This year’s Pride honorees represent some of the most diverse members of our community, and those who support our community, ever to be gathered into one room. In the spirit of the vast history and insight that these individuals, organizations and couples bring to the discussion, the Gay & Lesbian Times asked them to share memories from their first Pride, memories of their favorite Pride and answer the question, “Why is Pride still so relevant today?” The result is nothing short of an intricately woven, rainbow-hued tapestry that threads together the 33-year history of San Diego Pride. This year’s theme is “United for Equality,” and while each recipient’s contribution to our community is unique, all share one common belief: that the cornerstone of GLBT rights today is uniting to advance equality.

Bruce Abrams will serve as grand marshal for Pride’s 33rd annual Pride parade. Abrams is a well-respected estate planning and probate attorney in San Diego, who has dedicated his life to equality for all San Diegans. Abrams is an active member in the San Diego Democratic Club, as well as the Tom Homann Bar Association for GLBT attorneys.

Abrams frequently offers his services pro bono, and both the San Diego AIDS Foundation and the San Diego Foundation for Change are among those organizations Abrams supports.

Abrams says his most memorable Pride parade was when he marched with the progressive San Diego Foundation for Change.

“The San Diego Foundation for Change has been one of the most generous straight allies, and I was so proud to be one of the few gay persons who marched with them,” recalls Abrams. “They had long been funding gay and lesbian causes since the early ’80s. They were marching as a straight ally long before any of the car dealerships and business who have decided they can make a profit off our community. So to march with them was a great sense of honor.”

Abrams also serves as a commissioner on the San Diego Human Relations Commission, as well as having been a member of U.S. Congressmember Lynn Schenk’s Gay and Lesbian Advisory Committee.

Abrams says his first Pride parade was 1982.

“I remember this whole sense of family and community,” recounts Abrams. “Having my parents there, being completely out was such a memorable event for me.”

Abrams’ efforts for equality extend well beyond San Diego. Abrams also served five years as a board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, as well as for Equality California, an organization which, among many other issues, is at the forefront of the marriage equality debate in California.

For Abrams, San Diego Pride represents an opportunity for the community to express its vast diversity.

“It’s a window to our community,” Abrams says. “It shows how diverse we are – our artistic identities, our sensual and sexual identities. But it also shows how inclusive we are, as you watch members of the bear community and the leather community march alongside drag queens and women on bikes. It is a chance for everyone who paints the pallet of [the] LGBT community to come together.”

It is also, Abrams says, an opportunity for our community to advance equality.

“We are everyone’s family,” Abrams says. “We are politicians and lawyers and doctors and teachers and janitors at the hotels. By coming together and advancing equality for any one group, we ultimately advance equality for all of us.”

To most in the community, Bob Lehman and Tom Felkner are the former owners of Bourbon Street. To many, they are a consistent source of generosity for GLBT causes in San Diego. This weekend, however, Lehman and Felkner have a new title, Champions of Pride.

Lehman recounts his first Pride.

“When I was in the Marine Corp, the ship where I served as security was stationed in San Francisco’s Bay,” Lehman explains. “This was during the late ’80s, and I was still trying to navigate being gay and what that meant as a member of the military. So it was interesting to me that my first Pride experience was in the world’s gayest city! Having grown up in Southern Indiana, I was shocked to find out just how many people were gay.”

Felkner, a fellow Midwesterner, recalls his first Pride.

“My first Pride experience occurred entirely by accident,” Felkner says. “As a young man in Chicago, my first step out of the closet was to discreetly take the train to Boystown on what I thought would be a quiet Sunday afternoon. Instead, my bravery faltered as I stepped off the train and found myself surrounded by several hundred thousand people celebrating Chicago’s Pride parade! It was a surreal sight for someone who didn’t even know one single gay person yet.”

What a difference a decade or two makes.

Felkner speaks of one of his most memorable Prides, and it is with a very different sense of bravery, indeed.

