[Adapted from email travelogue, sent Wednesday, June 11 at 4:06 p.m.]

Friday, June 6

DC Alley Museum

Okay, this one is not directly affiliated with World Pride, but it's clearly on theme: the "Love Mural," written in rainbow-striped letters, at the DC Alley Museum. This is simply a couple of alleys in Washington, D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood, about one mile northeast of the White House. The Love Mural is the only one that could even be construed as queer in theme, though it's pretty clearly the most well-known of the several murals there.

The DC Alley Museum, which is not an official museum but rather just a collection of public garage-door murals, was one of nine places or events we went to on Friday alone. I just didn't include it in the "Part One" email about the non-Pride activities of our Washington, D.C. visit because that already had 21 photos included (I usually aim for 18 per email), and this rainbow design clearly fits better with the World Pride theme of Part Two anyway.

This is important stuff!

Freedom Plaza / "Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington"

At Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., the Rainbow History Project has an outdoor exhibition on display through July 6 called Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington. On about ten giant cubes are infographics and photos of local queer history spanning from 1965 to the present day. Shobhit and I were just passing through on our way between the Old Post Office and our tour of the White House, and happened to notice it, so there wasn’t time to digest it in full—but one wall of one of the cubes quickly caught my eye: “The Millennium Marches Onwards,” about the 2000 Millennium March on Washington for Equality, and its “mixed legacy” after being mired in controversy due to a “top down, undemocratic structure” led by the Human Rights Campaign rather than grassroots organizers.

I was at that march, which serendipitously occurred on my 24th birthday: April 30, 2000. To me, it was largely a sign that I had to be there. This was also during the year I worked at the Seattle Gay News, which meant I was aware of many of these controversies I never would have known about otherwise. In activist and queer journalist circles, the Millennium March’s controversies, the calls for boycotts, and particularly its lack of clarity of purpose, were widely known. All of that mattered little to me in my twenties: it meant a great deal to me—both to plan the trip, and to be there.

That was 25 years ago, and this year, after another two and a half decades of both amazing national progress and especially recent, dispiriting setbacks, Washington, D.C. hosted WorldPride. The Capital Pride Alliance officially submitted its bid to host in 2021, and they were officially selected in 2022—these planning stages occurred during the Biden Administration, a time when there was still a lot of naïve conviction that Trump would never return to the White House. Trump’s re-election in 2024 had wide-ranging, immediate ripples of consequence, and WorldPride 2025 was no exception: some corporate sponsors backed out; the Kennedy Center, now packed with Trump appointees, canceled all WorldPride events it planned to host; many travelers, both international and domestic, canceled plans to attend due to safety concerns amidst a coordinated attack on queer rights by this administration.

Which brings me to my personal perspective and experience on all this. I had more than one person express shock when I told them I was going to WorldPride in Washington. D.C. One actually said to me, “I wouldn’t be caught dead there!” They acted like I was putting my safety or maybe even my life in danger, that I should expect to get spit on or have eggs thrown at me or maybe even shot, like God knows what could happen. Days before we flew out there, I saw a video posted to Threads of a man angrily tearing a rainbow wrap from a street lamp post, the replies packed with people expressing anger at seeing such flagrant homophobia, and dismay that WorldPride Washington DC hadn’t been canceled outright due to safety concerns.

I resisted all this from the start. Times like these are when courage is needed most, and in response to the backsliding of queer rights, that’s all the more reason to be there! When they silence us, when they frighten us, they win. I’m not about to let them win. And more notably, people far too easily forget that whipping each other into a frenzy on social media is rarely reflective of real life; and one anecdotal incident is not evidence of horrendous abuse on every corner. Most importantly, people around the country seem to have no idea that the City of Washington is a largely autonomous entity, and while it is beholden to the U.S. Congress in ways no other American city is (one of a great many compelling cases for D.C. statehood), it operates far more independently of Congress, or certainly the President, than people think. Washington, D.C. is actually one of the most progressive cities in the country, has one of the highest per-capita queer populations of any major American city, and I found it to be a strikingly welcome place to visit.

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

I also happened to be at WorldPride Sydney, in Australia, in 2023. I was struck and moved by the amount of rainbow flags and Pride paraphernalia on the streets and in storefronts all over the city, something I said at the time you don’t tend to see in U.S. cities. Walking around Washington, D.C., I found the city-wide welcoming atmosphere, with rainbows and Progress Pride flags all over the place, to be surprisingly comparable.

