Pride rolled on in towns large and small the second weekend of June, including events that faced down challenges with overwhelming support.
Bar Harbor Pride
Rangers from the National Park Service and nearby Acadia National Park wore their park service uniforms and Pride colors for the Bar Harbor Pride Festival.
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LGBTQ employees at NPS had sounded the alarm about discriminatory and conflicting memos restricting uniforms at special events in the days right before Pride month. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland clarified the policy to allow employees to participate in uniform representing their respective bureau. The National Parks Service then posted a photo of the Stonewall Inn, which was designated a national monument in June 2016.
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The account noted that “parks are for everyone” and that Pride will continue to be honored in the national parks to recognize “the contributions of LGBTQ+ Americans past and present, including our team of employees, partners and volunteers.”
More than a dozen small businesses offered discounts for Pridegoers across Bar Harbor and hosted Pride events. Out Maine shows nearly three dozen more Pride events throughout the state in June.
Capital Pride
In Washington, DC, the 49th annual Capital Pride drew hundreds of thousands of people to the parade, festival and days of celebration, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, and Grand Marshals Keke Palmer and Billy Porter.
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Capital Pride Alliance will host World Pride next year featuring 16 days of events elevating LGBTQ people, equality, and acceptance around the globe, launching with DC Black Pride events.
Brecksville Broadview Heights Pride Fest
Suburban Pride rose again this year at the second annual Brecksville Broadview Heights (BBH), Ohio Pride. LGBTQ people, families, allies and more than a dozen supportive sponsors including faith leaders and houses of worship came out to show Pride and solidarity for diversity, acceptance and welcome.
BBH Pride reports nearly 2,000 people turned out to take in more than three dozen vendors, six food trucks and three bands for the festive and sunny Saturday event.
The event was targeted by a handful of extremists at a Broadview Heights city council meeting in April, who objected to the event being held on public property, including a speaker from an anti-LGBTQ group previously identified as a Southern Poverty Law Center hate group. The mayor of Broadview Heights refused to move the event, as has been the mayor’s prerogative under a 97-year-old statute, and BBH Pride was celebrated without incident.
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown attended BBH Pride with his wife, writer Connie Schultz.
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Montclair Pride
GLAAD Board member and actress Peppermint headlined the third annual Montclair Pride in Montclair, New Jersey. Peppermint returned to the Main Stage for the first time since appearing at the debut Montclair Pride in 2022.
The festival stretched over multiple blocks of downtown Montclair with three performance stages and more than 190 vendors, sponsors and community-wide partners..
Montclair Pride, hosted by LGBTQ community nonprofit Out Montclair, has grown in footprint and attendance in its first three years, into the tens of thousands of attendees for Saturday’s festivities and more coming out for daily events in the week leading up to it.
“To walk through the sea of families, friends, dogs, our elders, the next generation… seeing everyone celebrating themselves, feeling that energy, is something I will never forget,” said Rafael Cuello, co-founder of The Out Agency.
KC PrideFest
Thousands of people lined the streets of Kansas City for the KC Pride Parade on Saturday, sponsored by the KC Pride Community Alliance. Brands and hometown institutions including T-Mobile, Kansas City YMCA, the Kansas City Zoo, media partners KCTV5, and hometown favorite professional soccer team KC Current walked in the parade to cheering crowds waving rainbow flags, who came from all over Kansas City and neighboring states.
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PrideFest performances carried on Sunday with a replacement stage after thieves stole the original stage. Organizers said the replacement stage was found, installed, and was bigger than the original.
“Perseverance in one word,” Erik Deavila, the owner and founder of ED Art Studios, told KCTV5. “The fact that our community is not unknown to sabotage, crime, hate, all that kind of stuff. Not saying that’s what motivated that but I just think it shows we are not going to let that kind of stuff stop us.”
Canyon County Pride
More than two-thousand people attended the first-ever Canyon County Pride in Nampa, Idaho, on Sunday. The event was organized in a matter of weeks and faced down less than supportive comments from Nampa’s mayor, which volunteers say helped even more people turn out.
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Organizer Tom Wheeler said he was already planning for a second Pride next year.
“We’re in a state that has a lot of legislation that’s being passed to discriminate against LGBTQ people, and so we knew we were going to put it on to raise awareness of our existence, and people came in droves showing that we’re here, we exist,” Wheeler told the Idaho Press.
“We heard so many youth say, ‘I did not know people would be here,’” Wheeler said.
“We had to share the message that, ‘look around and see your community.’ Just letting people know we belong here.”