“In 2000, Matt Stephens and I were honored by Pride for our work to fight Proposition 22 [same-sex marriage ban],” Felkner recalls. “As we marched together carrying a giant rainbow flag, we came upon some demonstrators and quietly stood in front of them as they taunted us with viciousness that shocked me. But, even as one man spat, ‘You’re not man of the year, you’re sissy of the year!’ I never felt more proud and right and at peace with myself as a gay man.”

Lehman also recalls an attack, but a very different one.

“I remember San Diego’s Pride parade in 1999,” Lehman says. “This was the first year that Tom and I owned Bourbon Street and participated with a float in the parade. My brother was filming the parade while his wife rode on the float with a group of our fiends. As we were waiting in line, the tear gas explosion occurred and my brother filmed as people ran from the scene. Despite – or because of – the attack, I realized how lucky I was to have family and friends that were there for me in good times and bad.”

Lehman and Felkner are the first to step forward to help social and political causes. Felkner serves on the San Diego Human Relations Commission, as well as U.S. Congressmember Bob Filner’s LGBT Advisory Board. Lehman serves on District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ Advisory Board and on Rep. Filner’s Veterans Advisory Board.

Together, the couple of 14 years serve as co-chairs of the upcoming Nicky Awards.

Lehman and Felkner are being honored this year by Pride in large part for their efforts in co-founding the Stonewall Citizens Patrol in response to the escalating crimes against the GLBT community that have occurred in the past year, including the attacks that followed last year’s Pride festival.

“One of our most memorable Prides – although a not-so-favorite memory – is from last year when we were walking outside the Pride festival on Saturday night,” Felkner explains. “As we strolled through the darkening sidewalks of Balboa Park, we both shared an eerie sense of danger. We still don’t know what made us uncomfortable, but we turned around and went home. About 90 minutes later, five gay men were beaten just 100 feet from where we had been walking. After that night, we began developing a concept that would hopefully prevent attacks like that from happening again, an idea that became the Stonewall Citizens Patrol.”

Lehman and Felkner initially met with police officials and local leaders to create the all-volunteer community crime group, and donated the patrol vehicle and staff funding for the inaugural year. Volunteers conduct neighborhood patrols during weekend evenings, while raising awareness of crime within the GLBT community and educating citizens on protecting themselves and others.

San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne is on record saying that the Stonewall Citizens Patrol has helped reduce crime in the Uptown neighborhoods.

Lehman and Felkner have also organized events that include the protest against the House of Blues and 4th&B when 4th&B featured Buju Banton, an anti-gay singer. They continue to be champions of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and Momentum San Diego. They will lead the GLBT contingent of veterans in this year’s San Diego Veteran’s Day Parade.

“It’s easy to become complacent here in the sunshine,” explains Lehman. “San Diego is remarkably gay-friendly, despite its conservative undertones. But last summer’s attacks outside the Pride festival, anti-gay protests outside the recent ‘Out at Petco Park,’ and our military’s policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ are all reminders that there are people who view the GLBT community as easy and unsympathetic targets. Attacks against us must be treated just as we treat attacks against our civil rights – we have to stand up and say, ‘Not on our watch!’ We have to demonstrate we are a proud and honorable community. That’s what the volunteers of the Stonewall Citizens Patrol are doing.”

And that’s exactly what you’ll see Lehman and Felkner doing not just this weekend, but every single day of the year.

Each year, Pride honors a gay or non-gay organization that has supported the GLBT community over an extended period of time.

This year, Pride is honoring the San Diego Police Department for its proactive stance against hate crimes, especially in lieu of the brutal attacks outside the Pride festival last year. The SDPD has partnered closely with the Stonewall Citizens Patrol, providing guidance and training. It has also reintroduced a bike patrol that covers Hillcrest, Mission Hills and North Park during the afternoon and evening hours.

As in so many cases, an organization is only as strong as the members who comprise its ranks. Lt. Margie Schaufelberger recalls the brave actions of one officer 16 years ago.

