Gay pride marchers celebrate with parades, parties

Thousands of marchers and a rainbow of floats filled the streets of New York and other U.S. cities on Sunday as people celebrated gay pride, part of a weekend of events marred by a shooting death Saturday at a street party in San Francisco. Participants in New York's annual parade, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson, made their way down Fifth Avenue toward the Greenwich Village neighborhood. Throngs of people turned out despite the heat and humidity on Sunday to watch the city's annual parade. One of the parade's grand marshals was Constance McMillen, the lesbian teenager who sued her Mississippi school district over its policy banning same-sex prom dates.