The Daily Background
| Photos from the Chicago Gay Pride Parade, 2009
by Arlen Parsa
So, last Sunday (the 28th), Tiffany and I went to watch the (gay) Pride Parade here in Chicago. It was our first year going and one thing that I found pleasantly surprising was how many stereotypes were pretty much blown to pieces by the marchers. Here are some pictures I took challenging conventional wisdom on gays and lesbians. The quality varies because some of them were taken with my cell phone instead of my actual camera, which ran out of battery.
There are plenty of veterans who are gay.
This is the gay and lesbian Chicago Police float. Plenty of police officers were in attendance, both marching and serving as security for the parade (some of those not marching decorated the motorized tricycles they drove with rainbow flags).
Gay and lesbian Chicago librarians.
A small but loud contingent of gay Chicago firefighters drove down the street with their sirens blaring at one point.
This one was pretty fun to watch: a little motorized train of gay and lesbian Chicago Transit Authority employees hummed down the street. No word on whether they were the cause of the parade’s late start (heh, Chicagoans will get that one).
This happens to be the Puerto Rican float, but there were plenty of ethnic minorities represented, including the very impressive all-African American South Shore Drill Team.
There were more churches than I could count at the parade, but float happens to belong to a Jewish GLBT organization.
The Google trolly had a rainbow logo. The corporate presence at the parade was very interesting to see, and it ranged from displays of support from OfficeMax (whose banner read “Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Work!”) to not-so-subtle pandering from Southwest (whose banner read “Southwest dot com slash gay travel”).
Supportive parents of gays and lesbians (one sign in the background reads “God blessed me with a gay son”).
… And, okay, some stereotypes were confirmed. But what’s so wrong with that?
Oh, and lastly, this is a photo of IL Senator Roland Burris being driven around in a convertible. As he drove by, he was the only person clapping and cheering (though there were a few loud boos, not the least of which was my own). Geez, what is it with me taking blurry cell phone pictures of Roland Burris these days?