“In 1991, Officer John Graham marched in the parade in full uniform,” Schaufelberger says. “Graham was the first San Diego Police officer to come out [publicly at work] the previous year in 1990, and was selected as the [Nicky Awards’] “Man of the Year” for his courage in doing so.”

Schaufelberger says the most memorable Pride for GLBT law enforcement officers at the SDPD is likely 1993.

“In 1993, Chief of Police Bob Bergreen joined officers from the San Diego Police Department and other agencies to march in the Pride parade,” Schaufelberger says. “He was the first police chief to publicly demonstrate his support of his officers and the [GLBT] community.”

William M. Lansdowne is the current chief of police, and in honoring the SDPD this year, states: “[Chief Lansdowne] and department personnel continue to maintain dialogue through the chief’s LGBT advisory board for addressing various issues of concern within the community. Additionally, the department has provided training personnel at The Center adept in handling confidentiality issues surrounding domestic violence cases, and it continues sending out officers through its Speakers Bureau to discuss the concerns of small LGBT groups.”

Schaufelberger says the importance of the department’s commitment to not only talking-the-talk, but walking-the-walk is what makes the relationship between the SDPD and Pride – as well as the entire GLBT community, really – so powerful.

“The San Diego Police Department has long recognized the value of building communication and understanding with all of the communities we serve,” Schaufelberger explains. “The first Police Chief’s Advisory Board representing the LGBT community was established 30 years ago to provide a forum to explore issues and share concerns. The police department’s participation in the parade grew from a lone officer to the contingent that now represents law enforcement including local, state and federal agencies. Law enforcement’s presence in the parade demonstrates commitment to the community’s right to bias-free service and support for LGBT employees. The positive reception the contingent receives along the parade route provides the officers with a very powerful reminder that their work is appreciated.”

And appreciated they are, indeed, often bringing the most cheers from the crowd as they pass.

“On my honor I will do my best,

to make my training and example,

my rank and my influence,

count strongly for better scouting,

and for better citizenship,

in my troop,

in my community,

and in my contacts with other people.”

–From The Eagle Pledge

Every once in a while, someone does something that is so singularly unselfish you can’t help but be humbled. Such is the case with Mick Rabin, who will be honored as Pride’s Friend of the Year, an honor bestowed to those who do not identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, but rather to an individual or couple who supports the GLBT community over an extended period.

For Rabin, resigning his Eagle Scout Badge from the Boy Scouts of America in protest of the organization’s discrimination practices was symbolic of the kind of action that is required to achieve the Scout’s highest honor. Little did this San Diego Unified School District teacher know the path along which it would lead him.

“As a straight person, at first I had no real interest in Pride itself, per se,” Rabin explains. “But because of the Boy Scout exclusionary policies, I had to do something, and I didn’t know who to talk to about it. I have some very close friends who are gay, but I was not really involved in the community.”

Rabin figured if he was going to find someone with whom he could speak about the issue, they might be found at Pride, and so off he went to his first Pride parade in 2000.

“It just sort of coincided with the time of the Eagle Scout thing, but I have to say it was quite a culture shock, not knowing anything really about Pride,” Rabin says. “My notions of what the GLBT community was were shattered, but in a good way.”

Rabin made some contacts at Pride and began organizing Scouting for All events, as well as working with the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), for which he currently serves as treasurer and co-chair of its San Diego steering committee. Rabin works to raise awareness of sexual diversity at all levels of education, from elementary schools to high schools to colleges.

Editor of GLSEN’s newsletter, Rabin says his most memorable Pride was in 2001, a year when Rabin began to more fully understand the diversity of the GLBT community. It was also the year that Pride formally changed its name to be more inclusive by adding the full lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender acronym, LGBT.

“It was the first year we organized a presence at Pride for Scouting for All,” Rabin recalls. “It became this fascinating network of people who understood what needed to happen to get the [GLBT] community involved in pressuring the Boy Scouts for change.”

