Not...exactly one event a year. Based upon a quick google search (
http://www.gaypridecalendar.com if you're interested) I found quite a list of events, some with entire months of the year.
Well, if you charter a bus and drive from one Pride celebration to another across the United States for several months, it will probably look like there's a lot of Pride celebration going on. In the liberal East Coast city I live in, it's one day out of the year.
However, we are talking about two different topics - constitutional rights vs. a respectful request for decency and mutual respect.
It's hard to argue with requests for decency and mutual respect - so I'll try not to. But I will say this: public gay pride celebrations come out of a specific historic context. It wasn't too long ago when being gay in the US was
criminalized. Forgot nationwide marriage rights, a gay couple could be arrested for walking down the street holding hands; for
existing. Law-enforcement agencies around the country would routinely raid businesses known to have a gay clientele. Making a pass at someone could get you busted on a moral charge.
Or beaten up, killed, fired from your job, publicly ruined, and/or your family shamed for creating you. Heck, in 1978 in San Francisco, of all places, the first out publicly elected official was
assassinated. That's well within my lifetime. I was 9.
Imagine living in place where you couldn't hold your romantic partner's hand in public, for fear of everything from loss of income, arrest, to direct physical violence. For your entire life. Imagine all those voices telling you to be ashamed. Now imagine that changing...
This is a fertile soil that loud, in-your-face, public gay pride celebrations came from. It's fair not to like their excesses. It's fair to question their continued relevance in the 21st century -- and I'm sure a segment of the gay community does just that. But it's more than a little unfair not to acknowledge where certain gay pride celebration traditions come from, and why some members of that community might want to continue to honor them.
For the record, the public celebration you really want to avoid in Philadelphia, if you value both decency and your own sanity, is St. Patrick's Day. They bus drunk young people in from the hinterlands. It's nightmarish.