Celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month (in Photos)

June is Pride Month: a time to reflect, celebrate, and advocate for queer rights. In cities across the United States—and the world—pride celebrations are taking place to publicly display support for the LGBTQ community.

Pride Month has a long and tumultuous history: Its origins can be traced back to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, on June 28th, 1970. Demonstrations against the raid lasted for days, ultimately inspiring the beginning of a LGBTQ rights movement. The first gay pride march was held in New York City on June 28th, 1970, marking one year since the Stonewall Riots.

Since then, countless Pride parades, marches, and celebrations have taken place across the country. Rainbow flags, first featured in San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza for Gay Pride Day in 1978, have become a ubiquitous symbol in support of LGBTQ pride.

In West Hollywood, thousands attended the 49th annual Pride Parade. According to ABC, roughly 140 floats and dozens of groups participated in the parade. On the other side of the world, Tel Aviv Pride, a weeklong celebration that features a plethora of daily parties, drew hundreds of thousands to the streets. According to Forbes, Tel Aviv is one of the leading cities in transgender medicine, offering comprehensive endocrinology and psychology services and fertility conservation options for transgender individuals.

In many places, however, both in the U.S. and abroad, discrimination continues: The largest pride parade in central and Eastern Europe was held on Saturday in Warsaw, Poland, the New York Times reported. Poland is set to have 20 pride parades this year, according to the Times, all taking place amid anti-LGBTQ backlash from the right-wing governing party. And at the Capital Pride Parade in Washington, D.C., false reports of an active shooter sent participants running, which led to seven people suffering non-life-threatening injuries, the Washington Post reports.

But there are still many reasons for LGBTQ people and allies to celebrate: 2019 has seen a wave of victories for queer people. This week, Botswana decriminalized homosexuality and Ecuador legalized same sex marriage, and, last month, Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage.