Los Angeles Mayor-elect Richard Riordan was among the politicians who rode Sunday in the 23rd annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Festival Parade in West Hollywood, Calif.
The event drew thousands of specatators and participants in West Hollywood, a tiny suburb between Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.
Riordan rode in an open car with Los Angeles Councilman Joel Wachs, who is openly homosexual and was one of the mayor-elect's key supporters in the June 8 election.
Wachs finished third, with 11 percent of the votes cast, in the April 20 primary behind Councilman Michael Woo and Riordan. But Wachs threw his support to Riordan in the runoff and provided him with the margin of victory.
Woo also rode in the Sunday afternoon parade along with Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, state Controller Gray Davis and state Treasurer Kathleen Brown.
Marching in the parade were scores of homosexuals and bisexuals who said they were veterans of the branches of the Armed Forces. They called for an end to the ban on homosexuals in the military, as proposed by President Clinton.
In New York, thousands of gay and lesbian demonstrators marched down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Sunday in the city's annual Heritage of Pride parade, aimed this year at honoring homosexuals in the military.
Marchers stopped in their tracks on the 2.5-mile-long route at 2:30 p.m. for a minute of silence to remember those who have died from AIDS, the disease that has ravaged the gay community.
Organizers said some 250,000 marchers from 350 organizations with 30 floats, bands and choruses paraded past 300,000 spectators. Police did not give an official estimate.
The official theme of the parade was 'Outlaw, Outrage, Outright, Outspoken, Outrageous, Outstanding,' and organizers said the march honored 'our lesbian and gay brethern in the military.'
Grand marshals were Perry Watkins, who was forced out of the army because of his sexual orientation but later reinstated, and Miriam Ben- Shalom, an Army staff sergeant who was honorably discharged in 1978 because she is a lesbian, organizers said.
The march route, marked by a lavendar line stretching from Central Park to Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, was trimmed a few blocks from last year's route. The adjustment was made to streamline the operation and allow marchers to form on side streets off Fifth Avenue, organizers said.
The celebration was to wind up in the West Village with a street festival, dancing in the evening along the Hudson River and a fireworks display.
As many as 100,000 people crowded downtown Atlanta for the Gay Pride Parade and Festival, ending two days of activities in Atlanta and other cities aimed at raising the awareness of and promoting gay rights.
After parading through Atlanta, those taking part gathered in Piedmont Park in midtown for the festival. While it was billed as mainly a social event, there were definite political overtone, with many participants calling for President Clinton to make good on his campaign promise to lift the ban on gays serving in the armed forces.
