Pride and prejudice.

• Author: Graff, E.J.
• Position: New York Gay Pride demonstration - Column

When I looked back at the escalator behind me, my heart lifted. Hundreds of men and women were streaming off the subway at Dupont Circle-all, it seemed, lesbians and gay men. To have been at the March on Washington parade grounds was powerful enough, but here! - here it was heady, even dizzying. Someone started a cheer, and the whole subway rang with shouts and applause for us all, alive and visible and rising into the daylight.

Is that moment - seeing ourselves as ordinary citizens on our cities' ordinary streets - what we're marching for? On June 26, 1994, New York City will host hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of men and women, this time from around the globe, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of what's mythologized as the launch of today's lesbian and gay pride movement: riots at a Greenwich Village bar called the Stonewall Inn. Those riots began when, on the night of Judy Garland's funeral, police held a run-of-the-mill raid. Bat patrons astonished police by erupting with longsimmering rage. The next three days of bottle-throwing, street-trashing, and fire-setting have been commemorated every year since with Pride marches in large and small cities worldwide, marches that celebrate Stonewall as the Big Bang that began widening our life beyond Mafia-run bars. Stonewall 25 will surely be the usual Pride mixture of Mardi Gras and politics, AIDS activists and marching bands, exhortatory speeches and s/m leathermen - a riot this time of identities.

How, then, can I imagine that Pride is about being ordinary? For decades, there's been a debate in the gay press - which lately has broken into such places as The New York Times - with one faction insisting that "gays" put forth a more respectable face while another faction howls back that "queers" are aiming for a diverse politics of sexual liberation, not middle-class assimilation. Meanwhile, every year the whole gamut shows up, from gay Republicans to New Age vegetarians to party animals.

Why do we come to these occasions in such increasing numbers? Are we out to claim the high moral ground, or out to have a good time? What, in other words, do lesbians and gay men want?

The answer is both simple and complex. We want to be ourselves. Every minority knows how hard and necessary it is to hang on to a sense of self when everything around you sells the majority's bias as the superior norm. Heterosexuality is pitched through TV plot lines, Olympics pair skating, co-workers' family photos, strangers' wedding rings. It's dismayingly easy to lapse into the moral murk of silence, to censor for others' comfort. Despite my best intentions, I hold back normal mentions of my life, such as the fact that we're buying a house, taking a vacation, or visiting the in-laws; hesitate to write my beloved's name on medical forms; guard my movements in public so that no one will guess my fierce and committed passion for the beautiful woman by my side...