On a hot Saturday afternoon broken only with a sporadic breeze, hundreds of people stood shoulder to shoulder, spanning more than two blocks of Central Avenue in St. Petersburg. Participants in the inaugural St. Pete Pride promenade smiled and shared laughs as they stood in parallel lines in the center of the street, embracing a 900-foot rainbow flag among them. The crowd was as dynamic as the colors of the flag it carried. From teen-agers to seniors, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies from St. Petersburg and beyond filled the street with the flag -- a symbol of their freedoms and future.
“It’s great! I’m full of pride with this beautiful family all around,” said St Petersburg resident Mark Bias, who walked on stilts -- wearing rainbow wings with matching feather boa and a silver-sequined cowboy hat -- during the promenade and street festival.
There was a lot to celebrate at the St. Pete Pride parade and street fair June 28. Pride celebration events began June 2 and coincided with the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the anti-sodomy law in Texas and the court in Ontario legalizing same-sex marriage. The St. Petersburg City Council also declared June as St. Pete Pride Month.
But Saturday’s activities were also a time for reflection. Many of the participants, estimated between 8,000 and 10,000, recalled how far the struggle for recognition of gay rights has come -- and where it will go.
“The events were held in June solely because that’s when we celebrate the riots at Stonewall,” said Carl Kuttler III, festival chairman for St. Pete Pride 2003. “Pride has grown to be really an outpouring of appreciation of what occurred at that place.”
Late on the night of June 27, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York. After the three days of rioting in the city “the idea of Gay Pride was taken up as a rallying cry,” said Susan Stryker, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society, based in San Francisco.
Stryker said the riot at Stonewall occurred after a long history of police harassment in gay bars, and it came only after lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people “started thinking of themselves as a repressed minority community.” With that shift in thought came a shift in action, Stryker said.
That action resulted in another milestone June 26. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, declared unconstitutional a Texas law that made sexual acts between two people of the same gender illegal.
“The decision is the second Emancipation Proclamation,” said a 55-year-old man from St. Petersburg attending the street festival who would not give his name because he feared retribution at work.
“It’s an important step not to criminalize mutual love between two consenting adults,” said St. Petersburg resident Brandon Bergman, 29, who walked around the street festival with his Boston terrier, Chopper. “It’s a shame it took this long.”
For Wanda Miles, who represented Christ the Cornerstone Church in St. Petersburg at the pride festival, the decision gives hope.
“It gives us the hope that we would all be treated equally, that our relatives would be recognized, our families would be recognized.”
A step to that goal came in Ontario, on June 10 when the provincial appeals court redefined marriage to include same-sex couples.
Kuttler said the decision in Ontario represents continued acceptance. He cautions, however, that with each advancement there is opportunity to take things for granted. “Even when you’re celebrating -- that’s the most important time to be politically watchful,” he said.
Bergman said it is important for gay and straight people to stay mindful of the struggle for rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
“Those drag queens didn’t riot at Stonewall so drugged-out 17-year-olds can go out and shake their asses.”
It didn’t take riots for some legal advancement in St. Petersburg.
In January 2002 the city’s human rights ordinance, a non-discrimination policy, was modified to include sexual orientation. Councilman Rick Kriseman, who represents west St. Petersburg, said the change was an attempt to recognize all people in the city.
Events such as St. Pete Pride and actions including the ordinance change are important for Kriseman. “It shows St. Petersburg truly is a diverse city,” said Kriseman, who reread the proclamation at the festival. “We’re taking steps forward, treating each other as human beings.”
Those steps resonate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents of the city, Kuttler said. “The city is saying ‘You’re safe, we will protect you, you’re a valuable part of this community.” Kuttler said it’s nice to know the city cares as much about his community as it does for the city.
But not everyone was celebrating Saturday.
Phyllis Sterner of St. Petersburg was one of about 10 born-again Christians who protested the festival in front of a shop on the 2300 block of Central Avenue.
“Jesus loves you, but not your lifestyle,” she shouted at festival-goers through a megaphone as they walked to the event. “You can be rehabilitated through Jesus Christ.”
Kuttler doesn’t think the struggle for the rights and equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will ever be finished. “That’s why we celebrate our relationships with each other and with your straight friends and co-workers,” he said. “The battle is won one person at a time.”