This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Pride march in San Diego. To chart the course of the Pride movement in San Diego, we present a timeline of events created by Lambda Archives of San Diego, San Diego State University’s Out on the Left Coast Pride history project and San Diego Pride. This timeline has been abbreviated for space reasons, but more information can be found at lambdaarchives.org. and at SDSU’s Out on the Left Coast at sdpride.sdsu.edu.
MORE COVERAGE: On its 50th anniversary, San Diego Pride is looking back and ahead
1969
A police raid on the Stonewall gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village on June 28 sparked five days of riots and protests in the city and galvanized the formation of gay rights groups across the United States including the militant political organization the Gay Liberation Front.
1970
In February, San Diego State College students organized a local chapter of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) as an approved on-campus organization. In December, the local GLF chapter hosted its first “Gay-In” at Presidio Park, a festive gathering attended by 60-100 gays and lesbians. It was seen as the first public expression of gay pride in San Diego.
1971
The GLF launched a newsletter and a phone helpline called the Gay Information Center that would later morph into the San Diego LGBT Center (now known as The Center). On Nov. 28, the GLF picketed San Diego Police headquarters to protest the department’s treatment of gays, lesbians and drag queens and against the gay stings conducted in Balboa Park. In December, a picnic-style Gay-In was held at what’s now known as Nate’s Point in Balboa Park.
1972
In February, San Diego GLF Stephen Bell and Jess Jessop traveled to a Chicago conference to help co-author the 1972 Gay Rights Platform in the United States. In October, planning meetings began to open a gay center where men and women could find community and assistance as an alternative to bars and churches.
1973
Early in the year, the local GLF chapter disbanded as the less-political Gay Information Center (GIF) grew. On June 24, the first San Diego Gay Pride Week kicked off. In September, the building that would eventually become known as The Center opens at 2250 B St. in Golden Hill (it would later relocate to its current location in Hillcrest). The San Diego gay newspaper Pacific Coast Times would print its first issue in 1973, and the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform was established.
1974
Although the exact time, location and details are hazy, the city’s first gay pride march took place this year, perhaps around the end of June in connection with a San Diego Pride event. An estimated 25 people walked along downtown sidewalks because they lacked a city permit to march in the streets. That September, San Diego Police arrested 23 men on felony and misdemeanor perversion charges related to their activities in the restrooms at the May Co. department store in Mission Valley. After the suspects’ names and addresses were printed in the local newspaper, one of the men committed suicide. A couple dozen LGBT community organized a protest against the police.
1975
In June, an estimated 400 people took part in the first city-approved San Diego Pride march, which started downtown near the County istration Center and concluded with a rally near Marston Point at Sixth Avenue and Juniper Street. In the early parade years, many marchers wore paper bags over their heads to protect their identities for fear of retaliation from employers and agitators. The event was widely covered by both the gay and mainstream media.
1977
Singer Anita Bryant launched a national anti-gay crusade that galvanized gays and lesbians nationwide to stand up for their rights. More than 1,000 San Diegans participated in this year’s Pride march.
1978
California state Sen. John Briggs launched an initiative, Prop. 6, to prohibit homosexuals from teaching in public schools and prohibit curriculum that portrays homosexuality in a positive light. In response, the ’78 Pride rally focused on the “No on 6” campaign. The initiative was defeated at the polls in a landslide vote. Meanwhile, a long-simmering dispute with the San Diego chapter of the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP), which ed gay rights but wanted to promote their own political agenda at the marches and rallies, boiled over, leading to SWP spreading misinformation that Pride events were canceled. The events still went on but with lower attendance.
1979
In February, San Diego police raided a gay men’s club and arrested 23 patrons for lewd conduct. In response, activists formed the Gay Alliance for Equal Rights to address police harassment. At the annual Pride march that June, participation was down slightly when Black and Chicano groups declined to participate in what they saw as a White-dominated event.
1980
On June 21, the first San Diego Pride Parade took place, transforming from its political origins as a protest march for equal rights to a parade celebrating identity and unity. The name change caused a split in the Lesbian/Gay Men’s Pride Alliance. The lesbians, preferring the political march theme, left to form the Lesbian Solidarity Movement. As a result, parade participation fell from 1,300 in past years to 650.
1981
Lambda Pride, a nonprofit organization, is founded to produce the parade, which permanently changes its marching route from downtown San Diego to Hillcrest, where thousands of viewers began lining the streets to watch. At the post-parade rally at Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park in June, fundamentalist Christians showed up to protest the event. The presence of protesters would gradually grow during the 1980s. The first Pride Festival was held on Juniper Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. On July 10, the first local news stories were published about a rare and mysterious form of pneumonia among gay men. By spring 1982, AIDS was fast becoming an epidemic.
