How Gay Days Made a Home at Disney World

Like pretty much every child who walks up Main Street U.S.A. at Disney World for the first time, Alix, 10, and her brother Evan, 11, can barely contain their anticipation. Evan wants to ride Space Mountain. Alix is so excited, she can't even say what she wants to do. She is jumping up and down. It's a typical Disney scene, except that Evan, Alix and their sister Jamie, a desultory 4-year-old shielded from the sun in a stroller, have come to the Magic Kingdom with their two moms. It is the 20th anniversary of Gay Days at Disney, and the whole family has traveled from Hickory Corners, Mich., to celebrate.

Gay Days is now one of the largest gay-pride events in the world. According to Watermark, a Florida-based gay newspaper that has been covering Gay Days since it started, about 150,000 people attended this June's six-day gathering, which included 17 pool parties, a business expo, a comic-book convention, a film festival, an after-hours trip to a Disney water park (think dance music and guys in very small swimsuits), bobble-head painting and tie-dyeing for the kids, rivers of alcohol (and some other substances) for the adults and, on June 5, the great culmination: 20,000 to 30,000 lesbians, gays and their families and friends descending on Disney World, everyone clad in red shirts to signify their presence.

Gay Days started modestly in 1991 as a way for some 3,000 lesbians and gays from central Florida to become more visible — on one day, the first Saturday in June — in the theme parks that dominate the region's economy. Few nongays noticed. But the event sparked something in the gay imagination. For many gays and lesbians who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century, childhood was a time of anxiety and secrets, faggot jokes and spitballs. There was, literally and figuratively, no Glee. Going on the teacup ride or getting wet on Splash Mountain was a way to reclaim an unfinished adolescence. By 1995, at least 10,000 gays and lesbians were traveling to Orlando for the gay day at Disney.

There was also an element of political theater in a mass Disney visit — a flash mob before the term existed. "Twenty years ago, there were hardly any visible portrayals of our community other than the pride parades," says Chris Alexander-Manley, 52, president of Gay Days Inc. and one of the volunteers who helped organize the first event in 1991. The media tended to show "the drag queens and the extremes, the leather people," he says. "But that's only a small part of the overall community." A gay day at the Magic Kingdom was a way to emphasize that many gays just want to ride a roller coaster with their partner like any other couple.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1995839,00.html

I'm sure that you have some people who are under the influence, but it sounds like you have LOTS of people who are under the influence

"rivers of alcohol (and some other substances)". Sure, plenty do, but many people who happen to be Gay or Gay-friendly come for the fun activities throughout the day and evening. And not everyone who goes to the late-nite events gets plastered. It almost seems like they were disparaging the whole concept in a cautiously worded manner.

Yes, there's a seedy underbelly to most large adult get-togethers, but it's not resigned to just the Gay population. Have they never visited a Young Republicans national meeting or Republican National Convention? In fact, as a Christian, I heard from a theme park worker that was in charge of a lot of things, that many condoms were found all over the parks when Christian teens got together, so many that he couldn't believe it. There's no shortage of debauchery in the world. Shame on the writer for putting a bit much detail into the activities - the adult brain knows that late night drinking involves a good portion of people who get plastered and fornicate and vomit... not in that order, necessarily.

Read: "like any NORMAL couple".

I sure will be relieved when society evolves to the point where people stop writing about us as if we're a science project.