Do you know why June is LGBT Pride Parade month?

Sao Paulo is home to one of the largest LGBT Pride Parades of the world. It’s already a tradition: on the Sunday of the Corpus Christi holiday, people from all over Brazil gather in the iconic Paulista Avenue to celebrate diversity and fight for rights for the population LGBT🇧🇷 But why always in june🇧🇷

It is not only in Brazil that June is the month of various celebrations and protests in favor of LGBT people. This story began in the United States, in June 1969, with the Stonewall Riots. Until the 1960s, the United States had very cruel anti-LGBT legislation. It was a crime to love someone of the same sex, even if it was indoors and consensual. An LGBT relationship, until the 1960s, could lead to life in prison in the US🇧🇷 Castration, electric shock and lobotomy – surgeries that removed part of the patient’s brain – were used to try to “cure” homosexuals.

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Of course, this situation was unsustainable, and little by little the LGBT community began to organize itself. In the 1960s there were still few places that accepted LGBTs with peace of mind, but one of them, in New Yorkit was the bar Stonewall Inn, in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village. This bar was known, by the way, for bringing together the most marginalized part of the community: transgenders, effeminate gay men, masculinized lesbian women, transgenders and drag queens, among others.

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The time was propitious to put the finger on the wound of delicate questions. The 1960s were marked by the counterculture, and the human rights and anti-war movements were on the rise. In 1969, tired of so much injustice, the LGBT community that gathered at the Stonewall Inn revolted. For days they faced the police, who made frequent raids on the bar, acting against the regulars with violence and oppression.

What happened at the Stonewall Inn was impossible to ignore. Newspapers such as the New York Times and the New York Post covered the events. What started as a revolt against police oppression at the bar has turned into a fight for LGBT rights more broadly. No one else was going to hide.

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In 1970, the year following the Stonewall Riots, the first LGBT Parades took place in the USA, celebrating the anniversary of the event. The exact date of the celebration is June 28 – International LGBT Pride Day. In 1970 demonstrations took place in the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago, in addition to New York. In 1971 it was the turn of Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, West Berlin and Stockholm. And since then, every year, more and more cities have come together and organized to fight for LGBT rights.

History of the São Paulo LGBT Pride Parade

The first edition of the LGBT Pride Parade in São Paulo took place in June 1997, on Avenida Paulista. An iconic stage for protests and celebrations, the avenue received around 2,000 gays, lesbians, transvestites and activists to celebrate pride and protest against prejudice.

Each year, the Parade seeks to give visibility to a specific theme. In 2017, the theme is the struggle for a real Secular State. In 2016, it was the turn to fight for the Gender Identity Law and against Transphobia. Same-sex marriage was once a topic – and became law. And, of course, the fight against homophobia is a constant.

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Since 1997, the LGBT Parade has grown significantly from the 2,000 supporters of the first edition, the march has gathered 2.5 million people celebrating diversity, and entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest LGBT Pride Parade in the world, in 2006.

GLS, GLT, LGBT, Gay Parade – which name is right?

In 1997 the acronym most used to represent diversity was GLT – gays, lesbians and transvestites – and that is why the first march was called “GLT Pride Parade”. In 1999, the acronym changed to GLBT – gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. The protest was popularly known as the “Gay Parade”.

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Until 2017, the acronym used was LGBT, giving more visibility to lesbians and aligning with the acronym that is used in other countries around the world, such as the United States. In 2018, the slogan of the Parade is “Power for LGBTI+”, including for the first time Intersex people and the “+”, which covers other possibilities of sexuality that exist but are not contemplated in the acronym.