Mayor Keeps Vow to March in Gay Pride Parade
San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor kept a campaign promise Saturday and joined an estimated 1,000 homosexuals and their supporters in this city’s 13th annual Lesbian/Gay Pride parade.
The 40-year-old O’Connor, the city’s first woman mayor, was cheered and jeered as she marched with an AIDS support group.
O’Connor walked alongside the mother of an AIDS victim and a man afflicted with the disease. When she was campaigning in 1986, O’Connor promised gay community leaders she would march in the parade if elected.
On Saturday, the mayor said she was marching to emphasize the seriousness of the AIDS crisis.
Some spectators cheered O’Connor as the parade made its way through a Hillcrest neighborhood with a large homosexual population and many gay-owned businesses.
Counter Protest
Across the street, a small group of anti-gay protesters yelled insults at the marchers and O’Connor, who said she was not marching to “condone or condemn anyone’s life style.”
The mayor declined to speak at the post-parade rally in Balboa Park, where speakers asked for an increase in government funding for AIDS research.
After the march, some of the participants drove to City Hall, where they picketed in protest of the lack of city and county funding for AIDS-related projects.
San Diego police reported no incidents, except for the arrest of one spectator who was fighting with another man.
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