After years at Southside Park, the festival moved to Capitol Mall – where same-sex couples, gay singles and the friends and family who support them listened to live music with the dome of the Capitol and the golden Tower Bridge anchoring the celebration.

"It's important to make a statement in the capital," said Gail Mancarti, president of Sacramento Pride, while a rainbow-painted Mini Cooper blasting techno music rolled by. She expected Saturday's festival crowd to grow to 10,000 people. Among them were drag queens in platform shoes, but there also were advocates of same-sex marriage, proponents of gays in the military and thousands opposed to discrimination based on sexual orientation. Same-sex couples pushed their children in strollers and dogs tugged at their leashes.

Percentage-wise, Sacramento has the fifth largest gay population among California counties. According to the Williams Institute, a sexual orientation think tank at UCLA, 4.3 percent of the county's residents are gay. And the institute found that a greater proportion of gay people in Sacramento are in long-term relationships.

The Williams Institute says 9.8 percent of Sacramento's couples are same-sex, a percentage surpassed by only five other U.S. cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Boston.

Gay Sacramentans said it's because the city offers tolerance and a more laid-back vibe than other gay-friendly cities such as San Francisco and Miami. "We've seen a real migration from San Francisco to Sacramento," said Dennis Mangers, 69, a former Orange County assemblyman who now lives in Sacramento and came out of the closet after leaving the Legislature in the early 1980s.

"When I first came out, I had an apartment in San Francisco, but I decided that Sacramento was a saner environment, and more conducive to a relationship," he said. Mangers and his partner have been together nearly 20 years.

On Saturday, after the Pride parade wound down and crowds filled Capitol Mall, Bob Herne, 47, stood at the Sierra Forever Families booth talking to gay couples interested in adoption.

The executive director of the agency, he moved from Washington, D.C., to the Land Park neighborhood seven years ago. Walking his dog on the street, he recalled, an elderly neighbor introduced herself and asked about his wife. He told her he didn't have a wife. "Then she asked me, 'Are you gay? Because that's OK. I like gay people,' " Herne said. "I was so surprised."

In his old neighborhood in Fairfax County, Va., he said he and his partner were the only gay couple. In the Land Park area, he said, there are gay couples "behind us, across the street, down the street." Sacramento is simultaneously "a family-oriented place" and "very gay-friendly," Herne said.

Saturday's parade was led by Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles, the first openly gay person to hold that post. As the grand marshal, he rode the route in a horse-drawn carriage.

Following Pérez were a variety of gay-interest groups, from the Sacramento Gay Men's Chorus singing hymns to the Sacramento Sirens cheerleading team to supporters of gays in the military.

"Not that I don't enjoy a shirtless man on a float, I like that our Pride is a little more chill," said Christopher Edwards, 24, a manager at Paesano's Pronto restaurant. "Our community is a little more close-knit and less stereotypical."

Anna Tong (Sacramento Bee) – 20 June 2010.

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