100s of Thousands Celebrate Pride Weekend, Cops Present yet Excluded

Pride Month 2025 came to an often rousing, sometimes raucous, and in parts contentious conclusion on the weekend of June 28-29, as multiple parades and other events filled the streets of midtown and lower Manhattan with rainbows, affirmations, and a fair amount of mixed messages.

On Saturday the official Dyke Parade, which now also includes a strong pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli contingent, marched downtown from Bryant Park, while a splinter group, the Zionist-friendly, or at least anti-Hamas, Shalom Dykes celebrated their solidarity in a secret location in the West Village.

Why secret? Because they feared retaliation against themselves and/or the Shalom Dykes-friendly establishments that were hosting them, they said.

On Sunday, June 29, there were similarly dueling events, though both of these were on the streets, with the regular Gay Pride Parade—now formally known as Heritage of Pride—marching downtown from Madison Square while its upstart, anti-corporate, avowedly anti-cops rival, the Queer March ambled uptown from NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle at Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street.

Before these dueling celebrations kicked off, however, on June 27, NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch criticized Heritage of Pride, the organizers of the main pride parade, for their continued ban of uniformed police officers in the line of march. (Though cops also provide security and route control for the Dyke March and Queer March, they have never participated in them.)

This exclusion is significant, as nearly all the major and minor Manhattan parades include cops as participants, including Mounted Unit horses, Ceremonial Unit color guard, and the relevant fraternal organizations: Asian Jade Society, the Desi Society, Emerald Society for the Irish; NYPD Illyrian Society for cops of Albanian heritage, the Shomrim Society for Jews, and so forth.

“We are shocked, deeply offended, that Heritage of Pride has decided to exclude LGBTQ+ members of the NYPD from participating in the Pride March,” Commissioner Tisch’s letter began.

“This is in direct opposition to the inclusivity that the LGBTQ+ community has fought so hard for, and it flies in the face of everything that GOAL (Gay Officers Action League) has achieved over the past 43 years.”

The ban on NYPD participants in the event dates to the parade’s return from COVID in 2021, with organizers reacting to the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, its subsequent protests, and the “Defund the Police” movement, as well as citing police involvement in the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

Still, what organizers hoped to achieve by banning cops from an event they had happily participated in for decades remains opaque and contradicts the more recent history of the NYPD.

GOAL was founded in 1982 by NYPD Sgt. Charles Cochrane, who said at the time: “I am very proud of being a New York City policeman, and I am equally proud of being gay.” In March 1986, the New York City Council—14 years and many failures after its bill’s introduction—finally passed a Gay Rights Bill, barring discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Today, the NYPD Hate Crime Unit investigates all hate crimes, including those against, gay, lesbian, and transgender persons.

While it takes a special exclusionary form of “inclusion” to scorn cops, as some Dyke March and Queer March participants openly did, while holding an event under police protection, these groups pulled it off.

As for the Dykes themselves, they were energetic, with strong currents of angry protest against President Trump and passionate support for transgender rights, migrants, and all things Palestine.

This last passion found its apex in a sign held by one gay male spectator that read “Queer As in Intifada.”

If unpacking the irony and contradictions in this slogan are beyond the scope of this story, its presence at the Dyke Parade summarizes why the Shalom Dykes—whose members may or may not be Zionist but can surely tell where anti-Israel fury embraces antisemitism—left the Dyke Parade.

Whether fearing political reprisal or a summer COVID “variant,” a notable number of Dyke Marchers wore masks.

The morning of June 29 was even more complicated.

Cops were everywhere, including Deputy Chief Beaudette on Seventh Avenue north of Sheridan Square, and PBMS Commanding Officer, Assistant Chief James McCarthy up by Madison Square.

As for the Queer March, which would head north to Columbus Circle, it featured a similar mix of celebration and protest as the Dyke March, rainbow and Palestine flags entwined, but with more men, some of them impressively dressed.

While few Queer March participants wore masks, they were quite political, with one sign reading “F*CK COPS F*CK ICE F*CK IDF F*CK Fascists.”

With police banned from the main Pride parade, the line of march began not with cops on motorcycles or horses but with the music-blaring, confetti-blasting campaign truck of Governor Kathy Hochul, who was earlier among the numerous Manhattan pols who posed with members of the Gay Officers Action League.

It was loud! It was colorful! It was fabulous!

Back down at Sheridan Square, in front of the Stonewall Inn, a jovial black man from Massachusetts dressed in rainbow shorts, rainbow socks, a rainbow shirt, and rainbow crown, patiently awaited the parade’s arrival.