I'm not going to the Pride parade today for a bunch of reasons:
1) I have work to finish that I could have done yesterday if I hadn't spent the entire day drawing and playing with buster.
2) I couldn't find anyone who actually wanted to go to the parade with me, and there are few things in the world that make you feel more alone than being by yourself whilst among a couple hundred thousand people.
3) I don't, as a rule, really like parades. I say this even though that time I saw Coretta Scott King at the Constitution Parade in Philadelphia was pretty cool, as was watching the giant Charlie Brown float sail pass the Dakota that Thanksgiving I lived on the Upper West Side. Oh, okay, and seeing Hillary Clinton march in the 2000 Pride Parade behind a truck playing the theme from Shaft ("That Mrs. Clinton is a bad motha--Shut yo mouth!") is a cherished memory. But in general, I find parades loud, overcrowded, and exhausting.
I have been thinking this week about the Stonewall riots and the origins of the Pride Parade. It's been 45 years since patrons of the Greenwich Village gay bar, many drag queens among them, fought back against the habitual harassment of the NYPD and touched off several nights of rioting, and in the process became the impetus for the modern gay rights movement.
Earlier in the day the funeral of legendary entertainer Judy Garland and drawn nearly 20,000 mourners just a few short miles uptown. It's difficult to prove a causal link between the two events, even though Judy had a legion of gay fans and her funeral was a huge news story both in New York and around the country. Still, it's hard to imagine that she wouldn't have been on the minds of the patrons of the Stonewall Inn that night, as both homosexuals and New Yorkers.
I read several articles this week (some scholarly, others not so much) that worked hard to debunk the notion that there was any correlation between the funeral and the riots. One went so far as to claim it was actually insulting to imply that gays would only stand up for themselves when their "camp icon" had been taken from them.
I understand the inclination to distance oneself from anything iconic, campy or otherwise, when trying to stake out your own identity. Personally, I was mortified when I found out that Barbra Streisand was considered a gay icon. In addition to feeling exposed, I also learned that my affection for her was neither unique nor particularly special. I was devastated to realize that I might actually be a bit of a cliche.
I suffered from (and if I'm honest, sometimes still do) a form of internalized homophobia. But when I am finally equal in the eyes of the law, (we're not quite there yet) fee to sleep with, marry, raise children and estate plan with whomever I choose, what will it really mean if I continue to judge and censor myself? If I don't embrace my love of Barbra, my love of Judy, of Ethel, of show tunes, of Provincetown, of fresh cut flowers, of fruity rum drinks, of Lily Tomlin, of the Flying Nun, of drag queens, of both the color purple and The Color Purple, and a host of other things considered culturally queer, than what have I really gained? It is not enough to be equal. We must, all of us, be ourselves in all our complicated and sometimes embarrassing glory, even if what we are is, at least in part, a cliche.
As for Judy Garland's funeral and Stonewall, I certainly do not believe it's insulting or embarrassing to think this "camp icon" played a part, even a very small one, in our struggle for equality. History books are filled with inaccuracies half-truths, and flights of fancy, and there's no reason to think that Gay History will be recorded any differently. And in the end, at least in this case, I don't think the truth is quite as important as the overriding message and the end result.
