It is almost a rite of passage for elected officials in San Francisco. Each June politicians, and those seeking public office, dutifully line up to march with a contingent of supporters in the annual Pride Parade.
Anyone watching the procession slog down Market Street Sunday will see numerous political leaders march by, waving to the crowd. Some will travel on foot, others by convertible vehicles, and a few on floats, such as openly gay District 8 Supervisor and San Francisco mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty, who each year teams up with fellow politicians, local youth, and entertainers to dance his way to the end point near the Civic Center.
Politicians, gay and straight alike, love a parade, even a gay one.
"That is always part of the parade, and it is not just Pride. It is all parades. We ride in all of them," said openly gay state Senator Mark Leno, who has ridden in 13 of the city's Pride parades since 1998. "I think each of the communities, whether it be the LGBT community at Pride, the Chinese community at the Chinese New Year Parade, the Latino community with Carnivale, I feel, appreciate you for taking the time to be there."
Spectators may forget that when the parade began 40 years ago seeing an elected leader marching with LGBT people was an exceedingly rare sight. In addition to marking the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, the 1970 march also served as a public venting for LGBT people to demand to be treated equally and not as second-class citizens.
It was a coming out few politicians at the time wanted anything to do with, even in San Francisco. But organizers of those first Prides fully understood the political ramifications that were possible by having the LGBT community show its collective power.
"The process of raising the level of the consciousness of both gay and straight continues. The parade in San Francisco can be a major vehicle for this purpose. In an election year it is desirable to manifest an image of strength and solidarity," wrote the parade's organizers in the 1972 guide to the celebration, overseen then under the name of Christopher Street-West/SF.
More importantly to those seeking public office, the parade's spectators served as a vast pool of potential supporters and voters. Not only were LGBT people lining up to watch their friends march, but so too were many straight residents coming out to witness the parade's spectacle.
It wasn't long before political campaigns grasped the benefit an appearance at Pride could reap for their chances come Election Night. Starting in 1975 ads from local politicians congratulating the LGBT community on Pride appeared for the first time in the official guides to the festival that the Pride committee published.
The late Republican state Senator Milton Marks was one of the first. He not only addressed the Gay Pride rally held Saturday, June 28 in 1975 but also took out an ad that simply said, "Best wishes to you all!" Gene Prat, who ran for sheriff that year, also took out an ad in the guide that said, "My best to all!"
In 1977 the first letter of support from a San Francisco mayor appeared in the Pride parade guide. Mayor George Moscone wrote that it was "an honor" to lend his "strong support to the observance of Gay Pride week." He noted that "one of the most sacred rights guaranteed by our democratic form of government is the right to live one's life in the fashion he or she chooses �" and to be free from prejudice or discrimination of any kind."
Moscone, a progressive leader who was killed in November 1978 inside City Hall along with then-Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city's first openly gay elected official, went on to write that the United States government not only embrace a "multitude of lifestyles" but also "encourage the citizens of this country to express themselves fully, to live the lives they choose and to be proud of their identities and achievements. That is why Gay Pride Week is so important, because it gives formal recognition to the integrity, the strength and significant contributions of our nation's gay community."
Milk, of course, prior to his death took full advantage of the annual marches to attract support for his political campaigns. Milk addressed the same gay Pride rally as Marks had in 1975, and that year's guide featured a cover story about the ambitious political up-and-comer. An essay in the 1976 Pride guide, which called the parade the "highpoint of social and political expression in San Francisco," addressed Milk's failed Democratic primary bid that June against Assemblyman Art Agnos and urged gay voters to back gay candidates.
"If every gay in San Francisco would support Harvey Milk in his next campaign 'whatever that is' and if every gay anywhere would vote gay every time the opportunity offers, we would be far better off politically," stated the unsigned article.
One of the more famous photos of the charismatic gay rights leader is one taken at the 1978 Pride march by photographer Terry Schmitt that shows Milk wearing a lei while seated in a vehicle along the parade route, his right hand raised in a fist as he is engaged in an euphoric yawp.