Scouting for All’s efforts eventually led to a federal judge in San Diego ruling that the Boy Scout’s lease of land in Balboa Park violated the California Constitution and the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Six years later, after his first Pride, Rabin continues to act courageously in the fight against discrimination, but he also takes time out for the lighter side of Pride, too.

“I go to Pride to share information,” Rabin says, “but I also go there to enjoy the food and the people.”

And Rabin has a special message for his fellow straight community.

“I know it can be a culture shock to go to Pride because it really was for me the first time,” Rabin explains. “There were guys in bikinis holding hands and women not wearing anything in particular, showing affection for each other. Seeing it in person was a shock, but then if we really think about it, that’s what straight people are always allowed to do all over the place, every weekend at the beach. There wouldn’t be anything abnormal or strange about seeing a straight couple in bikini bathing suits. It’s just that at Pride they happen to be LGBT. It is difficult for LGBT people in such an extremely conservative town. I had to process this, and I came to the conclusion that this is a weekend and a space for these folks to just let go and be who they are, just like I am allowed to be who I am. That is a powerful thing to be able to come to grips with one’s identity and share a common ground.”

For that, Pride – and the entire GLBT community – salutes Rabin as our Friend of the Year.

As the old saying goes, big things come in small packages. Meet Elaine Graybill, who personifies the very essence of that expression.

Graybill is, says one friend, “the Pamela Harriman of the San Diego gay community.” As a master event-planner and fund-raiser, Graybill is a powerhouse in raising money and awareness for such causes as the Diversionary Theatre, The Center and Marriage Equality projects.

Graybill, who is straight, also sits on the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego board, having implemented a donor program though its fund-raising committee.

Graybill can’t recall exactly the date of her first Pride, “but it was sometime before we moved to Marston Point, maybe 1993 or 1994.”

As the then self-described fund-raising angel for the Gay & Lesbian Times’ softball team, Graybill volunteered with the league to work in the beer gardens.

“Oh, God, it was so crazy because it was so much smaller, and back in those days, there weren’t very many children, so there were people walking around in leather chaps and nothing else, bare-breasted lesbians, and I was intrigued by the whole damn thing,” Graybill recalls. “Oh, and the rainbow g-strings! It was exactly what I expected and yet so much more fabulous, and I tell you, I loved every minute of it.”

Graybill says while she is completely supportive of the evolution of Pride, as it continues to include a broader cross-section of the GLBT community, including families, she is, admittedly, somewhat nostalgic for “the outrageousness of the moment.”

“Pride is the time where everybody just lets their hair down and really enjoys themselves,” Graybill explains. “It’s hard not to notice how different everybody is. Remember the era when lesbian flannel underwear was in style? Don’t you just wonder what it’ll be this year?”

A consummate partygoer, Graybill has a reputation for not just raising money and awareness, but making it fun all the while.

“I love a good party, and that first Pride for me was like a Mardi Gras, only better,” Graybill recalls. “I was like, ‘This is the greatest party I have ever been to!’”

As for her favorite Pride, Graybill isn’t sure she can choose just one, but she settles on the Pride when Bronski Beat was playing the main stage.

“I had volunteered with the softball team in the beer garden, and we had all been hanging out together, and Tony Valenzuela’s mother pitched a tent in the middle of Pride and served us the greatest food,” Graybill recounts. “My daughter was in residency in Salt Lake City, and her best friend, Tim, was a gay man who had just come out, and so she sent him down here to me, and I sent him out into Pride and on the boat and to the Zoo Party. He was having the time of his life, and there we were, standing at the front of the audience of the main stage, you know, before there were trenches and roped-off security, just right there at the stage, and when the Bronski Beat lead singer, [Jimmy Somerville], who was a gorgeous, beautiful young man with gorgeous, long hair down to his butt, pulled the band out of his ponytail and just swished it in one long, slow-motioned sweeping movement, this huge golden mane, right in the middle of the song, and it just flowed around him! Oh, my God, 5,000 gay men just trampled us to get to the stage, this newly out kid from Salt Lake, Utah, and a short, straight woman, crushed! And every moment of it was fabulous.”

