“Gay and proud” (“I’m gay and I’m proud”)

“Gay and proud” is a gay slogan that appears to have started in New York City in 1969 and 1970. “Say it loud, gay and proud!” was a chant during the Stonewall riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1969. “Say it loud, gay is proud” was also chanted during New York City’s first Gay Pride Day on June 28, 1970. “Play It Loud, I’m Gay and I’m Proud” was cited in print in September 1970.
 
“Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968), a funk song by James Brown (1933-2006), probably influenced the gay pride chant.
     
   
Wikipedia: Gay pride
Gay pride or LGBT pride is the positive stance against discrimination and violence toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people to promote their self-affirmation, dignity, equality rights, increase their visibility as a social group, build community, and celebrate sexual diversity and gender variance. Pride, as opposed to shame and social stigma, is the predominant outlook that bolsters most LGBT rights movements throughout the world. Pride has lent its name to LGBT-themed organizations, institutes, foundations, book titles, periodicals and even a cable TV station and the Pride Library.
 
Ranging from solemn to carnivalesque, pride events are typically held during LGBT Pride Month or some other period that commemorates a turning point in a country’s LGBT history, for example Moscow Pride in May for the anniversary of Russia’s 1993 decriminalization of homosexuality. Some pride events include LGBT pride parades and marches, rallies, commemorations, community days, dance parties, and large festivals, such as Sydney Mardi Gras, which spans several weeks.
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On November 2, 1969, Craig Rodwell, his partner Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes proposed the first pride march to be held in New York City by way of a resolution at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) meeting in Philadelphia.
   
OCLC WorldCat record
Gay and proud
Author: Philip S Dorn
Publisher: [United States?] : Neptune Readers, ©1970.
Series: Neptune Readers, NR-104
Edition/Format:   Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
June 28, 1970 : gay and proud.
Author: Breck Ardery
Publisher: New York, N.Y. : W. Ardery, [197-?]
Edition/Format:   Audiobook on LP : LP recording : English
 
29 June 1970, The Capital Times (Madison, WI),  “Protest Social Pressures: 20,000 March for Homosexuality,” pg. 6, col. 4:
NEW YORK (UPI)—Bright banners and bold slogans declaring pride in homosexuality marked a three-mile march by 15,000 to 20,000 men and women Sunday.
 
The parade from Greenwich Village through midtown Manhattan to Central Park was the culmination of “Gay Liberation Week,” a series of celebrations designed to publicize the new militant fervor among hornosexual organizations
 
“Say it loud gay is proud,” chanted the marchers.
   
Google Books
28 September 1970, SCREW, pg. 16:
Play It Loud, I’m Gay and I’m Proud
 
Google Books
Dancing the Gay Lib Blues;
A Year in the Homosexual Liberation Movement
By Arthur Bell
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster
1971
Pg. 60:
He was gay and proud and loud, and he got busted on Forty-second Street for petitioning.
Pg. 84:
At first it was a little strange marching up the center of Manhattan shouting, “I’m gay. I’m gay.” But as we marched it became like saying, “Hey, Mom, I’m gay and I’m beautiful.” “Hey, Dad, I’m gay and I’m proud.”
   
Google Books
The Gay Militants
By Donn Teal
New York, NY: Stein and Day/Publishers
1971
Pg. 120:
On the walk to the 6th Precinct, GAY reported that Chants rang out. “Gay and proud, Say it loud, Gay and proud, Say it loud!” “Gay, Gay Power to the Gay, Gay People!”
 
Google News Archive
18 March 1971, The Village Voice (New York, NY), “Gay march on Albany: Coming out against straight-jacket laws” by Arthur Bell, pg. 54, col. 3:
One beautiful thing that’s come from Stonewall, a sense of community best felt at dances and demonstrations, never before felt at bars, never ever felt, at least by this feeler, before gay became proud.
 
Google Books 
The Mating Trade
By John Godwin
Garden City, NY: Doubleday
1973
Pg. 216:
On Gay Pride Day of 1970, some twenty thousand homophile men and women gathered in New York’s Central Park for a “Gay-In” of speeches, songs, sign-waving and chanting, with the slogans reflecting an increasingly militant temper:
 
Say it loud! Gay and proud!
Better blatant than latent!
Ho-Ho-Homosexuall
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Gay and proud : struggling to build an above-ground culture.
Publisher: [San Francisco, Calif. : Bruce B. Brugmann, 1974]
Series: San Francisco Bay guardian (San Francisco, Calif. : 1968 : Home ed.), v. 9, no. 2.
Edition/Format:   Book : English
 
OCLC WorldCat record
[Man holding an Australian flag and wearing a t-shirt with the phrase, gay and proud], Gay Mardi Gras, 1981
Author: William Yang
Publisher: 1981.
Edition/Format:   Image : Picture : English
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
“The parade of 1981 was something of a street demonstration march, although there were floats and a few costumes. It was a different route from the Oxford/Flinders Streets route now. It started around the barracks in Paddington, wound down Surrey Hills near Belmore Park, went up George Street and ended in Hyde Park.”—William Yang.