In his Pride Guide welcome that year Milk blasted President Jimmy Carter for not publicly opposing the homophobic Proposition 6 on California's ballot that fall. Known as the Briggs initiative, it would have prohibited LGBT people from being public school teachers.
"Gay freedom? That is a question that Jimmy Carter must answer. We must raise our voices loud and clear until he hears our message," wrote Milk. "How long, Jimmy, before you speak out for the human rights of all Americans?"
Faced with such sentiments within the LGBT community, straight leaders at the time made sure to show their support for Pride. A 1978 celebrity auction to raise money for the Pride Committee featured Moscone along with then-Police Chief Charles Gain; Joe Freitas, the district attorney at the time; Sheriff Eugene Brown; and state Assemblyman Willie Brown.
Following the deaths of Milk and Moscone, Board of Supervisors President Dianne Feinstein became mayor. She took out a full-page ad in the 1979 Pride Guide asking LGBT voters to retain her as mayor in that year's elections. And in her Pride welcome letter, Feinstein credited the gay community with playing a "major role" in the city's growth and vitality.
"San Francisco's celebration of these events underscores its determination to preserve, protect and defend those civil rights which are guaranteed to our citizens a pledge that must be honored and strengthened by all San Franciscans, and by future generations in this city as well," wrote Feinstein, now California's senior U.S. senator.
Yet Feinstein's supportive message couldn't ward off attacks from the LGBT community during that year's parade. She was a no-show at the march �" a spokesman told reporters she canceled due to having a cold �" but some suspected she was really trying to avoid the LGBT community's still-simmering anger over the White Night riots from that May.
Following the jury's decision to give Milk and Moscone murderer Dan White a lesser sentence for the killings, the LGBT community erupted in violence that evening and burned police cars in front of City Hall. Gains, the city's police chief, came under fire by his own officers for his handling of the event.
LGBT leaders hailed Gains's decision to hold his officers back from fully confronting the rioters, while some criticized Feinstein at the time for offering lukewarm support to her police chief. Chants that Feinstein was "on Dan White's side" could be heard at that year's Pride while the event's co-host, author Armisted Maupin, joked from the stage that, "The mayor called in sick. She's got gay flu."
"Her relationship with Pride was rocky over the years," recalled Glenne McElhinney, who was a member of the Pride committee from 1977 to 1984. "Pride's relationship with all of the politicians in town was rocky given how volatile it was at that time. We did not have a power base back then as we do now."
Nor was it merely straight politicians who ended up in political hot water due to their involvement with Pride. After he was elected to the Santa Cruz City Council in the 1980s, John Laird took part in the San Francisco parade as well as his hometown's own Pride march.
"It was hard to do at the beginning and we always had to have police protection," Laird recalled of the early Santa Cruz Prides. "Back home I took some criticism for riding in the San Francisco parade. Some people were very upset at the time. They thought you can't represent the city this way."
Laird persevered and won re-election to the council. Now Santa Cruz Pride is the largest annual political gathering in Santa Cruz County every year, noted Laird, who is running this year for a state Senate seat representing the Central Coast.
"I have lived long enough to see a complete sea change in politics. We are not totally where we need to be yet but in my lifetime as a public official it is remarkable where we have come," said Laird, who with Leno became the first out gay men to serve in the state Legislature when they were elected to the Assembly in 2002. "That is why it is important to be in the parade."
Parade's purpose a matter of debate
Today politics and Pride are as connected as moms are to apple pies.
But just how political the parade should be has been a constant question Pride organizers and the LGBT community have wrestled with since the start of the gatherings. Following the 1974 event, when local gay bar owners faced criticisms for turning the parade into a showcase for drag queens and raunchy floats, organizers tried to steer the 1975 parade into a more political nature.
