"I'm not homophobic, but why do they have to take it to the streets?" How pride marches came about and why they are still needed
"Let them do what they want at home, but why do they have to show it on the street?"
"I'm not homophobic, but Pride is a bit much, isn't it?"
Sentences that appear with the regularity of the seasons in the Czech space. They are often uttered calmly, sometimes even with the feeling that the speaker is actually tolerant. But that is precisely their strength and their problem.
They carry the idea that queer people have a right to exist as long as they are not seen. As long as they don't occupy public space. As long as they don't remind people that they're there. If they stay "at home".
But public space has historically been the place from which they've been pushed out.
Pride marches did not originate as colorful carnivals. They didn't originate as a marketing event or an urban festival. They were created as a protest. As a response to bullying, police violence, and the systematic displacement of queer people from the visible world.
Fateful Night
On the night of June 28, 1969, the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn bar in New York's Greenwich Village. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Similar raids were common in 1960s America - gay bars were surveilled, queer people arrested, ridiculed, thrown out on the street.
The Stonewall Inn was a gathering place for the most vulnerable: trans people, drag queens, homeless young boys, marginalized people. But that day, the bar patrons rebelled. What followed was several days of rioting that went down in history as the Stonewall Uprising - and became a symbol of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
A year later, in June 1970, the first Pride marches took to the streets of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was not a celebration of identity in the modern sense. It was a reminder - we are here. We have a right to be seen. And we don't want to go back into the shadows.
These early events continued an even older tradition. As early as 1965, a "homophile march" was held in front of the White House, organized by groups like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, calling attention to discrimination against queer people in government. That same year, there were the so-called Annual Reminder pickets - silent, formal protests in suits and skirts designed to show that gays and lesbians were "normal citizens." These events, too, were expressions of a fundamental need: to be seen in a space that had been forbidden until then.
But Stonewall changed its tune. The movement became radicalized. Instead of a careful plea for tolerance came the language of equality and freedom. There was talk of "Gay Liberation" and "Gay Freedom". And the march became its most visible symbol.
The first marches: courage, fear and Hollywood Boulevard
Today, it's easy to see Pride as an obvious part of the city's calendar. But the early years were anything but comfortable.
In Los Angeles, organizers tried to get permission to march down Hollywood Boulevard. At the time, the police chief said that giving gays a permit to march down Main Street was the same as giving it to thieves and muggers. The city demanded fees in excess of a million dollars. Only the intervention of the American Civil Liberties Union and a California court ruling ensured that police must protect the parade like any other.
Organizers received death threats the morning before the event. Still, they came out. The first Los Angeles Pride was quiet, with no music and a carnival atmosphere. Just people taking a chance on being seen, and the consequences that could result.
In New York, Christopher Street Liberation Day was created, named after the street where the Stonewall Inn stood. The goal was to create an annual commemoration while inspiring other cities across the United States. The proposal was clear: no age restrictions, no dress code, no hiding. Public space belongs to everyone.
A space that has never been neutral
Public space has never been a blank canvas. It is shaped by norms, images and expectations. And for most of modern history, it was "naturally" heterosexual.
Holding hands in the street. Kissing at a bus stop. The "traditional family" in commercials. Wedding billboards. A movie couple on a subway poster. These are all everyday presentations of one form of relationship and identity. We just get so used to it that we stop noticing it.
As soon as another identity appears in the same space, we speak of "imposition". We talk about 'promotion'. That "it's too much".
Pride came into being as a conscious disruption of this self-evidence. A reminder that the city is not just for one. That the streets are not just for one type of story. And that visibility is not a whim, but a tool.
From protest to global language
During the 1970s and 1980s, marches spread outside the US. In 1972, the first Pride was held in London. Gradually, the terminology changed - "Gay Liberation Marches" became "Pride". The emphasis shifted from revolutionary rhetoric to self-acceptance. It did not mean the end of politics, but a transformation.
Pride became a global language of visibility.
In Israel, the first march took place in 1993. Today, a quarter of a million people participate. In the Philippines, thirty to fifty people marched in 1994. In 2023, over a hundred thousand - in response to the rejection of the Equality Act.
In Japan, the first Pride was held in Tokyo in 1994. The largest march in East Asia took place in 2022 in Taiwan, where over 120,000 people took to the streets. In India, the first Pride was held in Calcutta in 1999.
In each of these contexts, the march had a different tone. In some places it was a joyous celebration, in others it was an outright political protest. But one thing was common: coming out into a space where silence had long been expected.
Prague: Pride in a country that "is tolerant"
Prague Pride was founded in 2011. It takes place every year in mid-August and offers dozens of debates, workshops, sports and cultural events in addition to the parade itself. The centre of the action is concentrated in the Pride Village on Střelecký ostrov, culminating in a parade through Prague on Saturday, which heads to Letná pláň.
From the perspective of many Czechs, however, Pride is unnecessary. "Nothing happens here anymore."
But the reality is more complicated.
The Czech Republic still doesn't have marriage for all. Queer kids hear name-calling in schools. Many people are afraid to take their partner's hand on the street. Not because they're squeamish, but because they know what might follow.
Prague Pride is not a celebration of privilege. It is a reminder that equality is not a done deal. That tolerance is not the same as acceptance. And that "you can do what you want, but at home" is just another form of restriction.
Why are we bothered by visibility?
So the question is not why other orientations have to be shown on the street.
The question is: why do we still mind if someone else exists as publicly as we do?
Pride isn't about queer people wanting to be more queer than others. It's about refusing to be less. It's that they don't want to live in the mode of invisibility that has been their only option for generations.
History shows one thing: no rights have ever come quietly. They didn't come from living rooms. They didn't come from closets. It came from the streets.
Because equality does not come in silence. It comes when it is seen.
