It's a tad overwritten, but I do actually remember Gay Pride Marches when they were grassroots. I marched in one in 1990. There was no corporate support or fancy floats. No thumping music and boys gyrating in jockstraps. It was a group of relatively ordinary people marching in the street, counter-protested by people from local churches. The only institutional support we had was being allowed to finish the march on a local university campus, where we were reasonably safe from harassment just for being gay in public.

In the state where this happened, we still had sodomy laws. LGB soldiers were still being tracked down and kicked out of the military. We had hardly any position representation in any kind of mainstream media.

We had real and serious civil rights problems.