Gays take pride in legal changes

SAN FRANCISCO - Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets Sunday for Gay Pride parades, energized by the Supreme Court's ruling that struck down laws against sodomy and a decision by Canada to allow gay marriage.

In New York, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco and other cities, revelers marched, danced and carried banners congratulating the Supreme Court for its landmark ruling as rainbow flag-waving crowds lined the streets.

"There's such a resonance, such a sense of movement," said Marty Downs, a community organizer with the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. "This year, it feels really political."

In recent years Gay Pride marches have sometimes been as much about partying as politics, but participants said this year's celebrations were different because of Thursday's ruling that struck down a Texas law banning sodomy.

The 6-3 decision apparently swept away laws in Florida and a dozen other states that ban oral and anal sex for everyone, or for homosexuals in particular. Both supporters and critics of the decision were quick to suggest it could lead to other legal advances for gays and lesbians - including the right to gay marriage - and organizers said a feeling of hope would carry over to the marches and celebrations this weekend.

The celebrations weren't confined to the United States.

In Toronto, a huge street parade Sunday celebrating gay pride included newly married homosexual couples who had traveled to the city to get married legally.

On June 10, an Ontario appeals court ruled as unconstitutional Canada's definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman. The national government says it plans to allow gay marriages throughout the country.

In India, where homosexuality is a crime, dozens of people marched in Calcutta carrying a huge rainbow flag in a rare public demonstration to demand rights for gays and lesbians.

In San Francisco, even before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling, the committee that puts on the city's parade, one of the best-attended events in the state, had decided to infuse this year's festivities with a more activist bent.

The parade's theme was "You Gotta Give Them Hope," a campaign slogan that belonged to San Francisco's first openly gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone 25 years ago this November. The SF Pride Committee used the occasion to encourage people to lobby the state Senate to vote for pending legislation that would grant gay couples most of the same legal and financial benefits as married heterosexuals.

"We got a couple of breaks in the last few weeks, with Canada legalizing gay marriage and now the Supreme Court," said Supervisor Tom Ammiano, one of two candidates vying to become the city's first gay mayor this year. "It looks like Sandra Day O'Connor watching Will & Grace really paid off."

WASHINGTON - The Senate majority leader said Sunday he supported a proposed constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage in the United States.

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Supreme Court's decision last week on gay sex threatens to allow criminal acts in the home.

"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually - or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist said on ABC's This Week.

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., was the main sponsor of the proposal offered May 21 to amend the Constitution. It was referred to the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution.

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