Whose Pride Is It Anyway?

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

It’s Pride Month, which means cities across the country will be having parades and other festivities, albeit scaled-down versions. In New York and several other cities, parade organizers have said uniformed police officers may not march as a group. Organizers say the move acknowledges that a Pride march isn’t just a celebration and that it began as a statement about police violence against L.G.B.T.Q. people at the Stonewall Inn. This week, Jane Coaston speaks to André Thomas, a co-chair of NYC Pride, which organizes the parade, and Brian Downey, a New York Police Department detective and the president of the Gay Officers Action League.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, Jane. My name is Mark from New York City. I'm arguing with my friends online with strangers
0:12.8	and just feeling internally conflicted about the New York City pride decision to not let
0:19.4	LGBT officers march in the parade and drawn some condemnation from places like the New
0:25.9	York Times, but I've also seen a lot of really passionate support for it from community activists.
0:31.3	And I'm feeling torn myself because Stonewall was a riot against police ray and police brutality,
0:37.9	which continues today. But I also refuse to believe that every single police officer is
0:42.7	that that person. And I think that there are good decent LGBT police officers out there.
0:48.3	Today on the argument, is it wrong to ban gay cops from marching on a parade in
0:55.8	uniform?
1:00.8	I'm Jane Kostin, and at my very first pride parade in St. Louis, Missouri, I remember being
1:06.7	struck by the sight of cops in uniforms marching and holding hands with their partners. Not
1:11.5	just because they were cops, but because the idea of being a cop and being out was stunning
1:16.0	to me at the time. That you could simultaneously hold two identities in public, and everyone
1:21.7	could know about both of them, and that could be okay. But I also know that the origin
1:26.9	story of pride is a story of police brutality. The Compton's cafeteria riots of 1966,
1:32.7	the Stonewall uprising in June 1969, both for reactions to police violence against LGBT
1:38.5	people, state violence against LGBT people. Last year, protesters said NYPD officers used
1:45.1	pepper spray and shoved demonstrators at a queer liberation march in New York's Washington
1:49.9	Square Park. A year after the agency apologized for the actions taken by officers at Stonewall
1:55.7	50 years earlier. In response, this year, NYC pride and pride marches across the country
2:01.9	have decided to bar uniformed officers from marching. Police officers are still welcome
2:06.5	to participate, but not in uniform.
	...

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