This is a tale of two parades, of two celebrations. Although one took place in our nation’s capital, on Independence Day, it was the other one—which I was truly honored to attend—that stood up for and embodied the best of America, the country that I love. I’m talking about the NYC Pride March, which last weekend commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
That parade and what it stood for is so important right now, at a time when some of our most cherished democratic values are threatened by our own president and his knee-jerk Republican supporters. Five million people attended the NYC Pride parade, two million more than were expected, according to Mayor Bill De Blasio. It went off beautifully.
At the Pride parade, everyone I could see was cheering, clapping, and singing along (Sister Sledge’s classic We Are Family was played, among other tunes) in harmony—at least in spirit, if not in the musical sense. We were all celebrating the idea that everyone in America should have the same legal rights as everyone else, no matter who they love. Furthermore, we were celebrating the idea that everyone in our country (and, of course, around the world) is equally deserving of respect no matter who they love.
These are powerful ideas, and they echo words that were written in ink, and later sealed in blood, at the time of country’s very own little coming out party that we threw on July 4, 1776. The Pride parade made me proud of how far our country has come on LGBT+ rights since the Stonewall Uprising, even though we have plenty of distance yet to cover, in particular when it comes to the rights of trans people and the disproportionate violence they face. On this and every issue, it’s important that we both mark, commemorate, and rejoice in our progress and, simultaneously, commit to finishing the job. Doing the former breeds more hope that we will be able to accomplish the latter.
The parade that took place on Independence Day is another story.
The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote has a bit of a twitchy thing going on when it comes to his own legitimacy, don’t you think? That’s likely a big part of his really odd demand to have tanks and lots of other big military machinery arranged around him on our country’s birthday. It’s really just about overcompensating for the size of his … electoral victory. What, you thought I was going to say “hands?”
Trump’s July 4 party was, ultimately, a bit of a letdown. The best thing we can say is that he didn’t bleat on about the terrible crimes supposedly committed by the media or various leading figures in the Democratic Party, like he does on the other 364 days of the year. You know, many people say (!) that having a free press and an opposition party are kind of central to being a democracy, so we can acknowledge that at least he didn’t pull his usual “enemies of the people” and “lock her up” shtick while he was situated amidst all the tanks and fighter jets. Speaking of jets (you knew this was coming down the runway, didn’t you?), the speech also demonstrated that Trump literally knows nothing about American history, or else how in the world could he have said that, during the Revolutionary War:
Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.
Of the many, oh so many hilarious responses, this one was my favorite:
For the full effect, you really do have to sing that one out loud. One other, less noted misstep in Trump’s speech concerns the reference to Fort McHenry and the “rockets’ red glare,” an attempt to name-check our national anthem, written by the aforementioned Francis Scott Key. However, Trump—in this case, presumably, his speech writers, as there’s no way he came up with the name of Fort McHenry off the top of his head—blew this one as well. Key wrote the anthem about a battle at Fort McHenry that was fought during the War of 1812, not the Revolutionary War. Fort McHenry wasn’t even built until 10 years after the Revolutionary War ended. Incompetence runs from the top down in this White House.
Jokes and blunders aside, the entire event was an incredibly inappropriate hijacking of our nation’s birthday for personal, partisan, political purposes. As Molly Jong-Fast wrote:
Let’s be real; the whole thing was TOTALLY political. Look no further than the supposedly “free” fireworks on display. Phantom Fireworks donated $750,000 worth of fireworks on the very same day the president decided to forgo “$300 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which include fireworks.” And of course nothing says bipartisanship like reserving VIP seating for GOP heavies and rewarding RNC donors with a view of the tanks.
I will add that I loved VoteVets’ trolling of Trump with the memory of the man who can, even from beyond the grave, make him act even more pathetically petty than usual.
When it comes to Trump betraying our country’s founding ideals, it’s about something beyond the failings of his parade compared to the far more inspiring message of the Pride March. He has betrayed his own promises to the LGBT community. The most recent example of this relates directly to the central theme of the Pride March: commemorating what happened at the Stonewall Inn 50 years ago. On this, as with so many other issues (such as, just last week, North Korea), Trump seems to have decided that if Barack Obama did something, he needs to do the opposite. That’s where this part of the story begins.
