My cousin was having a discussion with her sister and shot me an email inquiring my thoughts on Judy Garland. I wasn't entirely sure as to the motivation behind the question, so provided the following response:
Hmm. I think Judy Garland is dead. Other than that, I don't spend
much time thinking about her. I have, however, met her daughter Liza
Minelli at a CD signing and she seemed pleasant enough. Historically, the
death of Judy Garland was the last straw for some drag queens in New York
City. When the cops came to shut the bar down, the queens rose up (thus
the Stonewall Riots). This is also the reason that June is designated as
"PRIDE" month, because it was when the people rose and said 'we're not going to
take it anymore ... or something along that line.
I was not entirely satisfied with my response so I tried to conduct an informal poll and was not satisfied with the answers. So I went to Wikipedia. What follows is what I call Pride 101.
Pride - a Wikipedia Definition
In June 1969, a group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people
rioted following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. The late Miss Sylvia Rivera a transgender rights activist and founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance is credited by many as the first to actually strike back at the police and in doing so, spark the rebellion. The Stonewall riots are generally considered to be the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, as it was the first time in modern history that a significant body of LGBT people resisted arrest. First year anniversary marches organized by other groups were also held in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1970.
Brenda Howard known as the "Mother of Pride" an early leader of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance in the early post-Stonewall era coordinated the first month anniversary rally and then the "Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day March" on June 28, 1970 to commemorate the first year anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Howard also originated the idea for a week-long series of events around what is now known as Pride Day; this became the first of the extended annual LGBT Pride celebrations that are now held around the world.
In New York and Atlanta the annual day of celebration to commemorate the Stonewall Riot came to be called Gay Liberation Day; in San Francisco and Los Angeles it was called Gay Freedom Day. Both names spread as more and more cities and towns started holding similar celebrations.In the 1980s there was a major cultural shift in the Stonewall Riot
commemorations. The previous loosely organised, bottom-up marches and parades
were taken over by more organised and less radical elements of the gay
community. The marches began dropping "Liberation" and "Freedom" from their
names under pressure from more conservative members of the community, replacing them with the philosophy of "Gay Pride". The Greek lambda symbol and the pink triangle which had been revolutionary symbols of the Gay Liberation Movement were tidied up and incorporated into the Gay Pride, or Pride, movement,
providing some symbolic continuity with it's more radical beginnings.
Opposition
Within the gay community, some reject the notion of gay pride, perceiving therein an undue emphasis on sexual orientation and a lack of discretion and modesty to the
detriment of either public morals or the cause of gay rights; they propose to
soften strident activism in order to better integrate into the mainstream.
Others oppose gay pride on account of its identity politics, which run in
opposition to the ideals of an Enlightened liberal democracy. Many gay people
who are not heavily liberal believe that they are being excluded and ignored in
favor of the identification of gay society with political concepts they do not
agree with. Others see it as depreciative of the identity of the individual;
they say one's sexual orientation should not be one's quintessential defining
characteristic. It is not unusual to see small groups of religious
fundamentalists protesting at gay pride events.
Pride as an acronym: People Rejoicing In Diversity Everywhere
The Rainbow Flag
Color has long played an important role in our community's expression of pride. In Victorian England, for example, the color green was associated with homosexuality. The color purple (or, more accurately, lavender) became popularized as a symbol for pride in the late 1960s - a frequent post-Stonewall catchword for the gay community was "Purple Power". And, of course, there's the pink triangle. Although it was first used in Nazi Germany to identify gay males in concentration camps, the pink triangle only received widespread use as a gay pop icon in the early 1980s. But the most colorful of our symbols is the Rainbow Flag, and its rainbow of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple - represents the diversity of our community.
The first Rainbow Flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, who created the flag in response to a local activist's call for the need of a community symbol. (This was before the pink triangle was popularly used as a symbol of pride.) Using the five-striped "Flag of the Race" as his inspiration, Baker designed a flag with eight stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
According to Baker, those colors represent:
pink = sexuality
red = life
orange = healing
yellow = sun
green = nature
blue = art
indigo = harmony
violet = spirit.
Baker dyed and sewed the material for the first flag himself - in the true spirit of Betsy Ross.
Baker soon approached San Francisco's Paramount Flag Company about mass producing and selling his "gay flag". Unfortunately, Baker had hand-dyed all the colors, and since the color "hot pink" was not commercially available, mass production of his eight-striped version became impossible. The flag was thus reduced to seven stripes.
