Pride parades are taking place all over the United States this month. But as we all rev up for this year’s festivities, the fault lines of race and class emerge as well. In addition to Gay Pride events, there will be a segment of our population attending Black Gay Pride and Hispanic Gay Pride events.

And oddly enough, the racial divide that is always evident at Pride events across the country shows us something troubling and broken about ourselves as we strive to be a community and movement.

It shows us that the spiritual and political life of our movement cannot afford to be fraught with or stymied by bigotry, but instead it demands inclusion and constant growth. Our movement and communities call for varied expressions of the life, gifts and talents of the entire LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) community.

We are a diverse people – and that is our gift as well as our struggle. Our diversity should not dilute our commitment, but rather should teach us more about its complexity, and by extension teach the larger society.

For many heterosexuals, Gay Pride is viewed as a conspicuous parade of unbridled hedonism, spawning moral condemnation and homophobia.

For example, World Pride 2005 in Jerusalem was postponed. Why? As the National Gay &Lesbian Task Force Religious Leadership Roundtable stated in a news release, it was because, “Homophobia has marginalized people throughout the world, creating places of tyranny and violence toward people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. This event in Jerusalem will be a testament of the solidarity in the movement toward equality, justice and full inclusion for LGBT people across the globe.”

Just last week, the news was about how the mayor of Moscow flatly refused protection for the city’s first Gay Pride march, leading to violent attacks on marchers by nationalists and skinheads.

But let us not forget our homeboy, right-wing televangelist Jerry Falwell, who shared his views about Gay Pride with the Associated Press in 2000.

“There’s a lot of talk these days about homosexuals coming out of the closet,” Rev. Falwell said. “I didn’t know they’d been in the closet. I do know they’ve always been in the gutter.”

Even among gays, views on Gay Pride are mixed. For many, Pride represents a bone of contention. Once many thought the celebration was too political and had lost its vision of what it means for people to just have a good time. But others now think of it as a weekend bacchanalia of drugs, alcohol and unprotected sex, desecrating the memorial of the Stonewall Riots [On June 27, 1969, a series of violent conflicts between gay men and the police took place in New York City. It was the first time that a large body of gay men resisted arrest] and the chance to make a political statement.

At its core, Gay Pride events are about remembrance, thanksgiving and an invitation for the community.

So let’s not forget the “reparative therapies” to cure our homosexuality, like testicular castration, electro-shock therapy and lobotomies. Today we have so-called “ex-gay” ministries, which aim to “cure” us of our “perversion” with the right spiritual dosages of God and damnation.

And let us not forget the summer months of 1998 when the country was hit with an explosion of “ex-gay” ministry ads that appeared in major newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today. The ad stated: “Please, if you, or someone you know or love, is struggling with homosexuality, show them this story. If you truly love someone, you’ll tell them the truth. And, the truth that God loves them could just be the truth that sets them free.”

Pride is an act of thanksgiving. It allows us and our heterosexual allies to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of June 27-29, 1969, in New York City’s Greenwich Village, an event that sparked our modern queer liberation movement.

Gay Pride is also an invitation for community. It is one of the loci of the ongoing battle in the LGBT community for inclusion into mainstream society. Because of the ongoing struggle, Pride challenges society’s exclusion of us by inviting everyone to join in the parade.

Pride need not be viewed as either a political statement or a senseless non-stop orgy. Such an either/or approach artificially divides the integral connection between political action and celebratory acts in our fight for our civil rights.

Gay Pride events are a reminder to us all of how far we have come down the road as a people, but it is also a reminder of how far down the road we still must go.