1 3 1977 2 5 1978 2 7 1979 5 12 1981 2 14 1982 1 15 1983 2 17 1990 1 18 1991 1 19 1992 1 20 1993 2 22 1994 3 25 1996 1 26 1997 3 29 1998 1 30 1999 4 34 2000 6 40 2001 4 44 2002 2 46 2003 4 50 2004 5 55 2005 2 57 2006 1 58 2008 4 62 2009 1 63 2010 2 65 2011 1 66 2012 2 68 2013 6 74 2014 4 78 2017 4 82 2018 4 86 2019 6 92 2021 2 94 2022 1 95 2023 1 96 2024 1 97
Regional context and challenges
Along with the Vatican City, Armenia remains one of the few European countries that has never held a public LGBTQ Pride demonstration. While the local community has organized indoor small festivals, these events are consistently targeted by violent extremists. To date, no public street parade has occurred due to extreme security threats and government refusal to provide necessary protection. A small group of activists performed a brief, unsanctioned walk through Baku with a rainbow flag in 2013. Since then, activism has remained almost entirely digital or indoor to avoid state crackdowns.