Pride in the mainstream
LAKE VIEW | This year's parade features serious messages, draws more families
Chicago's Pride Parade seems to have grown up.
The 38th annual parade still had Carmen Miranda impersonators and floats with Speedo-clad boys shakin' it to the usual techno music. Fabulous-looking women with strangely prominent Adam's apples. Tattooed and tanned "Dykes on Bikes" who drowned out the techno with their Harleys.
The 38th annual parade still had Carmen Miranda impersonators and floats with Speedo-clad boys shakin' it to the usual techno music. Fabulous-looking women with strangely prominent Adam's apples. Tattooed and tanned "Dykes on Bikes" who drowned out the techno with their Harleys.
But many marchers used floats and T-shirts for serious messages. There were multiple calls for an end to the Iraq war and demands for HIV/AIDS funding and gay marriage. Parade watchers seemed to include more families with children than in years past.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
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Mainstream Pride
Maureen O'Donnell
But many marchers used floats and T-shirts for serious messages. There were multiple calls for an end to the Iraq war and demands for HIV/AIDS funding and gay marriage. Parade watchers seemed to include more families with children than in years past.
There were floats with gay veterans, gay judges, gay seniors, gay youth and gay African-Americans, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Buddhists. Unitarians. Jews with a rainbow menorah. Grammy-winning singer Melissa Manchester, who is appearing in the menopausal musical "Hats," called for benefits for gay families.
Amaechi's autobiography, Man in the Middle, became a New York Times best seller.
Size doesn't matter when it comes to insults, he said. "Being 6 [feet] 9 and 325 [pounds] just means that people make fun of me by e-mail, not in person," Amaechi said.
He doesn't concern himself with comments like those from retired NBA player and Chicago native and Carver High School graduate Tim Hardaway. After Amaechi announced he was homosexual, Hardaway said in a radio interview that he hated gay people.
"His thoughts on me are pretty unimportant," Amaechi said. "He's shown himself to be a person of little vision and a closed mind, and those types of people, their opinions don't really matter."
Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) reminded Chicago's gay community to get tested for HIV. An anti-AIDS cocktail "is not sexy," Tunney said.
Police said attendance at the parade wasn't substantially eroded by Sunday's Cubs-Sox game and Mexico-U.S. soccer matchup. "I'd say it's one of their biggest," said Supt. Phil Cline.
The crowd hit about 450,000, the same as the parade's attendance high in 2005, said Cindy Gatziolis of the Office of Special Events. There were 250 registered entries.
Protesters traditionally station themselves at the end of the parade, near Diversey and Cannon Drive, where they quote the Bible, call for repentance and sometimes suggest to the female impersonators that they aren't that pretty. One shouted: "You're going to get sick, sick, sick with AIDS."
Marchers sometimes shout insults and question whether the demonstrators have issues with their own sexuality.
But this year, the Lakeshore Pride Freedom Band stopped for a moment, turned to the protesters and began to play a song.
"Jesus Loves Me."