The above shot is just one example of many we found at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the central branch of the Washington. D.C. Public Library. There was a giant rainbow PRIDE sign right outside the front entrance; a DC Public Library sign made of flowers color coordinated into the rainbow flag; a beautiful PRIDE reading display of books just inside the entrance; and a giant Progress Pride flag made of chain linked circles of construction paper, among other decor. I particularly made it a point to get the above photo of "Celebrating Pride" books, because it seemed subtly pointed that these were children's books, displayed outside the children's section of the library.

World Pride Boat Parade

In spite of all the concerns—some of them founded, many of them not—I truly had a blast, in Washington D.C. overall and at WorldPride 2025 in particular. There were too many related events to count, and Shobhit and I could only attend a fraction of them, albeit mostly the major ones: two nights of “Pride on the Pier” at the Wharf, with a low-key but delightful “WorldPride Boat Parade” on Friday, a fireworks show on Saturday, and dancing with a DJ on the pier both nights; the 17th Street Block Party in DuPont Circle on both Friday and Saturday; the WorldPride Parade on Saturday (as is Capital Pride tradition, earlier in June); the WorldPride Street Festivals on Saturday and Sunday; and—getting back to the history of these marches on the National Mall—the WorldPride International Rally + March on Washington for Freedom on Sunday.

There could only have been 15, maybe fewer, boats at the Boat Parade, floating up the Potomac River past the pier we walked out on. Another gay couple, local, stood next to us and said, "Blink and you miss it, huh?" I still found it charming, and got photos of about ten of the boats—even one delightful video clip. Seattle has far more recreational boating than Washington, D.C., so I think someone needs to start organizing annual Pride Boat Parades here. (I'd do it myself, but I'm not bougie enough to own a boat!)

Pride on the Pier (First Night)

I love this selfie I took with Shobhit while we were dancing to delightfully stereotypical songs on the pier.

Saturday, June 7

Capital Pride [Street] Festival (Day One)

Here was another surprise: in contrast to the Seattle Pride Parade, which typically begins at 11 a.m. on Pride Sunday (the last Sunday in June), the Capital Pride Parade—this year the World Pride Parade—began at 2 p.m. The parade was expected to be even longer than usual and likely lasted well into the evening, but Shobhit and I only stayed for a couple hours of it. The World Pride Street Festival, however—on Pennsylvania Avenue between 9th and 3rd Streets, a half-mile stretch—started at noon, so Shobhit and I walked down there first, arriving at just before 1:00.

The crowds were mercifully thin at that time, and although like most festivals it was characterized mostly by vendor booths (and a performance stage, still pretty empty of performers at that point), we still encounter a few cool photo ops. For example: a woman offering to take people's phones and snap photos of them in this colorful display, by "Woven Together." Full disclosure: I did not figure out until literally the middle of writing this paragraph that Woven Together was one of World Pride D.C.'s many paid-ticket party events, General Admission being about $63. Shobhit and I had no desire or need to go to any of these paid events, which are actually common at annual Pride Weekends the world over—Pride on the Pier, which was public and free, worked just fine for us! But we did get this fantastic photo out of it.

World Pride Parade

As a side note, in the wake of especially targeted attacks on the trans community, which have been steadily increasing for years but especially kicked into high gear with the current administration, I was disappointed to find little that was trans-specific on the WorldPride 2025 website. There never was a lot, but later a “Diversity Pride” menu was added to the Events list, which included Trans Pride Washington D.C.—the main event for which occurred early, May 17, weeks before my visit. I later learned, too late, that there was a National Trans Visibility March just before the International Rally + March, which itself was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 8. Not only is there oddly no mention of this event on the WorldPride website, but even at the largest national queer festivals it feels like trans events get short shrift—this one scheduled at 7:30 a.m. How many people didn’t make it to that just because it had to happen so early?

(In the photo above: protesting the Trump Administration's ban on trans people in the military.)

On a more positive note, there was definitely trans visibility at the other major events: the Parade, the street parties, and perhaps most importantly, among the speakers at the International Rally.

Above: one of the World Pride Parade Grand Marshals, Laverne Cox, trans actress most famous for her part as Sophia Burset from Orange Is the New Black. It's too bad the shadows of trees makes it practically impossible to see her face, but it was really her! (The other two Grand Marshals were Reneé Rapp from the Mean Girls musical—both Broadway and the adapted movie—and activist Deacon Maccubbin, who had been the lead organizer of D.C.'s first Gay Pride 50 years ago.)

Parade contingent advocating for D.C. Statehood—an absolutely worthy cause if you're against taxation without representation (which is the very definition of this district), but a pipe dream when half the country would be against giving two more senators to a deeply progressive population (remember what we discussed already!).

