Lisa Albrecht: The other thing that makes me sad is the GLBT movement has kind of remained single-issue in its politics, so there's this celebration marching up Hennepin Avenue without any attention to a war going on right now, or an economic crisis in this country right now. The focus tends to be more on social partying. And the Pride committee tends to be predominantly white and more interested in gay-male stuff. Now I also know thousands of people come from all over the Midwest who don't live as privileged a life as many of us live here in the Twin Cities. They are either closeted or not able to have as large a community. So I understand the need for somebody from rural South Dakota to come to town that weekend and party, yet at the same time, why shouldn't there be a constellation of events that are doing political education?
Craig Carnahan: I moved here in 1980. I grew up in a very small town in South Dakota and in a generation where being gay was something you really had to keep a secret. People lived in fear of being discovered. There was a lot of trauma over potential ramifications for relationships with family and bosses and housing and everything that impacts your basic quality of life. So to come out of that environment and move to a city and see the number of people that would come to the festival in plain view and openly celebrate who they were was incredibly inspiring. It blew all kinds of dust out that closet door for me.
Courtesy of the Tretter Collection/U of M libraries
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Jean Tretter: GLBT culture and history certainly aren't going to be taught anytime soon in public schools, so where else are young GLBT people going to get it? We can't just expect that every young lesbian and gay who grows up is going to seek out their history. It's a good thing they don't have to suffer what people had to suffer in the past, but they also need to know about that history, about that previous suffering, or they're going to end up taking the community right back to where it was. The more assimilationist you become, the more likely you are to fall back, to become indifferent, to say everything will be okay. And it won't be. Because the haters, the people who despise us, are always going to be there, just like we're always going to be here.
Ken Darling: There are always these backlash arguments and part of that is the nature of activists--you see it in the opponents of the gay rights struggle too. They love to talk about how they are under siege. It's a way to rally the troops. And they're absolutely right, I mean, we can't afford to just sit back and presume that just because we are on the right moral side of this argument, we are going to win. But this backlash notion, I've been hearing that for 10 years! There's always a backlash, and rather than calling it backlash you call it resistance. It's absolutely not true that the gay rights movement is moving backward, or that this defense of marriage amendment and all of that are somehow going to slow the progress of the gay rights struggle. Absolutely untrue! Those are the futile gestures of opponents who not only are losing, but who know that they are losing.
Michael Dahl: When you are in the parade, especially the first time, it's overwhelming. It's such a feeling of acceptance and community. I know those are such clichés but it's amazing. It's amazing.
Ann DeGroot: I remember about three years ago I was in the parade and I looked around and thought, I can't believe this, because I remember when it was 200 of us scraggly homos walking down Lyndale.
Jean Tretter: In some respects, I'm kind of sad that the kind of radicalism we had in the '60s and '70s is gone. Wouldn't it be nice if we were out in the streets marching against Bush? But we're still there, we're still accomplishing the goals that we wanted to accomplish, we're just doing it in a slightly different way. And we're known for being able to give parties, so why not give the best party possible and invite everybody to see what a great party it is?
Tim Campbell: Gay Pride is not the grassroots activism that it was, but in another sense it's the flowering of what the grassroots activists wanted.
Jean Tretter: When you think about it--I mean, at the first one, maybe 25 people marched, and today it's actually the largest parade in Minnesota, with almost 500,000 people expected--that's quite a difference.
Jim Kelley: The earlier Prides were more about personal transformation and taking personal risks, whereas now it's almost a group transformation. All of our events we try to do in such a way that anyone who comes can be totally relaxed, and there's no need to hide who you are. You can wear what you want, hold hands if you want, all of those things that you should be able to do in the general public--just like the straight population does. It sets an example of what the world could be. And hopefully people can come and experience that, and take it back to their general life and say, I need to change things; this is the way that I want to live all year round.
Special thanks to Jean Tretter, whose extraordinary collection of GLBT literature, art, and artifacts is housed in the Special Collections and Rare Books section of the University of Minnesota's Elmer L. Andersen Library.
