The first time I saw the New York City Pride parade, I was 19 years old and barely out of the closet. Less than a month later I would be expelled from the Boy Scouts of America. I had no idea that a letter from a New Jersey Scouting executive would set off a decade of litigation ending at the Supreme Court of the United States. That was over a quarter century ago. The fight isn’t over. I proved that last week.
I didn’t know any of that watching the parade pass me by. What I knew was joy. People wholly different from me, from every corner of the city and the world, celebrating together in a common cause that unites people from every walk of life, race, income, and creed. It was the first time I understood, viscerally, that I wasn’t alone.
That feeling is why I fought for inclusion, equality, and gay kids.
Last Sunday, I walked that same route down Fifth Avenue. There were nearly three million people. Same joy, a few more wrinkles, sharper understanding of how fragile it all is. Last week, 36 years after my expulsion, I filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Defense and Pete Hegseth over its secret memorandum of understanding with Scouting America — the organization that expelled me, now rebranded. Different courthouse, same fight.
Dolly Levi, the irrepressible matchmaker of Hello, Dolly!, knew something about this. She’d been away too long, grown comfortable on the sidelines, and had to remind herself that life only rewards those who show up for it. Don’t let the parade pass you by, she said. She was talking about more than a parade. After the devastation of losing the Supreme Court in 2000, I pulled back from the movement for a bit. I needed a break. I thought I’d moved on, but Dolly was right all along.
Joy does that. It doesn’t just comfort you. It fortifies you. It clarifies what’s worth protecting and what’s worth fighting for, sometimes for a very long time. Pride and joy are not opposites of activism. They are its source.
Here is something most people don’t know: Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that produces one of the largest queer gatherings in the world, operates on a budget of just $3.2 million and a full-time staff of seven, a number the organization is aiming to double this fall. This year it faced a $750,000 budget shortfall as corporate sponsors pulled back. Mastercard. Garnier. Skyy Vodka. Target. One by one, they dropped out, scaled back, or quietly asked to go unacknowledged. Nearly three million people showed up on Fifth Avenue on Sunday. Seven people and a $3.2 million budget made that happen, and a quarter of that budget just evaporated. So, I thought about what I could do, how I could help. I donated money and can lend my voice to help make certain the parade is there for everyone for years to come.
The same forces are at work everywhere, and they are no longer subtle: the Pulse memorial crosswalk painted over in Orlando, rainbow crossings removed from Miami Beach to Montrose, Pride symbols treated as contraband, and our Pride flag stripped from the Stonewall National Monument.
And then there is this: prestigious medical institutions like Mount Sinai, willing to hand over the private medical records of transgender children to the federal government. That is not a cultural skirmish. That is a threat to human lives.
The rollback is not accidental. It is deliberate and accelerating.
The parade is not a party. It is a political act wrapped in joy, which has always been its genius. Christopher Street Liberation Day. The Stonewall Riots. These are not ancient history; they are the living foundation of what we march on every June. That joy carries it all forward.
Maybe some think they have moved past needing the parade. A Fire Island share, a house in the country, a life built far enough from the closet that Pride Month feels more like noise than necessity. I understand that impulse. I felt it too, until I walked that route on Sunday and remembered what 19-year-old James needed to see standing on the sidelines. Taking it all in.
Somewhere out there, there is a queer kid who needs to see it. Needs to know the world is bigger than wherever they are right now. Needs to feel that joy in their chest before they know what to do with it and maybe spend the next 36 years doing something about it.
Pride is not guaranteed. It is built, every year, by thousands of volunteers who believe it matters.
If you can, please donate to Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that runs NYC Pride. If you can show up, show up. If your company has pulled back from Pride sponsorship, help them reconsider. Tell them their LGBTQ employees are watching, and they remember. If money is tight, your time matters just as much; volunteers are the backbone of our march. And if you think you’ve outgrown needing the parade, go anyway. You might be surprised what it still has to say to you.
James Dale is a civil rights activist, speaker, and plaintiff in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), the landmark Supreme Court case. In June 2026, he filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Defense challenging its secret memorandum of understanding with Scouting America. He serves on the board of Lambda Legal and writes at JamesRDale.com and on Substack.
