New York, San Francisco and other cities cap Pride month with a mix of party and protest

NEW YORK — The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reached its crescendo as huge crowds took part in jubilant, daylong street parties from New York to San Francisco.

Pride celebrations are typically a daylong mix of jubilant street parties and political protest, but this year’s iterations took a more defiant stance as Republicans, led by President Trump, have sought to roll back LGBTQ+ rights.

The theme of the festivities in Manhattan was “Rise Up: Pride in Protest.” San Francisco’s Pride theme was “Queer Joy Is Resistance,” while Seattle’s was simply “Louder.”

Lance Brammer, a 56-year-old teacher from Ohio attending his first Pride parade in New York, said he felt “validated” as he marveled at the size of the city’s celebration, the nation’s oldest and largest.

“With the climate that we have politically, it just seems like they’re trying to do away with the whole LGBTQ community, especially the trans community,” he said, wearing a vivid, multicolored shirt. “And it just shows that they’ve got a fight ahead of them if they think that they’re going to do that with all of these people here and all of the support.”

Doriana Feliciano, who described herself as an LGBTQ+ ally, held up a sign saying, “Please don’t lose hope,” in support of friends she said couldn’t attend Sunday.

“We’re in a very progressive time, but there’s still hate out there, and I feel like this is a great way to raise awareness,” she said.

Manhattan’s parade wound its way down Fifth Avenue with more than 700 participating groups greeted by huge crowds. The rolling celebration will pass the Stonewall Inn, the famed Greenwich Village gay bar where a 1969 police raid triggered protests and energized the LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The site is now a national monument. The first Pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

Marchers in San Francisco, host to another of the world’s largest Pride events, headed down Market Street to concert stages set up at the Civic Center Plaza. Denver, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto were among the other major North American cities that hosted Pride parades Sunday.

Meanwhile, at the Istanbul Pride event Sunday, Turkish authorities detained more 50 people attempting to march as part of the government’s decade-long crackdown on the event.

A heavy police presence in hot spots around the city prevented significant gathering and the organization had to change the location multiple times.

Yildiz Tar, editor in chief of the LGBTQ+ rights organization and journal Kaos GL, wrote on X that 54 people were detained at Istanbul Pride, including six lawyers. As of Sunday evening, seven had been released and 47 were still in detention.

The Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey, or DISK, announced that at least three journalists were among the detained.

“The palace regime will not be able to stay in power by demonizing the LGBTQ community,” said Kezban Konukcu, member of Parliament from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, who participated in the event.

Once boasting tens of thousands of participants, Istanbul Pride has been banned since 2015 as the religious conservative Justice and Development Party began playing up to the more conservative elements of its base.

Several other global cities including Tokyo, Paris and São Paulo held their Pride events earlier this month, and others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November.

In the United States, Trump has issued orders and implemented policies targeting transgender people, removing them from the military, preventing federal insurance programs from paying for gender-affirmation surgeries for young people and attempting to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ and women’s sports.

Peter McLaughlin said he’s lived in New York for years but had never attended the Pride parade. The 34-year-old Brooklyn resident said he felt compelled this year as a transgender man.

“A lot of people just don’t understand that letting people live doesn’t take away from their own experience, and right now it’s just important to show that we’re just people,” McLaughlin said.

Gabrielle Meighan, 23, of New Jersey, said she felt it was important to come out to this year’s celebrations because they come days after the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark June 26, 2015, ruling in Obergefell vs. Hodges that recognized same-sex marriage nationwide.

“It’s really important to vocalize our rights and state why it’s important for us to be included,” she said.

Manhattan on Sunday also hosted the Queer Liberation March, an activism-centered event launched in recent years amid criticism that the more mainstream parade had become too corporate.

Marchers holding signs that included “Gender affirming care saves lives” and “No Pride in apartheid” headed north from the city’s AIDS Memorial to Columbus Circle near Central Park.

Among the other headwinds faced by gay rights groups this year is the loss of corporate sponsorship. American companies have pulled back support of Pride events, reflecting a broader walking back of diversity and inclusion efforts amid shifting public sentiment.

NYC Pride said this month that about 20% of its corporate sponsors dropped or reduced support, including PepsiCo and Nissan. Organizers of San Francisco Pride said they lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast and Anheuser-Busch.

Marcelo and Shaffrey write for the Associated Press.