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| Baton twirlers perform in the 2002 Divers-Cité pride parade in downtown Montreal |
A pride parade is part of a festival or ceremony held by the GLBT community of a city to commemorate the struggle for gay liberation, gay rights, and gay pride.
The gay community of a city will typically present an annual parade, sometimes in the context of a longer celebration including performances, dances, street parties, and the like. Most gay pride parades take place in the summer, particularly in June, to commemorate the Stonewall riots.
Pride parades evolved from protest marches held by gay people to fight for their rights. Many parades still have this character, especially in less gay-positive settings. However, in more gay-positive cities, the parades take on an exclusively festive or even Mardi Gras-like character. Large parades often involve floats, dancers, drag queens, music over megaphones, and marching groups from gay and queer institutions of various kinds. Some particularly important pride parades are even funded by governments and corporate sponsors, and promoted as major tourist attractions for the cities that host them. In some countries with leading gay rights, some pride parades are now also called Pride Festivals. Some of these festivals provide a carnival-like atmosphere in a nearby park or city-provided closed-off street, with information booths, music concerts, barbecues, beer stands, contests, sports, and games.
A portion of homosexuals and non-homosexals regard pride parades, especially those of a more festive character, as vulgar flaunting of sexual orientation, charging them with an undue emphasis on sex and bizarre behaviour which they see as detrimental to the cause of gay rights. Others criticize this position, seeing it as pandering to homophobia, and arguing that heterosexuality takes centre stage the other 364 days of the year and that pride parades promote visibility and discussion of gay and lesbian issues. Still others argue that such parades are carnivals and that they should be taken as such rather than as representative of everyday gay and lesbian life.
Cities particularly noted for their pride parades include New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, and Sydney (see Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras)
See also: Queer culture