Pride Month 2023: Here's Why It Is Celebrated In The Month Of June — All You Need To Know

It is critical to be aware of the dates and understand the history of the ongoing fight for LGBTQ rights in order to prepare for the upcoming Pride Month in 2023.

File Photo: Pride Month is observed throughout June (Representational Image)

Source : Getty

Pride Month approaches as the temperature rises in the United States, serving as a time to honour LGBTQ communities, promote queer joy, and advocate for rights that are currently under attack. Notably, New York hosts the country's largest pride parades each year, with the 2019 World Pride event drawing approximately 5 million people to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a watershed moment in the global LGBTQ movement.

In order to prepare for the upcoming Pride Month in 2023, it is critical to be aware of the dates and understand the history of the ongoing fight for LGBTQ rights. Pride Month is observed throughout June, beginning on Thursday, June 1 and concluding on Friday, June 30. Various celebrations such as parades, festivals, parties, and picnics are held in cities across America throughout the month.

Pride Month: History And Significance

Pride Month has significant historical significance because it commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York, which marked a turning point in the fight for LGBT rights. On June 28, 1969, a police raid targeted the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay pub in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The six-day-long protests that followed marked a watershed moment in LGBT activism in the United States.

The following year saw the first Pride parades in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. However, despite the critical contributions of transgender people and women of colour during the riots, including trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, they were largely excluded from early Pride celebrations.

This disparity was highlighted by Cathy Renna, Communications Director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, who stated, "The reality is that most of the folks on the front lines at the Stonewall uprising were trans women, trans women of colour, other people of colour, butch lesbians." She went on to say that the power to organise Pride events was primarily held by cisgender, gay white men.

Today, Pride Month is an opportunity for visibility and community building. In addition to celebrating LGBTQ love and joy, it serves as a platform for the community to address important policy issues and resources. Due to escalating violence against marginalised groups, particularly BIPOC and trans communities, New York City Pride made headlines in 2021 by prohibiting law enforcement presence at Pride events until 2025. LGBTQ organisations are actively fighting the more than 650 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year in 2023.

Pride Month began on June 28, 1970, with the first Pride marches in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, coinciding with the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Notably, thousands marched from Christopher Street, the site of the Stonewall Inn, to Central Park in the United States' inaugural Pride parade.

Even before the arrival of Pride parades, the gay rights movement in the United States experienced significant milestones. Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society, the first national gay rights organisation, in 1950.

As the LGBTQ rights movement gained traction, the community shifted from outdated terms like transsexual and homosexual to embracing identities like transgender, gay, and lesbian.

While the term "Pride" does not have a specific meaning, it does represent a collection of LGBTQ identities related to sexual orientation and gender identity. L stands for Lesbian, G stands for Gay, B stands for Bisexual, T stands for Transgender, and Q stands for Queer or sometimes questioning. The plus symbol represents the acceptance of other identities within the diverse LGBTQ community.