Shobhit and I visited so many museums in Washington. D.C., I can't remember which one it was in that I read about the Missouri Compromise—it could just as easily have been at The Petersen House (where Lincoln died after getting shot at Ford's Theatre across the street) or at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Either way, the Missouri Compromise admitted both Missouri and Maine as states in 1820, with Missouri being a slave state and Maine being a non-slave state, as a means of keeping the balance between slave and non-slave states represented in the Senate. (It also established the 36th parallel as the north-south dividing line between such states.) As it happens, several other states were admitted in pairs with the very same aim.

Anyway, I read about that, and thought: oh, right. We may not have legalized slavery today (actually, technically we do, which I consider unconscionable and shameful), but the basic idea remains: D.C. is not likely to be admitted as a state unless paired with another, equally conservative territory. Guam, maybe? Or the Northern Mariana Islands? These places have populations of only 169,000 and about 56,000, respectively—even admitting them as one combined state would make only 225,000, an even more unfair over-representation per capita with two senators than even the least-populated state currently (Wyoming: 588,000). Washington, D.C.'s current population is 700,000, incidentally—more people than Wyoming or Vermont, and still comparable to both Alaska and North Dakota. But, without another state's admission to balance the party scales in the Senate, a majority of Congress is never likely to go for D.C. statehood, no matter how plainly unfair it is.

I wish I could have gotten this guy's photo from the front. A lot of times I can't get my camera ready well enough until a contingent is already passing by. I can only guess it's somehow a historical reference to being the "pink sheep" in the family.

Hey look! It's the WorldPride Amsterdam float! World Pride typically gets hosted every two years, but 2025 and 2026 will be two years in a row, for local anniversary reasons—this year was the 50th anniversary of the first Pride in Washington, D.C.; and 2026 will be the 25th anniversary of The Netherlands being the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. Shobhit and I plan to be there, making it the third World Pride in a row that we'll have attended.

(Meanwhile in the U.S., momentum is building to overturn the federal recognition of same-sex marriage. And if you think this has little or no chance of happening, then you are just as naive as those who were convinced Roe v. Wade would never be overturned.)

The most delightfully surprising float in the Parade, by, of all organizations, the American Chemical Society.

Capital Pride / 17th Street Block Party (Day Two)

So, this what I felt most at WorldPride 2025: community, a force far greater than fear. Which brings us back to an eternal debate, one that has gone on at all the other queer marches and parades, at the Millennium March that I attended in 2000 and all the others: should we be focusing on the fight, or on celebrating? And I say: why not both? Aren’t we fighting for the right to celebrate ourselves?

I suppose we could do it with slightly more social distancing at times: there's a game we can play in the above photo, taken while bottlenecking into the 17th Street Block Party in DuPont Circle (Washington D.C.'s historically queer neighborhood). The game is called "Where's Shobhit?"

Pride on the Pier (Second Night)

I saw a delightful T-shirt recently that read, Every time we fuck, we win. To me, this is more than just a joke (a great joke though it is). It’s a provocation, a defiance, a celebration—a point of view that applies to both sexuality and gender. At WorldPride 2025, I was in public spaces infused with political passion, and pulsing with raw sexuality, and it’s good to remember that these things are inextricably linked. Dancing on the pier, to gay classics by Donna Summer, Cher (covering ABBA), Madonna and more, was a transcendent experience. It was a space held for communal joy, the thing we should always refuse to let them take from us—trans joy, queer joy, the joy of self, the joy of sex, the joy of expression in all its forms. WorldPride provided all of this for me and more, a deeply fulfilling experience and a vital reminder of what we continue and won’t stop fighting for.

The annual Pride on the Pire fireworks show—naturally set to Katy Perry's "Firework."

Sunday, June 8

Capital Pride [Street] Festival (Day Two)

Should I get this outfit?

International Rally + March for Freedom

Marching from the rally at the Lincoln Memorial to the Street Festival space near the Capitol, here alongside the Reflecting Pool and toward the Washington Monument.

I got this selfie near the end of the March for Freedom, walking beneath a rainbow banner other people were holding in the air. We were very wet with rain, which began falling shortly before the rally ended, which they had to rush through with their final six or so speakers as a result. Indeed, it rained on our March (but not our Parade!), but did nothing to dampen our spirits.

We actually went into the Street Festival from here after this, but I shifted that photo a couple of spaces above because I liked the idea of ending with this fantastic shot, a fitting visual ending to my account of a truly fantastic weekend and fantastic trip—one I expect to look back on fondly for decades to come.

My Bluesky posts

(PART TWO) World Pride Washington D.C. 2025