Gay Pride Week's well underway here in NYC. While most gays are out in full force, there's a queer constituency who aren't swinging from the rafters. Actually, more than a few. Since the days of the very first pride - and, in fact, Stonewall itself - there have been tensions between the movement's ideological factions.

Gay Pride's revolutionary message may have been white-washed years ago, but some gays never stopped queering it up to oppose Pride's mainstream, commercialized tendencies.

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No doubt recent gay rights developments – including this blog – would never have come about without the ballsy boys and girls who struck back at Stonewall.

The Stonewall Rebels may not have known at 1:20 am on June 28, 1969, but they were about to make history. Their actions spurred the international gay rights movement, resulting in countless cultural, legal, political, and social evolutions, including the decriminalization of homosexuality in dozens of nations. They also provided the nearly religious foundations for the greatest of gay traditions: Gay Pride.

In the thirty-eight years since gays, lesbians and drag queens first lashed back at police, forty-eight countries on every inhabitable continent have held commemorative gay pride celebrations, including Turkey, Sri Lanka and Peru.

Throughout countries, cities and towns the world over, queers commemorate that first gay pride march, the rebellion that started it all. The Stonewallers – and the activist successors - never could have imagined that the remembrance of their gay gumption would spur a multi-million dollar international party.

How did gay pride grow to such a girth? Where did it all start and, more importantly, where is it going? Find out, after the jump.

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