The North Fork celebrates Pride Month with parade and festival in Greenport: photos

Residents from across the North Fork gathered in the Village of Greenport Saturday to celebrate Pride Month with the second annual North Fork Pride Parade and festival.

The event, sponsored by the LGBT Network, started with a parade on Main and Front Streets, continued with a festival in Mitchell Park and ended with a tea dance at the roller rink.

Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi and Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski were among the dignitaries marching in the parade, which drew hundreds of people to the village for the celebration.

June is recognized as Pride Month across the United States and in many other countries, as a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and affirm its members’ long and difficult fight for legal and civil rights.

Pride Month traces its roots to the first demonstrations held on June 28, 1970 to commemorate the June 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City. The Stonewall Uprising refers to a six-day series of demonstrations and conflicts between members of the gay community and police following a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. At the time, homosexuality was considered a criminal offense in New York State — it would remain so until a 1980 New York Court of Appeals decision ruled the law unconstitutional. The Stonewall and other gay establishments in the city and elsewhere were subject to frequent police raids and harassment. In an era of growing political activism in the 1960s, LGBTQ+ people began to mobilize and fight back. Read more history of this era at the Library of Congress website.

The LGBT Network, founded in 1993, provides a host of services to people of all ages and all across Long Island and Queens. It launched the first-ever North Fork Pride celebration in 2023. See prior story.

RiverheadLOCAL photos by Emil Breitenbach Jr.