There was a different mood to this parade, as well as to the community it represented. The depression that had marked the penultimate phase of a community coming to grips with widespread death was beginning to lift. In its place was an acceptance. There might have been a time Before, but it was no longer the moment that people longed for; it was gone, everyone understood now, and it would never come back. Life would forevermore be in this After. It was cruel and it wasn’t fair, but that was the way it would be, and at the sixteenth annual Gay Freedom Day Parade it was clear that most gay San
...more
