Photo by Michael Burmesch
Pride Parade 2019
Pride Parade 2019
This year’s Pride Parade, the first since the COVID pandemic essentially shut down life as we know it in March 2020, announced its official theme “Pride is …”, encouraging participants to fill in the blank with an appropriate response. While those responses could span a spectrum from “Pride is Personal” to “Pride is Universal” and almost anything in between, in these days of relentless attacks from the right on LGBTQ equality, I believe “Pride is a Political Act.”
As it happens, for Wisconsin’s LGBTQ community, Pride 2022 marks some significant historical moments in our progress to equality. It is the 25th Anniversary of the annual June PrideFest at Henry Maier Festival Park. The move there in 1996 was a significant achievement not only for the Milwaukee’s LGBTQ community but also for the city itself that, by including PrideFest in the lakefront festival line-up as part of World Festival’s Inc, raised its embrace of equality for all. To its great credit, through community support and the dedication of its volunteers, PrideFest has weathered not only the pandemic but sundry pitfalls along its history while other major festivals including African World Festival, Indian Summer and Arab World Fest have faltered under similar pressures and disbanded. Festa Italiana, meanwhile, has cancelled its 2022 event.
PrideFest has evolved from its earliest iteration, an event in 1988 called a “Lesbian–Gay Celebration” with its theme “Rightfully Proud.” While it had the classic festival amenities, it also included a town hall meeting with politicians. Today, those politicians appear on the stage for the PrideFest Opening Ceremony in support of the city’s LGBTQ community. Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Milwaukee’s first elected Black mayor, made history in 2018 while an alderman as the lead sponsor of the city’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, a debunked practice that seeks to change a child’s gender identity. In recent years, ever more LGBTQ political candidates have run for local office and won. Most recently, Peter Burgelis became our first gay Milwaukee County Supervisor.
When Wisconsin Took the Lead
The most important of this year’s anniversaries, however, is the signing of Assembly Bill 70 by Governor Lee Dreyfus in February 1982. The bill was the first in the nation to make illegal the practice of state and private businesses discriminating against LGBTQ people in employment and housing based on their sexual orientation. The saga of its passage began 15 years prior, in 1967, when Milwaukee’s Black state legislator and civil rights activist Lloyd Barbee introduced the first bill to decriminalize homosexuality. In 1971, he introduced another bill to protect the gay and lesbian population from job discrimination.
It would take another 15 years for the efforts of State Representative David Clarenbach and activist Leon Rouse to assemble the political forces to convince Wisconsin lawmakers to support LGBTQ rights as outlined in AB 70. With bi-partisan support the bill passed in February 1981 and, despite eleventh hour attempts to persuade Governor Dreyfus to veto it, it was signed into law on Feb. 25 of the following year.
That Pride exists is the result of decades of political activism beginning long before the Stonewall Uprising that marked a turning point in the history of the LGBTQ struggle for equality. AB 70 was Wisconsin’s contribution to that struggle. In today’s political climate such a bi-partisan effort to grant rights to a marginalized group would be impossible. In fact, in Wisconsin and across the nation there are those who would take away our rights in an instant and are actively trying to do so.
We cannot pretend that our celebrations do not come from political activism and should never deny the reality that “Pride is a political act.” Today’s activists are continuing the fight. Perhaps when we consider what “Pride is …,” we should also consider what Pride is not: Pride is never returning to the closet and letting hate win.
Meanwhile, ever more Pride events are taking place locally and throughout Wisconsin. Most take place during Pride Month but others are scheduled throughout the summer. Information about upcoming Pride dates may be found on social media.
Here are a few select Pride events beyond our main Pride Weekend celebrations:
In Milwaukee:
- June 1 -5: Pride at This Is It,
- June 3: La Cage 2022 Pride Pageant,
- June 12: Castaways’ Leather Pride at Hunty’s
In Wisconsin:
- June 4: Wausau Pride
- June 11: Pride Prom, LGBT Center of SE Wisconsin’s “magical new event”
- July 10: Kenosha Pride 10th Anniversary
September dates TBA: NEW Pride Alive, Green Bay,