1982
This year was the first Pride celebration without a political rally, though the Lesbian Solidarity Movement held their own event on June 5. The parade grew and the festival relocated to private property where tickets could be sold..
1983
More than 60 contingents would march in the parade and San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, who was a progressive Republican at the time, established a Human Rights Day for gays and lesbians. In the years that followed, Hedgecock left politics following a campaign finance-related conviction and became a conservative radio talk show host. In 1994, he would sue Pride organizers to allow “Normal People” (meaning not LGBTQ) to march in the parade, but the case lost in court.
1984
The Pride festival doubled in size in 1984 and the rally returned, drawing 6,000 people including many lesbians who had left the organization in 1980. Hundreds of fundamentalist protestors showed up to protest the events. In response, counter-protestors formed a human buffer zone to protect the marchers and they carried signs reading “Love they Enemy” and “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.”
1986
Lambda Pride’s financial problems led to the festival’s near-cancellation in 1986. Last-minute angel donors kept the event alive. But the event had its chaotic moments. Hundreds of religious protestors showed up and some police officers refused to create a buffer zone to protect the marchers. As a result there were scuffles, fighting and chaos along the parade route. The rally’s focus in 1986 was to mount opposition to California Prop. 64, which would have restricted the rights of AIDS patients. It lost in a landslide vote.
1987
Maureen O’Connor became the first San Diego mayor to march in the parade, and with the full presence of San Diego Police restored along the route. The Pride rally focused on AIDS awareness, honoring the 289 San Diegans who had succumbed to the disease. More than 3,000 people at the rally marched 17 blocks to city hall to demand the city do more to help AIDS patients.
1988-’90
The 1988 parade grew to 3,000 marchers and the number of protestors dwindled. Helen Reddy performed at the Pride Festival, but expenses far exceeded ticket income, leaving Pride organizers with nearly $40,000 in debt. In 1989, a coalition of community leaders formed a new nonprofit with an executive director to provide budget oversight and planning. Although heavy rain reduced parade and festival attendance in 1990, the event broke even. During the 1990s, efforts to expand diversity among parade and festival participants gradually bore fruit.
1991
To avoid conflicts with Pride events in other California cities and to escape the uncertainties of San Diego’s unpredictable June weather (known as June Gloom), San Diego Pride events permanently moved to the month of July in 1991. As a result, parade and festival attendance, and event profits, began to grow.
1992-’95
With the move to July, San Diego Pride became a magnet destination for LGBTQ community from around the country. The festival moved to its now permanent location at Marston Point in West Balboa Park. In 1994, an estimated 60,000 people attended Pride events. Adding star power to the 1995 event was the parade grand marshal Greg Louganis, the San Diego raised-Olympics diving gold medalist who went public as gay and HIV positive the year before. By the mid-1990s, homosexuality was gaining wide acceptance from the public with the help of mainstream media television shows. As the stigma faded, more people were beginning to identify themselves as bisexual and transgender. In 1994, San Diego Pride incorporated as a nonprofit.
Late 1990s
With more mainstream corporate sponsors stepping up to Pride events and bigger celebrity hosts and musicians g on to appear, Pride continued to grow, with attendance growing to 100,000 by 1998. But there were a few dark clouds. In 1999, a protestor fired a tear gas canister at parade spectators but no one was seriously injured.
The 2000s
Festival attendance continued to skyrocket but anti-gay activists continued to make headlines. In 2005, a scandal erupted when anti-gay activisit James Hartline announced his discovery that two Pride volunteers were ed sex offenders. Eventually four volunteers were asked to leave the organization. Then in 2006, three men were arrested after attacking six festival-goers with baseball bats and knives. All three, plus an accomplice, were convicted in court.
The 2010s
Following the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule for LGBT military personnel, the U.S. Department of Defense allowed military personnel to march in the Pride parade wearing their uniforms in 2012. At the 2013 festival, attendees were invited to get married at an outdoor wedding chapel to celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide. In 2014, She Fest debuted during Pride week as a one-day event celebrating women and non-binary people. A few days before the 2019 Pride parade and festival, a San Diego man made two anonymous calls to San Diego Pride offices threatening to “kill all the gays and the children.” He was later arrested and sentenced to six years in prison for a series of bank robberies.
The 2020s
The 2020 parade and festival were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but many events were presented virtually online. In 2021, there was no festival but an estimated 10,000 people took part in a Resilient Community March from Balboa Park to Hillcrest. In 2022, the San Diego Pride Parade and Festival returned in a big way.
Today the San Diego Pride Parade draws an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people each year, making it one of the largest Pride events in America and the largest single-day civic event in the region, according to San Diego Pride.
