NYC Pride March returns amid new urgency, fears

NEW YORK - The 2022 NYC Pride March kicked off in New York City on Sunday with glittering confetti, cheering crowds, fluttering rainbow flags, and newfound fears about losing freedoms won through decades of activism.

The celebration, which closes out Pride Month, was interrupted in 2020 and was held in a much smaller size last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but returned at full size on Sunday.

Planned Parenthood led the parade this year, following the Supreme Court's decision on Friday that overturned Roe V. Wade.

The annual march took place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signaled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognized in 2015.

"We’re here to make a statement," said 31-year-old Mercedes Sharpe, who traveled to Manhattan from Massachusetts. "I think it’s about making a point, rather than all the other years like how we normally celebrate it. This one’s really gonna stand out. I think a lot of angry people, not even just women, angry men, angry women."

Thousands of people — many decked in pride colors — lined the parade route through Manhattan, cheering as floats and marchers passed by. Organizers announced this weekend that a Planned Parenthood contingent would be at the front of the parade.

"The past few years have been incredibly challenging for New York. Reviving the local economy is of vital importance, and tourism has long been the lifeblood of the city," NYC Pride co-chair Sue Doster said. "NYC Pride has always been an important economic catalyst for the city, bringing in people from across the country to celebrate. We're thrilled to be able to finally invite everyone back."

The New York City Pride parade, which is officially called the NYC Pride March, began in 1970 as a civil rights demonstration, hence the term "march." Since then, it has become an annual event marking the struggle for civil rights and more.

"Over the years, its purpose has broadened to include recognition of the fight against AIDS and to remember those we have lost to illness, violence and neglect," organizers state on its website.

As anti-gay sentiments resurface nationwide, some are pushing for the parades to return to their roots — less blocks-long street parties, more overtly civil rights marches.

"It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life," Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City's annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius', one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders.

"As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream," Clarkin said, "there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in."

More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas.

Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify.

According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment. Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation.

In recent years, schisms over how to commemorate Stonewall have opened, spawning splinter groups events intended to be more protest-oriented.

In New York City, the Queer Liberation March takes place at the same time as the traditional parade, billing itself as the "antidote to the corporate-infused, police-entangled, politician-heavy Parades that now dominate pride celebrations."

With the Associated Press.