• My friend Mike Funk drew this great comic strip about the Stonewall Riot

Furthermore, it was illegal to dress in a manner that didn’t reflect the “proper” documented gender that you were assigned by a doctor at birth. If you weren’t wearing three pieces of “gender appropriate” clothing, you could be arrested and, often, beaten up in jail. (The business-casual style of dress I wear to work every day would never pass this 1969 test. I must be a scandalous radical: I wear pants, shirts, and shoes – with shoelaces!)

On the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, the first Pride March was formed in response to the abuse of a people misunderstood, and then continued annually as a reminder that we should “do something,” rather than stand by watching innocent people get hurt. It grew further as more people found their voice to say, “We are not criminals of identity. We are worthy of being understood.”

So. What does this all have to do with same-sex marriage?

Well, I'm not totally sure. I wonder if the people participating in the Stonewall Riot of 1969 ever even thought about the freedom to marry, or if, in the climate of their era, it was simply unimaginable that the same governing system reacting to their queerness with violence could ever muster the words “Congratulations to the happy couple.”2 Surely, that would have been like explaining NASA's space exploration to someone still living in the lantern-lit Civil War era.

But while I can't quite answer that, I can tell you what the history of the Pride March has to do with the work we do at Community Access.

Community Access formed only five years after the Stonewall Riots, during a time when the mental health system was undergoing a huge transformation. ‘Mental institutions’ – with long histories of medications, physical restraints, and brute force – were shutting down and ‘releasing’ their ‘patients’ into hard, uncertain futures. Community Access formed to bring these survivors home, and to fight the stigmas and indignities holding them back.

More recently, Community Access has led another systemic transformation. At the forefront of a broad coalition – Communities for Crisis Intervention Teams – Community Access (led by our CEO Steve Coe and Community Organizer Carla Rabinowitz) successfully advocated for improved police responses to 911 calls involving individuals with mental health concerns. In a far-reaching action plan, Major de Blasio strengthened ties between criminal justice and behavioral health in NYC, incorporating: allocated funds of $130 million over four years; expanded training for 5,500 police officers; and, the creation of new community-based drop-off centers, as alternatives to incarceration/hospitalization for mental health recipients involved in police encounters.

Back in 2013, Community Access also opened New York’s first Crisis Respite Center, a community-based alternative to emergency hospitalization for individuals aged 18-65 who are experiencing psychiatric crises. Peer-staffed, the Center offers a friendly, safe, and supportive home-like environment with access to a wide range of recovery-oriented services.

Just a few decades ago, the general public did not understand, and frankly did not like, the variety of sexuality experiences and gender expressions possible in our beautiful human ecosystem. Today, we are realizing that it is the variety of trauma experiences and behavioral expressions that have been misunderstood. Myths in our culture made people afraid of their LGBTQ neighbors, and the reactions to those myths posed a very real danger to those neighbors. This is not unlike the cultural myths and fears of people with psychiatric disabilities, with lived mental health experience, who make up the Community Access staff and participant community.

This is the climate of our era: the unfolding of inclusive awareness accelerating on a global scale. And that’s why I couldn’t be any prouder to march, this Sunday, as an employee of a remarkable organization. Community Access, recalling the earliest years of the Pride March, is “doing something” instead of just watching.

And, yes, THAT'S why it's a march, not a parade!

1. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has been an officiant of several marriages between couples of LGBTQ identities, and is the second woman and first Jewish Justice in U.S. history. She didn’t get the nickname "The Notorious R.B.G." without earning it.

2. I’m also curious if people thought about marriage equality much during the White Night march of 1979, in the days after Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay city councilman, was shot and killed by a former co-worker. And how about during the first AIDS walks of the 1980s?

Twenty years later, we can see real differences in the discourse of human rights for LGBTQ people, and differences in perspective between those who remember and those who’ve forgotten. This is not to belittle the importance of marriage equality, but to put history in perspective. Imagine how much progress the next 40 years could bring.