"Pride" marches and events are...unfortunate. And I say this having participated in Northern Virginia's 2007 Pagan Pride Day event. Never again. Pride events are, at best, preaching to the choir (as PPD was) or, at worst, in-your-face demonstrations of just exactly how lunatic the lunatic fringe in any given demographic can be.
If gay people want to be accepted by society, they need to get on with just being. Being themselves, being part of society, being the mailman or doctor or engineer or what-have-you that you see every day. Being proud of who you are is different from being Proud; the latter implies ostentation, rudeness, and an unseemly belief that all people have to accept all things.
Gay people need to get it into their heads that not everyone will accept them. Ever. Just like we pagans need to deal with the fact that not everyone will accept us. Ever. Marching about it gathers no sympathy; rather it drives the fence-sitters away because it hauls out the dregs of the subdemographic and puts them on display for people.
And because a "Pride" march of any kind is, by its very definition, pot-stirring, it's no place for a Chief Executive.
-BP
