Over the Rainbow

I lived in Chicago's Boystown neighborhood in the summer of 1986. I had just gotten married, and we lived on a quiet street lined with typically Chicago three flats and greystones that, more often than not, looked far grander from the street than they were inside.

Our apartment was in the middle of the block, a short walk away from Broadway to the east, Halsted to the west. By day, the neighborhood was alive with a twenty-somethings, gay and straight, its cute restaurants and bustling shops a mecca for people like us, just getting started, still enjoying the laziness of weekends that revolved solely around our own schedules. Night games had not yet come to Wrigley Field, and we could hear the roar from the stadium just north of us on warm afternoons. Fans moved through our streets on the way to and from the game. Chicago is a sports town, and even the gay enclave of Boystown played along.

Evenings in our east Lakeview neighborhood catered more to the gay community than to "breeders" like us. When the weather was nice, we could hear through our open windows the revelers in the midst of their bar crawls. We tended to go elsewhere for our entertainment when the sun went down.

In the summer of 1986, when the Chicago Gay Pride Parade rolled down the block a stone's throw from our apartment, there were an estimated 40,000 in attendance. The parade gave an impression of flamboyance, or maybe that's just the way I saw it. In my mind's eye, I recall mascaraed men in muscle tees, cross dressers dancing in the street, over the top floats weighed down by exuberant survivors of a community that was in the midst of being decimated by the AIDS scourge. It was a day to celebrate our differences, to at least pretend to put aside our fears.

Today, almost thirty years later, my daughter and her friends will be joining a crowd in east Lakeview no doubt numbering in the millions to celebrate not just the annual parade but pride. Gay pride, straight pride, just plain old pride. Participants and spectators alike will gather in the June sunshine, enveloped by a glorious rainbow, to celebrate a great moment in history. This week, the gay and lesbian community in every state can officially enjoy the right to marry. Some of us wonder why it took so long, why it was even an issue, and, well, why anyone would want to get married. But it did take so long, and it is still, in the minds of many, an issue, and marriage can actually be a good thing, so there is much to celebrate.

I am guessing that what my daughter and her friends will witness will be very different from the stereotypes and caricatures that wedged themselves into my head all those years ago. Sure, there will be flamboyance. I like to think every community has its share of all kinds of people, defined not by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin but by the diversity that makes us all so uniquely human. Far right (or wrong) thinkers be damned, this year's parade is about love and family and respect and hope and equality and, if all is right with the world, a healthy dose of flamboyance to boot.

Today is about everything under the sun, and everything over the rainbow.