New York, N.Y. I marched in the very first Gay Pride parade in 1993 with the Queens Gay and Lesbian Unted (Q-GLU) with a great group of people including its founding member Ed Sedarbaum and Danny Dromm.
A few of the first Q-GLU meetings were held in our Jackson Heights, Queens apartment.
My mother, Frances Dudley Alleman-Luce, supported me by coming out for Q-GLU galas. My partner at that time was my second, Jeff Tendean, the other father of our son Mathew James Tendean Luce. Jeff and I became New York City Domestic Partners the first day the program was launched, legally becoming couple #76 in the City of New York. Domestic partnership was the precursor to gay marriage.
The pride parade is held in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, a pivotal moment in modern LGBT social movements. We march to create community and honor the history of our movement. In 1970, pride and protest marches were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco around the first anniversary of Stonewall. The events became annual and grew internationally.
I have attended pride celebrations in San Francisco and Chicago, and traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico for their first Pride Parade in 1990 that commemorated those who had passed during the AIDS epidemic.
My fourth partner, Bix Luce and I attended the largest international Pride celebration in history: Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019, produced by Heritage of Pride commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, with a reported five million attending.
