New York's Gay Pride Parade 2005

36th Annual Pride Week Parade in NY (click on the picture for slideshow)

The crowd that stretched from Bryant Park along 5th Avenue created a street party all the way to downtown. Every year, the weather had always been most conducive - the heat and humidity allowing everyone to bare and show off their toned bodies. Almost as though everyone was oblivious to the fact that they are in the middle of the city, instead imagining that they are on the beach enjoying the season highs. I go for many reasons - the fun, I enjoy being surrounded by so many beautiful people(men, women alike) and to show support for their causes.

The first Gay Parade in New York dates back to 1969 when about 500 people gathered at Washington Square Park a month after the 'Stonewall Riots'. Annually, on the last Sunday in June, the tradition continued. These days, the celebration is now called the New York Annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride March.



I grew in a society that didn't have much tolerance nor understanding for the diversity of humankind. Sometimes I blame it on the predominantly Catholic upbringing of the people that tend to divide everything to either black or white. To be accepted you had to be like everyone else and if you weren't you were either the sideshow freak or the outcast.

'Free your mind' is the slogan that caught my eye, suitably for the narrowminded whose opinions and ideas follow a one way street often absent of any self-reflection. Free your mind and realize that there is more to the world than what was there 20 or 10 years ago. Free your mind and wake up to the spectrum of colors in all hues and values and tints that surround this universe. Free your mind and accept that we as human are as diverse as each rock on the riverbeds. Free your mind and realize that non-conformity to the standards to which society had set does not make anyone a lesser individual.

Sexual preference is as varied as anything and it doesn't make one less or more moral than the other. I am a straight female whose preference had always been the straight male (European, tall, tan, young, smart and articulate being my weakness *wink*) but some of the friends I keep closest to my heart embrace diversity. I know their aches and their lives are often misunderstood, burdened with secrecy.

I believe that safe sex promotes not only good health but planned parenthood so I shake my head when people make a big deal out of a condom. I believe that same sex couples has the same capability to raise intelligent and emotionally, socially and intellectually balanced children as any other couple. I believe that couples regardless of their gender has a right to a marriage and that their choices of who they want to spend their life with should not be dictated by church or state but by heart.

That person who you find 'different' is not only a fag, a 'bakla', a 'tibo' or whatever else they are called. Remember that they are also brother, father, son, sister, mother or daughter. Remember also that they are also prime ministers, governors, senators, congressmen, lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, soldiers, writers, singers and most of all: like you, human.

I go to the parade yearly to bask in the joy of freedom, even for just an afternoon. I know at the end of the day, these people go back to their lives and their struggles until society becomes more understanding.