Photo credit: Milwaukee Pride
As we bask in the afterglow of another successful Milwaukee PrideFest with its record attendance of 45,787, a Pride Parade with a record 136 marching units, the fifth anniversary of marriage equality in Wisconsin (announced at PrideFest 2014’s opening ceremony), we should take a moment to reflect on our ever-increasing visibility as a community (and, in fact, as a nation) that these events reflect.
Symbolically, more so than during any Pride Month past, our flags are everywhere. A veritable sea of flags, in fact. The Pride Parade units and viewers flew and wore anything and everything rainbow, of course, representing transgender, bi, bear, leather communities and more.
Back in the winter of 2005-’06, a committee met in the Milwaukee Gay Arts Center with a mission to line South Second Street with rainbow flags along the Pride Parade route with the rainbow banners year-round. Back then, we had a passionate enthusiasm to not only spruce up the Walkers Point gayborhood but also give us visibility. As secretary, I composed the letter hand-delivered to local businesses to support the flag project. All but one (a now defunct flooring concern) embraced the idea, but that single objection was enough for the city to kill the continuous installation and reduce it to a single month. They proudly still fly each June, but now, a dozen years later, Milwaukee has a permanent rainbow crosswalk at Cathedral Square.
Also this year, for the first time and thanks to Gov. Tony Evers’ executive order, Wisconsin’s statehouse flies a rainbow flag for Pride Month (of course, as if on cue, State Assembly Republicans decried the act of inclusion, acceptance and recognition as “divisive”). Our professional sports franchises now offer rainbow pride apparel and hold Pride Night events.
Beyond Milwaukee, the colors of LGBTQ pride can be seen everywhere. You can even bake a six-layer rainbow cake thanks to a recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. A bisexual Sikh garnered tens of thousands of likes and shares on social media rocking a rainbow turban. And, despite an order not to fly a rainbow flag at U.S. Embassies, some resisted and raised one anyway.
Meanwhile, we were joined by our politicians, including Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Sen. Tammy Baldwin and city, county and state leaders, as well as Milwaukee County Sheriff Earnell Lucas, who all appeared at PrideFest, the Pride Parade or both.
The 2019 Pride Parade’s marching contingents featured dozens upon dozens of LGBTQ organizations, bars, allied businesses, affirming religious groups, families and individuals like GAMMA president “Bim,” who appeared, as he inevitably does, arrayed in a sequined and beglittered tux and cape as his alter-ego, West Allis’ favorite son and gay icon, Liberace. The crowds, too, represented the broad diversity of the community and its allies. At times, the parade route up South Second Street was reduced to a single lane as the masses of attendees surged to cheer the marchers.
Perhaps the most inspiring takeaway was a palpable sense of LGBTQ pride across the demographics of age, gender and ethnicities that both PrideFest and the Pride Parade conveyed. In today’s often discordant world, it is reassuring to see the beaming smiles celebrating a common cause. It gave me hope.
