This year was the first year Megan and I have gone to the Pride Festival – weird, huh? You’d think we woulda gone sooner. Turns out we picked a perfect year for the parade, which started at 10:00 AM. We decided the night before at Liv’s party that we were going to be there around 9:00-9:30. Megan said she wanted coffee, so I told her we’d need to leave home at 8:30 or so (knowing full well this meant that we wouldn’t leave until almost 9:00). The plan was set.
The next morning, I woke Megan up at 8:15. Sure enough, she had my hangover. I still don’t understand how that works. Maybe it’s like gravity. I don’t really need to know how or why, so much as just accept the fact that it does work. Anyway… We left pretty close to on time. It looked a little gray outside, so we packed umbrellas, but I was still in a t-shirt, shorts, and flops – a choice I would very soon regret.
See that picture up at the top there? Yeah, that ain’t this year’s festival. It’s last years and it looks like it was gorgeous.
By the time we parked and found a perfect spot to watch the parade, around 280 South and 300 East, it had started to sprinkle. Y’know, like Utah rain does – trying to decide if it’s actually gonna rain. I’m sure my insolence angered the Utah Weather Gods (Pope & Eubank, as they’re affectionately known), ’cause it pretty much dumped on us during the whole parade. All three of us were drenched (in spite of our umbrellas). And pretty much as soon as the parade was over, it stopped raining. Oh, it drizzled here and there for a few minutes, and it was still very overcast, but nothing like what it was during the parade.
After the parade, we went inside the festival and found some of our friends that had booths. We ran into Mary Olsen, who we didn’t know had a booth, and Darin Jones, who we knew before hand did have a booth. I bought a t-shirt from Darin that’s super-awesome, mostly because I own a print of the piece that insopired it (also his).
Speaking of which, one of the highlights was the t-shirts – in the parade, mostly, but just on people walking around the festival, too. Some of the highlights from the parade t-shirts were the “Legalize Gay” done by American Apparel, the “I Give Oral” from the HIV/Aids testing group, and this one below. It’s a bit hard to read, but it says “Buttars Likes Boys – he had a ranch full of them!”
One of the most interesting things I found was a booth sponsored by Gays and the Gospel. The banner outside their booth read “12 Scriptural reasons Latter-Day Saints should support marriage and equality” I only spoke to the young man inside the booth for a moment, but he was friendly and kind – nothing confrontational about him at all. He had a very loving and accepting tone when he spoke of the LDS Church, and how passionate he was about marriage equality. There was no anger or disdain for the LDS Church, just a desire to have his voice heard. From a doctrinal background, his stuff’s pretty solid and makes sense. The scriptures cited are contextual and relevant, and make some very good points. You can read more about it at www.GaysandTheGospel.org.
But I think the part of the festival that I enjoyed the most was the openess and freedom with which everyone expressed themselves. Some of it was as simple as a couple feeling free to simply hold hands while they walked, or affectionately embrace or kiss each other, when outside the festival in ordinary walks of life they may not dare to do so. And some of it was just the pure energy of a group of people celebrating their own and each others diversity. Truth is, for most of the festival I walked around with a silly/stupid grin on my face just because I felt like smiling – I was just happy for no particular reason at all.
I can tell you this – I’ll be back next year in celebration and support.
