Gay Pride

Homosexuals, as Gore Vidal has noted, are one of the last minorities in the nation about whom it is still safe to make public jokes. That may not last much longer. Increasingly, homosexuals are creating their own public para-institutions, including churches (see RELIGION). And with the proliferation of such radical groups as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, they are taking to the streets.

Hard on the heels of Women's Liberation and the Black Power movement, hundreds of male and female homosexuals in New York and Los Angeles wound up "Gay Pride Week" with parades that displayed, in turn, an angry solidarity and outrageous camp, proving that homosexuals are capable of some assertive wit about themselves and their sexual preferences.

On Hollywood Boulevard, one gay led a fearsome white husky dog that wore a sign; NOT ALL OF us WALK POODLES. Another poster proclaimed: HOMOSEXUALS FOR REAGAN. Marching up Manhattan's Sixth Avenue, the phalanxes chanted: "Two-four-six-eight, gay is just as good as straight!" or "Ho-Ho-Homosexual!" With cause, the homosexuals were protesting police harassment, Mafia control of some gay bars and other injustices. Some sociologists reckon that the nation's homosexual population, open and secret, is about 4,000,000, and so the new aggressiveness has a large potential. One picket sign in the Los Angeles parade sought to point the way: BETTER BLATANT THAN LATENT.

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