June is Pride Month, 30 days of celebrating and recognizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, two-spirit, and other communities. What started as primarily protest marches has turned into a worldwide phenomenon, with people of all sexual and gender identities participating in bigger and bigger festivals. Parades have moved out of “gayborhoods” and onto prominent downtown streets as they go mainstream.
While there’s plenty to celebrate, it’s important to not lose sight of the challenges that LGBTQ+ people still face. In a recent survey, more than one in three LGBTQ+ Americans reported experiencing discrimination over the past year. This discrimination impacts their ability to stay safe in the public sphere, access critical medical care, and more. It wasn’t until 2020 that the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in the workplace, applies to gay, lesbian, and transgender people.
But there is, and always has been, plenty of queer joy and affirmation to go around. These six facts about Pride’s origins, LGBTQ+ history, and queer icons will help you kick off Pride Month celebrations.
Pride Month Commemorates the Stonewall Uprising
In the wee hours of June 28, 1969, nine police officers raided the Stonewall Inn — a refuge for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers — in New York City’s Greenwich Village. At the time, soliciting same-sex relations was a crime in New York City, as was cross-dressing; Stonewall and many other gay bars also reportedly operated without a liquor license, in part due to historical laws against serving alcohol to gay people. At the time, it was commonplace for police to raid gay bars, and the ones in Greenwich Village had already been raided several times that month.
This time, the clientele at the Stonewall Inn saw their community members being violently arrested for “offenses” like dressing in clothing that didn’t align with what the cops perceived their gender to be, and fought back. What started as a vocal response escalated to throwing coins and bottles, and the officers barricaded themselves inside. The gathered crowd outside grew and eventually reached 400 people, and the resistance lasted five whole days.
It wasn’t the first queer uprising in response to violent police raids, but this one galvanized communities across the United States. New York’s first gay pride march, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, took to the streets in Greenwich Village exactly one year later.
The “P” in Marsha P. Johnson Stood for “Pay It No Mind”
One of the most prominent Stonewall-era activists was a Black trans woman named Marsha P. Johnson. She was present at the initial Stonewall Inn uprising, but she, along with close friend Sylvia Rivera, continued to speak out against trans and Black erasure in the gay rights movement through the 1970s. Johnson adopted her name when she first arrived in New York in the 1960s, with the middle initial “P” standing for “Pay It No Mind.” The phrase became her motto.
Nearly 30 years after her death, the city of New York named a small park for her. And while the city announced a plan for a memorial statue of her and Rivera, a group of activists, frustrated by delays, put up their own bust, sculpted with loops designed to hold flowers in the shape of a crown.
The Original Pride Flag Included 8 Color Stripes
Today, there’s a veritable cornucopia of pride flags for all kinds of sexual, gender, and intersectional identities — but when most people think of the original pride flag, they’re thinking of a six-striped rainbow flag originally designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker. At its 1978 debut, it had not six, but eight colors, each with specific symbolism: hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. Each flag was handmade the first year, but as the design went into mass production the next year, hot pink disappeared and a simple blue replaced indigo and turquoise, partly due to the availability of fabric colors.
Other pride flags, like those for the bisexual and transgender communities, started appearing in the late 1990s. In 2017, the Philadelphia flag brought the stripes back up to eight, adding black and brown stripes to the top of the rainbow to recognize people of color that often faced discrimination within LGBTQ+ communities. Increasingly, pride flags feature multiple flag designs merged into one omnibus flag.
Trans, Non-Binary, and Gender Nonconforming People Have Existed Throughout History
Evidence of gender identities that don’t conform to traditional ideas of “male” and “female” appears throughout communities dating back to ancient times.
Explicit petroglyphs in China’s Xinjiang region that may date back as far as the Bronze Age include figures with both male and female elements. The third-century Roman Emperor Elagabalus actively sought out what today we might call gender-affirming surgery. Fourth-century St. Mary of Egypt is often depicted as a masculine figure. Medieval records describe many gender-fluid identities, including people assigned female at birth living as men in monasteries. Medieval records from London describe a person assigned male at birth who lived much of their life as a woman.
An ancient Viking warrior tomb, previously thought to belong to a man because of the artifacts buried within it, was found to actually belong to a biological woman in 2017. More than 150 Native American tribes recognize genders with both male and female spirits, often referred to collectively as “two spirit” people.
Dolly Parton Once Lost a Dolly Parton Drag Contest
Dolly Parton, while not gay herself, has been vocally supportive of her gay fans — and her over-the-top aesthetic has made her not only a gay icon, but a staple in drag performances. Once, on a whim, Parton entered a drag look-alike contest, but ended up getting a very lukewarm reaction compared to the Dolly-portraying drag queens.
"They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just overexaggerated — made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything," she told Nightline in 2012. “All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line and I just walked across… but I got the least applause."
As of 2023, the U.S. Has 13 Openly Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Congresspeople
America has come a long way in mainstream LGBTQ+ representation. The 118th United States Congress (2023 to 2024) includes 13 members — two in the Senate and 11 in the House — who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, compared to 11 the previous year. That includes Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay person to be elected to the Senate, and Kyrsten Sinema, the first openly bisexual congressperson ever.
While the United States Congress has no openly trans members, at least three are making waves in state government: James Roesener in New Hampshire is the first trans man to be elected to any state’s legislature, Leigh Finke is the first trans person elected to the Minnesota Legislature, and Zooey Zephyr is the first out nonbinary person to be elected to the Montana Legislature.