Gay Pride Marches Marked by Celebration and Mourning
The events took place two weeks after the mass shooting in Orlando.
— -- Gay Pride marches took place across the country today, but the celebratory tone of the events was inter-spliced with poignant moments of mourning over the 49 men and women who died during the shooting massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, earlier this month.
New York, San Francisco and Chicago were among the cities holding marches, where loud music, dancing, and rainbow-colored imagery mixed with more subdued tributes to the victims of the attack at Pulse.
In the New York event, 49 men and women dressed in all white, marched with signs around their necks bearing the names and faces of the victims of the attack, asking for silence. A bystander at the event told ABC News that "you could hear a pin drop" as the group marched.
In Chicago, a group marched with an arrangement of rainbow colored balloons shaped into the phrase "1 Pulse", according to a report by the Chicago Tribune.
At San Francisco's parade, a "We're Orlando" group of about 300 people participated in the parade, honoring with a moment of silence when the march reached the grandstand. A memorial with their photos will be set up inside City Hall, according to The Associated Press.
"Our hearts are with Orlando. We think of them every day," San Francisco resident Cory Vaughn told ABC station KGO-TV, regarding Sunday's march in his home city.
Throughout the country, security was increased in the wake of the shooting.
Today's events also coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, a date that was capitalized upon by advertisers, and celebrated on social media.
On Friday, President Obama designated a new national monument at the site of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, where gay men and women demonstrated against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969.
Local and national politicians took part in Pride events, including presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who marched with a security detail at the New York event, taking breaks to shake hands with onlookers.
Clinton also marched in the New York Pride Parade in 2000 and 2006. She has received criticism in the past for the timing of her support for gay marriage, which she announced in a video for Human Rights Campaign in March 2013, nearly a year after President Obama did in an interview with ABC News.
Today's Pride events were mostly peaceful, according to reports, and in New York, interactions between participants and the NYPD were described as "friendly" by observers.
In the Capitol Hill area of Seattle on Wednesday, Michael Volz, a local trans man, was attacked after leaving a fundraiser for the victims of the Pulse shooting, ABC affiliate KOMO-TV reported.
The attacker allegedly said "Happy Pride" before punching and choking Volz.
The FBI has joined in the investigation, which police are classifying as a hate crime, according to KOMO-TV.