President Obama made history by invoking Stonewall in his second inaugural address. In that speech Obama spoke at length of our country’s “founding creed.” I wrote previously about the speech here, and discussed the importance of what he said about Stonewall specifically:
That creed, Obama noted, stood at the center of great liberationist movements throughout our history. He listed place-names from two that he (and others, to be sure) have mentioned before: the long movements for women’s rights (Seneca Falls) and civil rights (Selma). The president also listed a third (Stonewall) that signifies one never before been heard in an inaugural address, namely that of gay rights...Placing Stonewall in the liberationist pantheon alongside Seneca Falls and Selma represents Obama saying that the gay rights movement’s fight for equality is central to America completing its journey toward perfection.
Obama didn’t just namecheck Stonewall in that address, as significant that was. He also took action to make sure his words were embodied by a lasting, physical reminder of that ground-breaking event.
However, in the fall of 2017, the Trump Administration decided it would not be part of flying the rainbow LGBT Pride flag at the Stonewall national monument. In the end, they not only put the kibosh on a planned ceremony at the memorial, they even got rid of the flag and the flagpole where it flew by declaring that the federal government did not in fact own them.
Here’s more, thanks to what we’ve learned from a cache of emails released just last month after a Freedom of Information Act request was filed:
On Oct. 6, 2017, only five days before a ceremony to honor the flag's arrival, Willens ordered the flag removed, setting off a scramble among NPS officials who sought to present a united front to explain the sudden reversal.
In the end, NPS and Interior officials had it both ways: The rainbow flag that signifies gay pride would fly at Stonewall, but on a flagpole deemed not on federal property, even though it's inside the monument's boundary lines and the park's own superintendent assumed it was owned by the federal government. The NPS disposed of the flag by donating it to the New York parks department, which now owns both the flagpole and the flag.
After seeing the released emails, activists were not pleased:
"[snip] The feds were washing their hands of the whole project — it was crazy town; it was shocking," said activist Ken Kidd, who had worked with NPS officials on the planned 2017 ceremony celebrating the flag.
Emails to NPS show widespread frustration with the apparent reversal about federally sanctioning the flying of a flag. One citizen called the actions a "slap in the face" to the LGBTQ community. Another likened refusing the fly a rainbow flag at Stonewall to refusing to fly a MIA-POW flag at a military cemetery.
That last sentence really resonated for me, and I would imagine does for anyone who respects the tremendous sacrifice our soldiers and veterans have made. What the Trump Administration did—and it’s irrelevant whether the Orange Julius Caesar played a direct role or if this disgusting insult derived solely from the actions of his like-minded right-wing minions—typifies everything that is wrong, down to the core, with Trumpism.
What Donald Trump has done over the past four years, ever since he came down that escalator to announce his presidential run and proceeded to lie about the dangers posed by Mexican immigrants, has been in direct opposition to what makes America truly great. That’s why defeating him and his party in 2020 is so vital to actually making America great again.
Being an American is the most important part of my identity. It is the primary way that I feel a sense of connectedness with the people who I live among, with whom I share this land, and who make up the political community in which I participate. And on that last point, that includes feeling connected even to the people whose politics I loathe. After all, someone they love could save me or someone I love in countless ways, and vice versa. One of the ways we, as a people, reinforce that sense of community is through ritual, and one of those rituals is celebrating the birth of the United States as an entity.
That’s why it’s so frustrating to watch President Individual 1 turn our national July 4 celebration into just another event celebrating him and the large objects with which he has long been fascinated. But I’m not going to let him ruin my feelings about this day, a day that I celebrate as not only the birthday of the USA, but as the day the American people put their collective John Hancocks on a piece of paper that declared the absolute equality of each one of us. This is true even though we’ve been fighting ever since among ourselves over the meaning of those words, and over the question of whom they apply to.
Of the two parades I’ve talked about here, there’s no question which one did more to advance and celebrate the principles of equality and freedom for all Americans. It sure wasn’t Donald Trump’s.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)