Drag queens waved from vintage cars, their sequins glinting in the sun and their hair heroically refusing to fall flat in the heat. Dykes on Bikes roared past. The riders were topless, and I was thrilled on my deepest, gayest level. Pride was a party, a huge gay party, and I had never been so excited to be invited, or felt so instantly welcome, anywhere.

That’s where Pride succeeds. It gets more inclusive and welcoming every year, and as the queers become less threatening, more straight people come, and more minds are opened to the possibility that we gays might just be regular people, after all. (Albeit with better decorating sense and the sass to pull off chaps that leave little to the imagination.)

This inclusiveness is also where Pride fails, for lots of us. Who is Pride really for these days? Queers who are proud to be queers, of course. But it’s yet another place that straight white people now feel 100 percent welcome, even though they feel perfectly at home in any public space.

Having allies is wonderful, but sometimes I wish they could be allies every other day of the year, and let us have a party as gay and naked and radical and un-family-friendly as we queers might like.

Pride is clearly also for corporations who want to milk as much money as possible from a previously ignored demographic. In the past decade or so, companies have scrambled to prove how O.K. they are with L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ folks, and well, it’s embarrassing how transparent the scramble for our money is.

I’m not immune. The first time I walked into a Target and saw a whole gay pride display with T-shirts, hats and other rainbow stuff, I got tears in my eyes and just stood there, blocking the aisle, while people pushed their carts around me. I cried in a Target, y’all.