Why We Should March

By Randy Alfred

Editor’s Note: The San Francisco Bay Times, established in 1978, was rebranded as Coming Up! from 1979–1989 before going back to its original title. Throughout the earlier period, when founding news editor Randy Alfred was with the paper, he wrote many memorable articles that today still resonate and ring true. One is this powerful piece, published in Coming Up! in June 1981: doorstep. Sure, it hasn’t got off to a flying start in San Francisco. But can we be content that the wolf is merely at the door, and not yet inside the house?

Many gay men and lesbians don’t march, because they remain in the closet. Either they haven’t acknowledged their homosexuality to themselves, or they’re self-aware gays who feel they must hide their lifestyles from anti-gay friends (?), families, employers, schools, and other institutions.

We can’t expect the former to march, but their plight is further reason for the rest of us to do so. The more visible we are, the more we show that we feel good about being gay, and the more we show ourselves to be mutually supportive, then the more we encourage our sisters and brothers to take that all-important step of selfacceptance.

60,000? 100,000? A quarter million?

Who knows? Crowd estimation is an inexact art at best, and the moving, bustling celebrants at Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day in San Francisco make it no easier. Suffice it to say that our annual commemoration of the Stonewall Rebellion is the largest conscious gathering of lesbians and gay men in the world.

Despite these numbers, many people do not participate. They stay at home or stand on the sidewalks as the parade passes them by. Why? And why should we take part anyway?

When tallying up the reasons, we should consider three interrelated levels of impact. First, what will participation do for us individually? Second, what are the effects on other gay people? And, finally, what impact will the parade have on the straight population? Can we project our newfound pride and power to advance our liberation in terms of legislative victories and reduced socio-economic discrimination?

Some people think the parade is passé. They marched a few years back, when the idea was new. Now it’s like yesterday’s fashions, and they wouldn’t be caught dead in anything so dated. But if the movement and community solidarity are passing fashions, we may learn too late that even our relative haven in the City of St. Francis is a passing fashion. Political apathy is easy but expensive. The Christian Right is on our

“Well,” says the hesitant would-be marcher. “What If someone I know sees me?” There’s no better time and place to be seen. March proudly in the light of day, among thousands of other gay persons. It can be a liberating experience for you personally, and your participation can move others to march, increasing the political clout of the parade and swelling the ranks of the visible gay electorate.

If you have friends or family who don’t know about your secret, Gay Pride Week is the ideal time to come out to them. Why not bring them to the parade, or ask them to march with you?

There are those who don’t march because they see no significant difference between gays and straights, apart from what we do in bed. I’ve been asked, “Why should I march down the street screaming, ‘Gay is good!’? It’s not an important difference.” This just doesn’t wash. We are different. (Fortunately!) Our perspectives, our patterns of interaction, our creativity and very consciousness have been shaped and colored by an apartness from the conventional assumptions of everyday heterosexual reality. From childhood onward, we encounter stereotyped, negative, and often violent images of homosexuality.

Lesbians face the added oppression of being virtually ignored. Many lesbians grow up unaware that there are others like them; and many a gay man grows up thinking he’s the only queer in the world without limp wrists, a lisp, and an uncontrollable urge to don skirts and molest little boys.

This psychic violence takes its toll in negative self-images. When we treat each other poorly, it usually stems from poor self-esteem. This is truly unfortunate, for we already have enough to do, combatting our oppression by those straights who are unenlightened or downright malicious.

The price of accepting this oppression and denying our true and deeply felt emotions is a slow killing of our very beings. “We must love one another or die”—Auden’s advice to all humanity—has special meaning for his gay brothers and sisters. As we learn to love each other, we must teach the world to love along with us. So we march because we are different. We enjoy a long history and current plenitude of great and creative women and men in many fields of human endeavor, and so we are proud. We are subject to political, economic, social and psychological oppression, and so we are angry. And we march in numbers to show that we are strong, that we will no longer put up with being put down.

This spells positive political results, increased community awareness, and enhanced individual self-images. And we can bring hope and confidence to gay men and lesbians who are still learning not to hide and not to hate themselves. But what kind of images are we providing?

A friend’s mother living in Manhattan’s East 80s once asked, “Convertibles filled with musclemen in swimsuits: this is a political statement?” Well, maybe it is. In a puritanical society, just having fun can be political.

As a reason for staying out of the parade, though, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you object to the lifestyle imagery projected by parades you’ve witnessed, dropping out will only ensure that your own style isn’t adequately represented. If the great gay mass of “ordinary people in ordinary clothes” is not present to create new images, then all the old images and stereotypes will be reinforced.

These stereotypes include the straight impression that the only homosexuals are able-bodied white men. If lesbians, Third World, and disabled persons don’t participate in large numbers, the myth of their invisibility will continue. and the parade will be an inhospitable medium for strong profeminist, anti-racist and egalitarian consciousness.

The presence of large numbers of lesbians and gay men of all shapes and colors in their accustomed attire does not always deter the media from focusing on the most outrageous floats and most garish costumery. But we must not let the “bad” images drive out the “good” in a perverse Gresham’s Law of public relations. Instead, we can work with the media to ensure their coverage of the parade will be fair and balanced, and that we’re given the same consideration other minorities are accorded. Such efforts have yielded promising results, at least locally.

We can’t expect everyone to conform to our own values and tastes. Censorship is out of place in our parade or anywhere in a free society. Who is to say what is political (and thus presumably uncensorable), and what is offensive or obscene and “without redeeming social value”? Is drag, for instance, anti-woman or an inspired condemnation of conventional sex roles?

Some of us may regard others in the parade as continuing the sexual objectification instead of fostering personal liberation and mutual respect. Others might object to a closety prevalence of hetero-imitation among the conservative in lifestyle. Still others will find it unpleasant to share space with churchly gays—antigay religions having oppressed us for so many centuries. Women and men may not relish marching closely together. And so on.

But at least once a year we should be able to set aside these differences and achieve a sense of solidarity and unity. Unity is not uniformity. If we cannot allow each other personal freedom, how can we expect the straight public and straight politicians to do so?

Our diversity is our strength, and it is also the essence of our gayness. We are free spirits. We accept, and indeed celebrate, our variety. This is our profoundest political statement. Diversity is life, and the destruction of diversity is death.

Come out into the streets on June 28 and be a part of that diversity. Be yourself, and get high on our strength and our beauty. It is a day, truly, to be gay. Join the festival. Its name is life, and its face is love.

Journalist, producer, radio talk show host, and book author Randy Alfred, the founding news editor of the “San Francisco Bay Times,” in 2015 was inducted into the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Hall of Fame. To learn more about his work and achievements, view the collection of his written and recorded materials at the California Digital Library: https://tinyurl.com/5h3425ju