Community leaders and local artists came together to kick off Pride weekend and commemorate the legacy of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising at the annual Spirit of Stonewall Community Celebration at Balboa Park’s Organ Pavilion on Sunday, July 15.

Those who attended included Seth Kilbourn, policy director of Equality California, Joe Darby, co-vice president of Pride at Work, and Rene Nashtut, care coordinator for Aging as Ourselves, along with artists Marianne Keith, Peech, Noah Sugarman, the Kickers Cloggers and the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego.

“Gay, lesbian, bi, and trans drag queens arrested that night in 1969 [at the Stonewall Inn in New York City], those that marched in the first Pride celebration and continued the struggle as our community faced new challenges, those folks who [paved] the road we travel on our quest for equality, these individuals declared that they were no longer going to live in the closet and thus they opened the closet doors for you and I,” said Nashtut.

But the struggle continues, Kilbourn said, addressing the issue of marriage equality. “No matter how you feel about the institution of marriage, no matter how you feel about it politically, no matter how you feel about whether you would get married if you had the opportunity, how can we accept inequality in the law and accept the notion that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans are somehow less than?”

Jason Knight, a Hebrew linguist with the U.S. Navy, now a member of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, focused on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The Navy discharged Knight three consecutive times for being gay. “The ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy doesn’t work, and it’s discriminatory. All that it’s based on is discrimination,” Knight said. “We should have the right to serve. We are American too, and we should have the right to serve our country if we so choose to.”

Coral Lopez, communications manager at Bienestar, Los Angeles, finished the night off. Lopez said she was asked to speak on behalf of the Latino community, but advised not to speak about immigration. “I was asked to come to speak today on the issues of the Latino LGBT community, but I was cautioned not to speak on immigration.”

Lopez said that she wasn’t startled by the comment, since she is often “cautioned” by the Latino community not to speak on GLBT affairs. “You see, I wasn’t surprised to be cautioned, because oftentimes I am asked to speak at Latino community events and I am cautioned not to speak about those ‘gay’ issues.”

Lopez concluded by asking us all to “expand our meaning of equality.”