Gay Pride: Out in the Open, for All to See : Visibility: Annual festivals will continue to fuel the engines of the gay and lesbian movement begun 23 years ago at Stonewall.

It’s been 23 years since a group of drag queens in Greenwich Village unwittingly started the modern radical gay and lesbian rights movement by doing battle with New York City police officers in the now-legendary Stonewall Riots. The violent, two-day confrontation, instigated by a police raid of a gay bar focused national attention on the continuing infringement on the civil rights of gays and lesbians in America.

Additionally, the riots served as a sort of “national coming out” for the gay and lesbian community. The movement exploded onto college campuses, meandered its way into a handful of state legislatures for the purpose of overturning age-old sodomy laws, gained entrance into a number of the more tolerant religious sects, and even managed to persuade the American Psychiatric Assn. to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In a relatively short period of time, the gay and lesbian rights movement became a recognizable force in the American political, social and cultural landscape.

Witness the phenomenon of gay and lesbian power in San Diego, power that translates into governmental action on projects directly affecting the gay and lesbian community. Mayor Maureen O’Connor, a longtime supporter of gay and lesbian issues, has as her chief of staff an openly gay male, Ben Dillingham. Additionally, gays and lesbians sit on the county and city Human Relations Commission, Civil Service Commissions and a host of other appointed posts.

Recently, all four major mayoral candidates openly courted the gay and lesbian vote, and one of the remaining mayoral challengers, Peter Navarro, has openly supported domestic partnership benefits and the concept of civil marriages for same-sex couples.

Throughout her tenure, Mayor O’Connor has worked diligently on addressing housing issues for Persons with AIDS (PWAs). Presently, the city leases land for $1 a year to the Brad Truax House, a transitional shelter for homeless PWAs. O’Connor has also worked with the Housing Commission to achieve Section 8 certification for PWAs, while both city and county officials have lobbied long and hard to have San Diego included as a Ryan White Care Act-funded city.

Further, the excellent working relationship that the gay and lesbian community enjoys with Police Chief Bob Burgreen ultimately resulted in the appointment of a special police liaison officer to the gay and lesbian community. In recent years, Burgreen has openly recruited gay and lesbian officers at the Pride Festival. He was recognized in the Pride Parade as the gay and lesbian community’s Friend of the Year.

How did the gay and lesbian community in San Diego achieve this level of influence and governmental access? Through years of lobbying, campaigning, and, most important, being visible.

It’s this type of visibility that recently allowed the San Diego Democratic Club to send five openly gay and lesbian delegates to the Democratic National Convention in New York. And it’s this kind of visibility which, on a national scale, prompted Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton to permit the first openly avowed PWA to address the full convention.

Increasing gay and lesbian visibility will logically expand the base of gay and lesbian power. Annual pride festivals and parades, by encouraging visibility, will continue to fuel the engines of the gay and lesbian movement begun 23 years ago at Stonewall.