Why June is celebrated as Pride Month?

Every year in June the world celebrates Pride month dedicated to the LGBTQ community and their right to live a dignified life. Pride is about people coming together, to show and celebrate how far gay rights have come and how much is still left to achieve. Pride month is about equality, teaching acceptance, education in pride history and above all, love. During June, the people are taught about how damaging homophobia is and why everyone needs to get rid of it. It’s about being proud of who the people are no matter what gender it is. Now we will tell you the reason why June is celebrated as Pride month.

Why June is celebrated as Pride Month?

1. The organized pursuit of gay rights in the United States reaches back to at least 1924 and the founding of the Society of Human Rights in Chicago by Henry Gerber. This gay right movement came in June 1969 in New York city’s Greenwich Village, at the Stonewall Inn. In the early morning time of June 28, police raided this popular gathering place for young gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people and also were arresting the employees for selling liquor without a license, roughing up many of the patrons and clearing the bar. The crowd that watched the bar’s patrons being harder into police vans became enraged. Also, previous witnesses to police harassment of members of the LGBTQ community had stood by passively and that time the crowd jeered the police and threw coins and debris at them along with forcing the police to barricade themselves in the bar to await backup. However, the police reinforcements dispersed the crowd, riots waned and waxed outside the bars for the next five days and these Stonewall riots provided the spark that ignited the gay rights movement in the United States.
2. Before these riots, Gay activists in Philadelphia had staged an “Annual Reminder” protest outside Independence Hall on July 4, but these had been carefully constrained picket demonstration in which men were required to wear suits, women were called upon to don skirts and blouses, and displays of public affection were forbidden. At the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations in Philadelphia on November 2, 1969, the idea of a march in response to the Stonewall events was proposed. The first anniversary of the Stonewall riots was scheduled on June 28, 1970, the march was named the Christopher Street Liberation Day march after the street was the epicentre of New York City’s gay community and from which the procession originated.
3. However, gay power had been proposed as the slogan for the march, it was argued that the movement had yet to be politically empowered but that its members felt great pride in their sexual identity. It was decided that the march theme would be “gay pride.” When the march ended 51 blocks north in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, its numbers had risen dramatically, as individuals joined the precision en route in solidarity, chanting, “Say it clear, say it loud. Gay is good, gay is proud.”
4. On the day of the New York march, “the world’s first permitted parade advocating for gay rights” was staged on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles and a “Gay In” was held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
5. Thereafter, gay pride generally came to be celebrated in the United States on the last Sunday of June. In time, the day expanded to become a month-long event.