Neon Nights

Saturday, June 23, 1990
The Concert Hall

The GCDC’s Neon Nights dance on June 23, 1990, corresponded with the 1990 Toronto Pride festival. The slogan for the dance, included on the handbill above, was “Let your Pride glow!” Meeting minutes indicate that deciding on the slogan for the GCDC dance was a relatively simple process; elsewhere in the city, however, attempting to choose an official slogan for Pride was intensifying a political rift.

In his book Queer Progress, Tim McCaskell writes about growing tensions within Pride during the late 1980s and into the 1990s. He details how debates about the official slogan for the 1990 festival brought this tension to the forefront. Pride organizers needed to decide between two options: “Decade of Visibility” or “By Any Means Necessary.” Some of the Pride organizers, McCaskell writes, thought both options were a bit too political, arguing that many of their communities were not visibly gay and that “By Any Means Necessary” was too aggressive and might frighten straight people.

For McCaskell, the debate about an official Pride festival slogan is just one example of how a political consensus— recognizable in the 1980s— had begun to erode by the 1990s.