S.F. Pride parade at 40: Gays no longer outlaws

Oh, what a mighty change 40 years has brought.

Back when San Francisco's first gay rights parade shocked the squares of 1970 with the bold spectacle of a couple hundred marchers down Polk Street, having homosexual sex in California was a crime.

Now? This weekend's two-day San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and Celebration, culminating with Sunday's parade, will pack downtown with hundreds of thousands of revelers. And the daily frivolity of penis-shaped cookies and guys in cut-to-there chaps in the Castro draws chuckles, not indignation.

The battle for LGBT rights still has plenty of heat, activists say, but there's a satisfying sense of normalcy that's been attained - especially in San Francisco - that has young crusaders looking on themselves more as a power bloc for societal good than a one-note constituency.

The annual Pride celebration is just good-time icing on the cake.

"This week is very fun, yes, but I really feel aware of how far we've come and how we have some different goals now," said Zac Benfield, 32. He is one of the organizers of this week's show at the Faetopia gallery on Market Street near Castro Street - and the themes alone illuminate the contrast between 1970 and 2010.

Naked men in oil

On one side of the gallery is the "Eco Homo" exhibition, which features among its environmental messages photos of naked men slathered in oil on gay-popular Baker Beach. On the other side are mattresses where people can cuddle as they watch the 1992 drag queen classic film, "Aliens Cut My Hair!"

The photos are meant to make the catastrophe of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill personal - as in, yes, it affects gay people, too. The mattresses are, well, for inventive fun.

The whole scene might have drawn baton-bearing cops in 1970, Benfield acknowledges with a grin. And that's the point.

Those days are long gone, he said, and he figures he and his fellow LGBT activists have attained enough freedom to act like any other societal bloc.

"We want to move beyond just the activism of queer liberation and realize that we have some amount of power now to change our future," Benfield said. "We're more diversified than they were back then.

"There's a lot of organizing on the street level, and we don't necessarily have to toe the line of the HRC (Human Rights Campaign, one of the foremost gay rights lobbying groups in the country). We can just be who we are."

Feisty is fine

That feisty, forward-looking spirit sits just fine with the folks who put together this weekend's Pride celebrations.

Today features a festival around Civic Center and home-grown events all over town. Those include history tours, cheerfully smutty parties and the installation of a giant pink triangle on Twin Peaks.

Sunday has the huge parade along Market Street, led off at 10:30 a.m. at Beale Street by Dykes on Bikes, and then more parties, exhibits and food.

Among all this levity - this year's theme is "40 and Fabulous" - there will still be plenty of serious talk, including a videotaped address at 2:55 p.m. Sunday in Civic Center by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

After all, said Amy Andre, S.F. Pride executive director, it's not yet legal for LGBT people to get married or be openly gay in the military. Kicking down those barriers will take energy young and old, she said.

"We still have a long way to go," Andre said. "But look at this: Forty years later, we have someone like Nancy Pelosi involved in our event, and I don't know that anybody back then would have thought we'd have the speaker of the House addressing us.

"They were still worrying then about whether the police were going to round people up."

Old times

Author Bruce Boone, 70, remembers those roundup days as if they were yesterday. This week as he strolled to the Castro Theatre with his Yorkie, Miss Sadie, he perused the Pride Week movie offerings and wondered if the bad old days were really all that bad.

"Forty years ago, there was an outlaw sense about the gay rights movement," Boone said. "You felt like you were part of a sort of club ... and everyplace I went, there would be people to hail, to go drinking all night with.

"Now, everybody's either dead or gone, and the last time I went to a movie here at the Castro, the theater was filled with 25-year-old screaming queens." He shook his head with a laugh.

"What would I want with 25-year-old screaming queens?" Boone said. "On parade day, I'm going to stay home and read."

A few blocks south and a couple of generations away, 18-year-old Skyler Tommila of Oak Harbor, Wash., stood in front of Harvey Milk's old camera store and gaped at the historical window display. He's on his first visit to San Francisco, and topping his list of destinations was this shrine of the gay rights movement.

"I've heard so much about this town, and it is such an inspiration," he said quietly. "I come from a small Navy town, and let me tell you, people are a lot more accepting of gay people here than they are there.

"This," he said, spreading his arms to take in the Castro's sun-splashed shops and restaurants, "is amazing."

E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle