A DECADE OF PRIDE: the last nine Pride Marches

by George Painter

If the 10th annual Gay/Lesbian Freedom March is average, the day will be sunny and around 85 degrees. Thousands of marchers will be participating, but the local media will downplay the numbers. Below is a review of the preceding nine marches. There were at least four previous marches/rallies (1971, 1972, 1976, and 1977) but they were organized by disparate groups and had no continuity.

I. Saturday, June 26, 1982. Weather: Sunny, 83 degrees.

The first march was the only one held on a Saturday. It attracted perhaps 500 people to the Statehouse grounds, and did not feature any nationally known speakers. However, Ken Goggin carried a torch for the upcoming Gay Games.

The Citizen-Journal saw the event as so insignificant, that it didn't mention it. The Dispatch carried a small article in the third section mentioning the "small" group of anti-Gay protesters.

II. Sunday, June 26, 1983. Weather: Sunny, 88 degrees.

The march was moved to a Sunday, and the newspapers claimed that the number of marchers was up to about 600. Gay journalist Larry Bush was the featured speaker. New Governor Richard Celeste sent the first of eight annual messages of support to the rally.

The Citizen-Journal deigned to mention the rally, but it probably would have been better had it not. Its article referred to AIDS as "a fatal disease that strikes homosexuals" and mentioned that Craig Covey was the executive director of "a Columbus [Glay rights group," without mentioning Stonewall Union's name. The Dispatch moved the event up to the second section, and was more accurate with facts. It mentioned that AIDS could strike anyone and it saw fit to mention

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Stonewall Union's name.

III. Sunday, June 24, 1984. Weather: Cloudy, breezy, 81 degrees.

The coolish temperature and the cloud cover made it seem as though rain might fall, but it stayed away. Featured speakers were Vic Basile, of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, who explained what was taking place in Gay politics in Congressional races throughout the country, and the Honorable Mary Morgan of California, the first openly Lesbian judge in the United States. Judge Morgan let us know that "[h]istory is on our side." Duane Jager, candidate for Congress, marched with us, and a large "Jager for Congress" banner was clearly visible in the line of marchers. A fire engine was also part of the parade that year.

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An ugly incident occurred just as the first marchers reached the Statehouse grounds. A large group of fundamentalists made a menacing rush toward the marchers, armed with clubs and chains. Two candidates for office who were working security for us helped make a human chain that prevented the homophobes from reaching us. Jousted about in the incident were Cindy Lazarus, then candidate for Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney, and Andrea Yagoda, a candidate for the Franklin County Court of Appeals. In addition, a phony bomb threat was called to the Statehouse grounds, but the only people who left were the fundamentalists, who were panicked by the announcement. Undercover police were put into the crowd on the Statehouse grounds, allegedly to prevent confrontations with fundamentalists.

We were moved back to the fourth section in the Dispatch and the writer was different from the previous year's. A photo of a drag queen graced the article, and the article itself was clearly biased in our favor. The Dispatch said 4,000

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marchers were present. We were again given an insultingly tiny article in the homophobic Citizen-Journal, relegated to a place underneath an article on drug paraphernalia This year Stonewall Union's name was mentioned, and the it claimed that we had 3,000 marchers.

IV. Sunday, June 30, 1985. Weather: Sunny, 85 degrees.

This was the year that the City of Columbus established a permit fee and required us to pay for overtime for police to work the parade. The speakers were the first openly Lesbian Mayor in the United States, Valerie Terrigno of West Hollywood, California, who said that she came to Columbus to "celebrate being a Lesbian and

being free" and Congressman Gerry Studds of Massachusetts, the first openly Gay member of Congress.

Richard Dean of the Columbus Baptist Temple hired a pilot to pull a sign: "AIDS. God's curse on the homos," in the hope that it would cause a mass repentance of the marchers. We claimed about 8,000 marchers, but the newspapers said 3,000.

The Dispatch put us back into the second section, with a juxtapositioned pair of photographs, with the headline "It's All in the Signs." One was a picture of a smiling mother from the Akron PFLAG group holding a sign with a loving message. The other was a picture of frowning fundamentalists with signs saying such things as "God Hates Homosexuality." The Citizen-Journal, in what turned out to be its final story on Gay Freedom Day, portrayed two drag queens from Toledo and gave the 1985 march the only signed, full-sized article the paper would ever give to the event.

One disc jockey in Columbus lost his

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job for his on-the-air comments that the march featured several thousand marchers with "whips and chains."

V. Sunday, June 29, 1986. Weather: Sunny, 85 degrees.

The new Executive Director of Stonewall Union was Scott Walton. The

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FORWARD

TOCE THER

march and rally moved to a different site this year, the Riverfront Amphitheater, because the fundamentalists had reserved the Statehouse in a vain attempt to prevent us from marching and rallying. Featured speaker was Mary Dunlap, the attorney representing the organizers of the Gay Games, who were then in a court suit seeking the right to use the term "Gay Olympics." Also speaking was City Council Member Cindy Lazarus who compared her recovery from alcoholism with the stigma of being Gay. She re-