One lesbian told a Bay Guardian reporter at the time that the LGBT community is "marching more for rights than to put on a drag show or a leather show." The alternative newsweekly noted in its story that year that Pride organizers "are trying to inject a little more of the spirit of Stonewall into San Francisco's parade. The San Francisco parade has traditionally been more campy and commercial."
The debate over whether Pride should be a party or a political rally raged on into the early part of the1980s, with the community divided into two camps, recalled Linda Boyd, who was Pride co-chair in 1983 and 1984.
"It was an interesting time," said Boyd, because the community was divided between people who were political �" such as those who were in charge of the parade in the early 1980s �" and others, such as people from the Tavern Guild society "who were more interested in just having a party and didn't like the political stuff."
"At that time, it was still pretty daring to be out at all," added Boyd, 64. "To me, it seemed like a political act to come out at that time."
Questions regarding Pride's purpose took on particular significance at that time due to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, which was killing off thousands of gay men. For many in the LGBT community it was no longer a time to party but a moment to demand more from political leaders who largely were ignoring the burgeoning medical crisis.
Kathy Knowles, who volunteered with Pride consistently from 1981 through 1992, said of the HIV epidemic, "It came to dominate the political aspirations of everyone. It overcame the idea of equal rights, and suddenly people were dying of an incurable disease, and the government wasn't paying attention."
Knowles, 56, said there was a conflict over whether the parade was a celebration or a political action.
"I think over the years it wanted to be both at the same time," she said.
One example of how that affected the parade was in the late 1980s, when ACT UP contingents would frequently stage die-ins at various places, including in the middle of the parade, disrupting its flow.
That "caused problems for the people running the flow of the parade, and the health and safety people who had to keep things moving," said Knowles, who added, "It wasn't as though people were angry about that �" they understood the significance. But it was disruptive, to say the least, in a four-hour parade."
According to an article in the 1981 parade guide by Ann Levy and Konstantin Berlandt, that year's media co-chairs, the previous year's parade committee had voted to add speakers to the previously planned all-music program.
But four days later, the parade board overruled the general membership, editing lesbian activist Robin Tyler "and two others off the list, adding two names of their own and shortening times for all," the story said.
The article stated, "The simple issue: Is the parade just entertainment, another day of dancing and being high, momentary happiness on the ragged edge of catastrophe? Or is it also a motion toward recovering our hopes and dreams?"
Despite being crossed off the list, Tyler came anyway.
In a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Tyler said a board co-chair had apparently said "there was no need for politics anymore."
There'd been the national March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (which Tyler said she'd called for in 1978), and Milk had become the first openly gay man to be elected to political office in a major U.S. city.
However, people from the community �" Tyler thinks it was mostly lesbians �" thought differently and invited her to speak. Tyler had emceed the parade before and was well known as an activist and a comic.
Supportive community members surrounded her as she walked to the stage. Tyler said that when she spoke, "I said the same thing I've been saying, unfortunately, for 35 years."
As she recalled it, she talked about how the community didn't have any rights, how could there be pride without self-esteem, and how could there be self-esteem without continuing to fight for civil rights?
"I'd like to say it was me, but it really wasn't me, it was the community that wanted to remain political," said Tyler.
According to the 1981 article, parade security tossed Greg Day out of the press area behind the stage when he attempted to photograph "the flying wedge assault to the stage" of Tyler supporters in 1980, half of whom were wearing monitor T-shirts. The result was "a very confusing melee of monitors fighting monitors," the article said.
In a recent interview with the B.A.R. , Day, 65, said he was in the press area behind the main stage when a group of security monitors and others approached the main stage and prevented him from entering.
Day said the head of parade security told him to stop taking pictures, and he was escorted from the press area. People with the parade also threatened to take his camera, he said.
Day, who said the controversy was around women trying to participate more in the parade, said he subsequently asked the parade committee, "How can you be a civil rights organization and not uphold the freedom of the press and other rights?"
He said although he had "no interest in it," he was nominated and then elected as co-chair.
Tyler didn't recall seeing Day being escorted out, but noted she'd been busy speaking.