And, yes, Graybill says all of that in one breath.

But Graybill doesn’t just sit around waxing nostalgic. In fact, it’s unlikely you’ll ever find Graybill sitting around at all. She works a crowd with the ease of a politician, the grace of movie star, and the spunk of the kind of in-your-face activist that brings a smile to your face as you find yourself writing a check for her favorite causes.

Graybill says there are a number of reasons why Pride is still so relevant today, including its financial impact for the GLBT community.

“First, OK, yes, it’s still the best party in town, and people come from all over the country,” Graybill explains. “But it’s also a party that has brought hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to organizations I am involved in and care about. It’s a great party that generates a lot of cash that gets put back into the community. It is also so incredibly, unbelievably political, beyond the San Diego Democratic Club and the Log Cabin Republicans. It’s so radically political because there is a tremendous education going on, about who we are as a community – the Gay Men’s Chorus, the Diversionary Theatre, The Center – there isn’t one aspect of life that San Diego Pride is not involved [in] in some way. You can’t possibly come away without some greater understanding and respect for an aspect of gay life, whether it’s the arts, Different Strokes’ water polo, food vendors and jewelry designers, travel businesses. Where else can you have all of that delivered to you in such a fabulous package?”

As for the future of Pride, Graybill is convinced Pride is as relevant today as it was 33 years ago, and as it will be 33 years from now.

“It’s our block party, those of us in search of greater civil rights,” Graybill says. “Whether you are short, tall, fat, skinny, butch, a queen, whatever – bringing everyone together teaches us that we are special people who have life, liberty and the right to live it the way we want, the right to talk about those we love, the right to have families that are open and honest and proud, and the right to do all of that with dignity and grace – and all of that at the greatest party in the greatest city!”

This year, Pride will honor two longtime “Inspirational Couples,” representing the thousands of other GLBT lifetime partnerships in San Diego.

Cynthia Lawrence and Peggy Heathers of Allied Gardens are celebrating their 35th anniversary. They met at a friend’s brunch gathering in Santee during what Lawrence describes as “a time when bars were the only alternative for meeting other women.”

Lawrence remembers their first Pride as, well, San Diego’s first Pride.

“I remember hearing about the first Pride because some of our friends talked about it, but I don’t think we were directly involved during the parade itself,” Lawrence explains. “But I remember talking about it because people were marching with brown paper bags over their heads, so they couldn’t be identified. It made such an impact on us, to think that they had to cover their faces in order to march. It was very poignant, really.”

Lawrence also recalls how the whole culture of shame that was being promoted by the straight media for those who were involved with the march hit home during one of her early Prides.

“After the parade, I was sitting on a hill with my 7-year-old son and Tom Kerry, a friend of ours, and Tom was holding my son’s hand, and a photographer came up to take their picture,” Lawrence recounts. “I knew [the photographer] was just playing up to the whole idea that gays are the ones who molest children, and it was so distressing to think that that’s where we were. We marched in a parade and made lots of noise, you know, with chants and cars. Mostly, it was a statement we were making about our visibility. It was the mid to late 1970s, so it was kind of exciting because it was political, and we were making a proud statement at the same time that a lot of civil rights fights were going on, fighting for civil liberties. And all the photographer wanted was a picture to promote the straight community’s fears.”

Heathers is a retired social worker from the county of San Diego and served proudly on the County’s Human Relations Commission, before the city began its own commission. Heathers was also a member of the original steering committee comprised of local GLBT activists in the early 1970s that became what is now, The Center. She recalls a favorite Pride memory.

“Cynthia was grand marshal, and she was in this white carriage for her efforts in cultural ethnic issues,” Heathers says. “I think of that parade when Cynthia went by, and now whenever I see PFLAG go by, it always strikes something in my heart, that I think, ‘Oh, God, yes, things can be better.’ And I realize that there are terrible things that are tough, and can make things seem absurd, and it is still hard to take some of them, but then you see non-gay people marching with us, and it’s all suddenly exciting again.”

