Experiences #2 and #3: Holy Covenant Church and Pride Parade

We started out the day at a great church service at the Holy Covenant Methodist Church, situated along the el tracks on Diversey and Sheffield, about a mile from our new place. Today's service was a welcoming one, part of Chicago's month long pride celebration. Great music, ethusiastic minister, very nice congregation -- we really liked it alot.

After the service we walked a few blocks toward the lake and watched a HUGE pride parade -- it lasted several hours and featured amazing floats, raunchy dancers, earnest legal groups, prim parents of queers -- you name it, they were there. It was a beautiful sunny day and thousands of people were there watching the parade, giving it the feel of a giant street festival. We left after about three hours and the floats were still coming. All in the all, the entire day felt like a great welcome to the neighborhood.

When I was a teen about 30 years ago I took the bus down to this area on day to visit a friend. The bus stopped early and the driver told everyone to get out. As I got off the bus and started walking the rest of the way to my friend's apartment I realized that I was in a march of some sort, and then realized further that it was a bunch of gay people -- my introduction to public queer organizing, I guess. Even though they had to shut the street down, my first gay pride march was just a shadow of the one that we saw today. Seeing the diversity of folks out there today (race, age, religion, etc.) made us feel like the Religious Right just isn't going to win this battle.