In the March 1982 issue of On Parade, a publication put together by people associated with the parade, Barbara Cameron indicated controversy over if and how to include speakers remained contentious.
Cameron, who'd served as a 1981 co-chair with Day, wrote that one problem was that "Many people have consistently pointed out that by 3 p.m. the crowd is too restless (and certainly high) to care about hearing speeches."
By the start of the 1980s there was no question in the minds of local politicians that they needed to have a presence at the parade or be involved somehow, if only through an advertisement in the Pride guides. It may have still been a party atmosphere on the streets but Pride offered a platform for politicians few other events in San Francisco could match.
Watershed moment
In hindsight 1980 was a watershed year in which the relationship between Pride and political leaders seems to have been forever cemented. For in addition to letters from Feinstein and openly gay Supervisor Harry Britt, who had replaced Milk on the board, was a proclamation from then-Governor Jerry Brown (who is now running for a third term as governor) and a full-page advertisement from Congressman Philip Burton.
Tom Ammiano, today a state Assemblyman, that year sought support for his school board campaign. In all more than a dozen elected people and candidates for office used the Pride guide as a tool to promote their campaigns. In the parade that year eight politicians or people running for office had contingents, a record number back then.
And the Pride Parade and festival also became a platform to wage public education campaigns about LGBT rights issues and pressure the federal government to take action. The 1981 Pride Committee utilized that year's event to fight a federal policy that could deny foreign visitors from entering the United States based solely on their sexual orientation.
The week prior to the June march that year Pride leaders invited two gay foreign participants to take part, British musician Tom Robinson and Ignacio Alvarez, an activist from Mexico. The decision led to a court victory, with a U.S. District Court judge in Northern California issuing an injunction against the anti-gay ban on foreign lesbian and gay male visitors.
Calls for action on AIDS increasingly became part of Pride's message and focus. Feinstein's mayoral welcome in 1983 was solely about what she described as "a poorly understood and often deadly set of diseases impacting the gay community with particular severity." She called for a "strong show of solidarity from all people, an outpouring of community caring and a united demand for adequate research funds from the federal government."
In 1987 lesbian comedian Kate Clinton attacked then-President Ronald Reagan's handling of the AIDS epidemic in a piece she wrote in the Pride guide that year.
"The health of a nation? Forget it. The Reagan administration continues to move on the AIDS crisis with speed that can best be described as just north of glacial," wrote Clinton.
It was another example of how Pride had become a way to showcase the LGBT community's anger with certain political leaders. The 1983 Pride guide ran a blank page to protest former Republican Governor George Deukmejian's refusal to issue a Pride proclamation as his predecessor Brown had done.
The state's GOP leader came under more criticism during the 1984 Parade following his veto of a state bill that would have banned LGBT discrimination in the workplace. The bill's authors, Agnos and Marks, were invited to address the crowd from the stage that year.
Even after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first Republican governor to issue Pride proclamations, it wasn't without controversy. His vetoes of gay marriage bills were greeted with rebuttals to his Pride messages.
The other side of the coin has also manifested itself during various Pride celebrations. The 1985 celebration is believed to be the first time when a United States Senator addressed a Pride audience. The milestone belonged to Alan Cranston, a Democrat who represented California in the Senate from 1969 to 1993. And in 1998 President Bill Clinton became the first president to issue a Pride proclamation, with his vice president, Al Gore, following suit a year later.
The political issues of the day �" and those who hold public office �" will likely continue to shape whether Pride feels more like a political rally versus an outdoor block party for years to come.
"It has always been there and will always be there. It is exactly how it should be. Our community sits on the horns of this dilemma about assimilation or liberation. Pride is a manifestation of that," said Teddy Witherington, Pride's executive director between 1998 and 2005. "It is good and healthy that discussion, that difference of opinion is alive and well, especially alive and well within Pride. The day it isn't is the day we really should be afraid."
Seth Hemmelgarn contributed to this story.