Dallas Pride at 25
If it seems Dallas is missing out on the Pride events this month, just wait until September, when the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade celebrates its 25th anniversary.
"I think 25 years of successful Pride events and pretty good relations with the city and in the community is something we should celebrate," said Michael Doughman of Dallas Tavern Guild, which puts on the parade.
Doughman said the celebration will be an opportunity to recognize the people who made the LGBT community strong in Dallas.
"We want to honor the organizations that might have faded away, like Oak Lawn Community Services, and the people who have been leaders in our community, the ones that went before and really did the hard work, the ground work, and fought for us to currently have the great community we do," he said.
This year's Pride parade will march down Cedar Springs Road from Wycliff to Lee Park, led by three grand marshals.
The male grand marshal will be Mark Frazier, the past owner of LGBT nightclubs Woody's and The Eagle. The female grand marshal will be Laura Miller, a former mayor who led the city in large strides forward toward LGBT equality.
Last year's grand marshal, openly gay former City Councilman Ed Oakley, feels Miller is just the right person for the 25th anniversary parade. Oakley said Miller was instrumental in pushing through ordinances granting domestic partner benefits to city employees and prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.
"I'm glad that it's going to be bestowed on her because she moved our community light years ahead," Oakley said. "There's no one I can imagine whom our community should honor more than her."
The honorary grand marshal will be Jeff Key, a former marine who left the service after coming out and was the focus of the Showtime documentary "Semper Fi."
"We've always shied away from spending money to bring in entertainment honorary marshals because we have more than an abundance of really talented people here in Dallas. So we really wanted to focus on honoring a list of what we call heroes, and Jeff is the perfect fit," Doughman said.
The upcoming plans for the 25th anniversary have Doughman thinking about the parade's beginnings.
"It was a lot smaller and didn't really require a lot of security or organization," he said. "It was sort of, show up and if you paid your fee you could walk down the street."
After a few years of being led by volunteers and struggling to get organized, the parade was adopted by the Dallas Tavern Guild and Alan Ross. Last year, more than 2,200 people marched in the parade and thousands more came to celebrate.
"Alan Ross was instrumental in that," Doughman said. "He took on the project himself and pretty much made it his own for the next 18 years."
In 1990 the event was renamed in honor of Ross and the years of hard work he had put in to make it successful.
Doughman said the Dallas parade is unique because even though it has grown so much, it has never had any major problems.
"Other than organizational issues, we really haven't had any problems. There has never been any violence, the protests have been very mild and well contained," he said.
The biggest conflict over the parade was actually between event organizers themselves, and it focused on the date of the event.
The parade was originally held in June, but was moved to September to commemorate Judge Jerry Buchmeyer's 1984 ruling that threw out Texas' anti-sodomy statute. When that ruling was overturned by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, organizers had a lot of debate over whether to move the parade back to June.
"I think it came down to a seasonal issue," Doughman said. "It's just too hot in June to have a parade in Dallas. Plus this way you don't have to compete with June being jammed packed with Pride celebrations in other cities."
While the event has been relatively free from conflict, Doughman says it's had many highlights. His favorite of which was in 2001 when the parade took place just two weeks after 9-11.
"We had a riderless horse open the event, and the thousands of people watching on were silent. It was an amazing moment for me," he said.
While the parade has gotten larger and stronger over the past 25 years, Doughman isn't sure where it will be in another 25.
"I'm not sure that 25 years from now we will even have a parade, because I think the community is slowly and steadily melding more into the mainstream," he said. "I think we might have a celebration, but parades have always been pretty much a protest march. And we are approaching the point where other than a few political issues we really don't have a lot to protest. Some cities are even considering now just going to a festival and not doing the parade aspect."
But for now, the Dallas Tavern Guild is focused on the September anniversary and taking applications to ride in the parade and become a volunteer. To access the form, visit dallasprideparade.com.