More than two million people will fill the streets of Manhattan on Sunday for the New York City Pride March. But in small towns across the New York region in recent weeks, the march’s buoyant spirit has already gotten a head start.
In the bucolic villages of the Hudson Valley and the conservative towns of Long Island, Pride events have drawn a wide range of people: gay and transgender adults who make their lives outside the urban centers that have been the community’s traditional haven, young people who recently came out of the closet, and straight parents who want to demonstrate inclusivity to their children — no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Jamie Creamer, 38, who lives in Patchogue, on the South Shore of Long Island, attended a Pride event there with her wife and their two young children, “to start setting an example,” she said.
“This is our community. This is our town,” she said. “My son plays sports in this town, and I’m a coach in this town. If we want to make a difference, we’ve got to start with ourselves.”
The New York City Pride March began as a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall riots, widely viewed as the start of the modern L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. Since then, Americans’ support for L.G.B.T.Q. people has soared to somewhere between 60 and 70 percent in recent polls. For many people, that has turned Pride from the radical celebration of a riot against the police into a sort of secular holiday, with rainbows adorning everything from subway ads and police cars to limited-edition merchandise rolled out each June at big-box stores.