Pride Is Community
David Duffield
Aaron B. Marcus, a researcher at History Colorado, wrote Pridefest: A History of Denver’s Gay Pride Celebration in Colorado Heritage Magazine May/June 2013.
The evolution of Pride in Denver marked a turning point after the 1973 rise of the Gay Coalition of Denver (GCD). After the GCD’s victories, among them overturning anti-gay laws, Marcus notes: “The time was right for Pride.”
1975 saw Gay Pride Week, the first “gay-in” attended by 50 people and monitored by police at Cheeseman Park.
“Another step in gay liberation” read the GCD newsletter. 1976 saw the first Gay Pride Parade, as hundreds of people marched from Cheesman Park to the Capitol for more festivities and a live show featuring Christi Layne.
1977, however, was more contentious. According to Marcus, Out Front noted that Gay Pride was a “reaffirmation of pride and dignity for all gays.” The same article noted the first “Gay Day” at Elitch Gardens, and that letters to the editor showed that people felt unity and pride in their community. The so-called “Coors Controversy” also hit like a busted keg that year. Coors was in a long-lasting labor dispute both involving the Chicano and Gay communities. Coors was served at Pride and was also a sponsor, sparking some community ire.
Upset with Coors’ labor practices — among past issues were lie-detector tests for communists — some activists tried to stop Coors beer from being served.
Though they had written a letter of apology in Out Front, and their keg was smashed, Marcus notes that there were larger concerns. As Phil Price, founder and then-editor of Out Front stated, police would be back at the bars once the media went away to arrest people for things like standing up and drinking. Marcus concludes that activism- themed Pride continued through 1979, among them protests over the growing support for anti- gay sentiments from orange-juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant. More lesbians joined the parade and the community showed more unity and strength than ever before.
Pride meant something different to many people. Tea Schook was born in Michigan and moved to Denver in 1975 after being a student at the University of Michigan. Inspired by the “Rocky Mountain High” mystique, Schook wanted to “take a walk on the wild side and find a job.” Her early memories of Pride abound with community.
“We owe the outcasts of our revolution,” she says. Schook liked “that we could all be part of it, because the sum of who we are is a great force for changing the world.” Her first Pride was around 1976 and she remembers it being a “little parade.”
By 1978, Schook was the youngest member elected to the Center’s board. Just 21, one of her first jobs was to get the word out about the Imperial Court of the Rocky Mountain Empire (ICRME) who largely supported the festival. She remembers the 1977 Coors Controversy, and says women were tired of the parade being mostly about gay men. Women — many of them feminists — also wanted the parade to be a protest. Others simply wanted a parade. “We all came together in the end,” she says.
Some of her favorite memories of Pride include PFLAG making headway in 1989, ICRME, and Mayor Pena (among others) who really revitalized Pride. A year later, Tea ran for governor against incumbent Roy Romer. “I got him to speak to [the community]” she notes, making Romer the first governor to speak at Pride after the election. Schook says that he spoke about his understanding and evolution to being an ally stemming from his time during Selma in the Civil Rights era.
“It was a symbolic moment for our state,” she says. Schook admits to having no ‘worst memory’ about Pride. “It was about being with your own. There’s a euphoria, like a second adolescence when you come out [and share] that experience with people.”
She recalls the GLBT community having a denial complex over the question of whether or not we were too sexual. “We are a sexual people” Schook says, adding that we’re “not defined but embraced by our sexuality, and to ignore that is to ignore the breadth of our human experience.”
For Chris Sloane (aka Christi Layne), Pride was political but circumscribed by naiveté. Sloane was the person to get the permit for the Parade for the Tobie Foundation, among the first Pride coordinators, and an Empress of ICRME. Sloane remembers a presentation about Pride in a poem, Spare Some Change for a Dying Queen by Jimmy Centola which plays up to the kitsch, prejudice, and debt Pride and gay liberation owe to drag queens. “I remember the first march over Colfax, seeing everybody in force for the first time.”
Sloane remembers this profound naiveté about what gay liberation meant. “Our knowledge was limited, our publications were gossip sheets, and if we had to articulate what it meant to be treated equally, we would have to go searching for answers.” Sloane remembers that the first Pride was like “strength in numbers, seeing we weren’t standing in a storm all alone.” Sloane recalls a “men vs. women” thing in the early years, and that no one was willing to work on it. “That journey was a lot more difficult than people know.”
Sloane’s best memory comes from 1976: “As we arrived in Civic Center, we turned to see who had gathered — hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, as far as you could see back up Colfax, there were people.” Most were cheering, laughing, dancing, “holding hands and each other. We were a community.” Sloane concluded that “the blessing of pride is ongoing each year [that] we renew our dedication to being who we are. In the promise of Pride is a commitment to learning about our complex diversity. Pride is and always will be a work in progress.”
For Donaciano Martinez, who moved to Denver in 1975, Pride has changed a lot over time. He said he came as a representative of the Colorado Springs Gay Liberation Front in 1969. He remembered that “in the days before AIDS, [Cheesman] Park was always packed on the weekends,” and that in 1975, there were “no speeches, no banners, and no leaflets. With the use of a simple magic marker, the words ‘Gay and Proud’ were handwritten on poster boards that were stapled to tables.” He recalls a distrust between gay men and lesbians in those years, though this changed by the late 70s. He also says many gays and lesbians had been marching in anti-war demonstrations since 1971 shouting loudly: “Out of the Closets and into the Streets.”
Martinez recalls the Coors event of 1977, observing that “irreconcilable differences” escalated to the physical confrontation over the keg, which led in part to controversies about the Center’s board thereafter. Martinez also remembers that Pride 1978 was co-organized by lesbian activists and gay men, and that the lesbians wanted the drag queens to march in high heels the whole way, so they’d know what it felt like to be a woman.
“Whenever asked how Pride events have changed,” Martinez says, “my instant response is that the event is more expensive.” He believes that marchers shouldn’t be charged. Regardless, Martinez notes that organizers should “revisit the principles that were brought to the table by [our] foremothers and forefathers.”
Aaron Marcus does an excellent job describing the history of Pride. He notes that attendance dropped in the 1980s just as HIV/AIDS hit the community hardest. By 1987, there were just a few hundred people versus the thousand at the beginning of the decade. By 1989, due to organizational problems, there were only 250 people. Gay Pride, as Tea Schook recalled, was saved “by everyone coming together.” According to Marcus, it was also rebranded “PrideFest” in 1990. Amendment 2 rallied people into the streets in 1992, as numbers grew by the thousands. By 1994, there were 40,000 people, and 60,000 by 1996. That year also saw the end of Amendment 2, and more corporate sponsorship with more than 220 businesses and booths. By 2001, the Two-Spirit Society were grand marshals, and by 2003 more than 100,000 people attended, and families got their own day. By 2013, civil unions were sealed and equality measurable as attendance reached more than 300,000.
Paul Hunter, a leader and activist in Denver, once said: “If we come out, and stay out, express ourselves and our love for one another, cease damning those creative energies which we — like all humans — have, the city of Denver will be better for it.” Marcus concluded: “Two persistent themes have defined PrideFest throughout its existence in Denver: visibility and unity.”
As always, our pride is community.
The Colorado LGBT History Project invites you to share your stories, documents, photos, and memories of Pride. We offer oral histories, help get your documents into archives, and educate the public. ColoradroLGBTHistory@gmail.com
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