7,000 Celebrate Gay Pride at UCI Parade : Lifestyle: Event represents ‘a chance to feel good about ourselves’ and erase the feeling of isolation, participants say.

For Townsend Carr, Sunday was a rare day: one of the few days of the year when she felt like the rule rather than the exception.

Standing in a crowd of 7,000 attending the fifth annual Orange County Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade at UC Irvine, Carr said that to a lesbian, “a day like this is important because usually you can really get a feeling of isolation.”

Carr, 31, a graduate student in English at UC Riverside, had to yell to be heard over the music and cheers.

“Usually, you’re marked as ‘different.’ Today, the assumption is that you’re gay or lesbian. It’s empowering to feel that I’m not different from those around me.”

Mick Michaels, 31, a medical technologist who drove from Hollywood, said the event--the highlight of the second and final day of the Orange County Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival--represents “a chance to feel good about ourselves.

“Every day is straight day,” he said with a smile. “So today we get to have our day in the sun.”

In a year when the political issue of gays in the military has been one of the hottest, the gay pride parade chose as its grand marshal Navy Chief Petty Officer Keith Meinhold, who was booted from the service after revealing his homosexuality. He sued for reinstatement and won back his post.

Meinhold, 31, dressed in a red, white and blue stars-and-stripes jacket, said he hasn’t had “a lick of trouble” with his colleagues since rejoining the Navy, demonstrating, he said, that “if I can do it, then gays and lesbians can serve in the military without any problem.”

There is only one difference between his days in the closet and his days as a well-known symbol of gay freedom, he said.

“I get a lot of women making passes at me now,” Meinhold said with a chuckle and a who-can-understand-it shrug.

The prominence of the debate over the role of gays in the military has done nothing but benefit the cause of lesbian and gay freedom because it increases public awareness of the struggle, Meinhold said.

“It has put the word ‘gay’ on television and on the lips of thousands of people,” said Meinhold, who lives in Palo Alto. “People are discussing it. Even irrational discussion helps.”

The 60-odd entries in the parade ranged from those noting serious social issues to the lighthearted and entertaining. Marchers carried banners from AIDS service organizations, such as the Laguna-based Shanti, and gay-support groups, like Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Members of a lesbian mothers group pushed baby strollers.

One set of paraders carried a black banner with white letters reading, “Family of Hate,” and the three marchers behind it carried drawings of three men known for their anti-gay rhetoric: the Rev. Lou Sheldon, who runs Anaheim’s Traditional Values Coalition; Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

One of the more colorful floats advertised Ripples, a Long Beach bar. Decorated in blue and white fringe with huge shells and sea horses, the float featured two dancing men in bikinis and a rhythm-and-blues singer. Another float, sponsored by a gay hiking group, depicted the great outdoors. One car advertised the services of a hair salon, and women in tight black dresses walked alongside it, tossing strings of green beads to the crowd.

Contingents from the Unitarian and Episcopal churches walked the parade route, too, as well as a group from the Mormon Church.

“I love any organization that calls itself more-men ,” quipped parade announcer Diva, a transvestite entertainer well-known in Orange County’s gay club scene.

To Stephen Guber, 71, a retired mailman from Long Beach, Sunday’s parade illustrated important changes in public attitudes toward gays and lesbians. At the first Orange County festival five years ago, he said, anti-gay demonstrators threatened to hit festival-goers with baseball bats. Nothing like that happened at this year’s festival.

“I think it shows how things are changing,” he said. “People are becoming more understanding and tolerant and sensitive.”