Lawrence and Heathers have, in their three-and-a-half decades together, watched the progression of Pride, from the early years before there was a festival, and then in the years of the festival when it was held on India Street. The relevance of Pride continues to strike a cord in both their hearts today.

“We’ve really watched it grow,” says Lawrence, a retired teacher from the University of California San Diego, who currently works as a graduate advisor for students at the Western Institute for Social Research in Berkeley, California. “And look at how things have changed, but at the same time how they haven’t changed. The worse thing a kid can call another kid is ‘fag,’ and Peggy and I do panels at schools like SDSU trying to change that. Pride does a lot to educate, too. We have to find a way to share the strength that can balance off the emotional pieces that go on in our lives. Pride is that way for a lot of young people, at least for the weekend.”

Together, Lawrence and Heathers serve as role models for young and old couples alike. Advocacy and their relationships are deeply intertwined. As a couple, the women launched The Center’s women’s program. Heathers later started the women’s caucus for the San Diego Democratic Club and was the manager for the San Diego Women’s Chorus, which Lawrence founded.

And, together, Lawrence and Heather will be honored as an Inspirational Couple, celebrating their individual and their collective contributions.

Jerry Peterson and Bob Smith say they remember Pride before it was Pride.

“My memory of the first event may not even be considered as one of the 33 San Diego Pride events,” Peterson explains, referring to Pride marking its 33rd annual celebration this year. “But a parade did take place, and it was around 1973 or 1974. [The first official Pride parade took place in 1975.] It was a parade made up of groups, and the thing that young people today should be aware of is that there were marchers in the parade that wore paper sacks over their heads with cut-outs for their eyes, so they could not be identified. That was the climate of fear for their jobs, or whatever, that existed at that time.”

Peterson and Smith, who have been together for 40 years, met at a dinner party in Chula Vista, and are being honored as one of San Diego’s two Inspirational Couples at this year’s Pride parade. Both men are active supporters of several GLBT organizations. Few fund-raising events go by at which Peterson and Smith are not table captains.

Peterson, who owns Jerry and David’s Cruises and Tours, a tour company that caters to GLBT travelers, started a local home for runaways, The Bridge, in 1970. It was the same year that New York City saw the first gay Pride march in the nation. Peterson also served on the committee that became what is now The Center.

Smith is a semi-retired, family-practice doctor who opened the Robert S. Smith Medical Group on Sixth Avenue in 1991, which specializes in treating people with HIV.

Giving back to their community comes naturally. Together, they have seen and/or participated more than 30 San Diego Prides.

“Our most memorable Pride was about 20 years ago,” Peterson recalls. “The parade was formed on the street where the festival is now held, while the festival grounds were in the Navy Hospital parking lot. The parade started on Laurel Street and went north on Sixth Avenue. Our supportive and wonderful mayor [Maureen O’Connor] at the time was called “Mayor Mo,” and she not only led the parade, but walked the entire route, as well!”

O’Connor was the first elected official to ride in the San Diego Pride parade in 1986. The following year, O’Connor declared June 13-14 “Gay Pride Days,” and several City Council candidates rode in the Pride parade. Peterson and Smith could not have been happier as they watched their efforts for equality begin to be realized.

For Peterson and Smith, though, Pride is not just past memories. Pride remains a vital, relevant and necessary event.

“We think this year’s Pride theme says it all,” Peterson explains, referring to Pride’s 2007 theme, “United for Equality.” “And we hope that it inspires all of us to work hard and contribute our time and money to make unity and equality a reality in the next five years. By that time, legal civil unions should be a reality, accepted on the federal level, as well as the state level. All of us should want this for those in our community who enjoy long-term relationships. What a 45th anniversary celebration it will be if Bob and I can participate in a legal civil union by that time!”

We’ll be sure to check back with them in 2012! In the meantime, they’ll be busy making sure young people never have to march wearing paper bags over their faces for fear of reprisal.