Pride 2024 Celebrated in Small Towns and Surprising Places

July 12, 2024
HANK ORSO

Pride 2024 Celebrated in Small Towns and Surprising Places

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A post shared by Canyon County Pride (@canyoncountypride)

If you only doom-scrolled through LGBTQ political stories these days, you'd think all was gloom and bluster as we hurtle with unease and trepidation (okay, outright fear at times!) toward this Fall's election. But look beneath the surface, seek out the smaller stories in surprising places, and you'll find that Pride in 2024 turned up in some unlikely locales for the first time, and hopefully not the last. Nope, they couldn't take our Pride no matter how hard they tried. And oh, did they try!

GLAAD reported recently on the state of Pride, and while it had its ups and downs, there was a lot to celebrate. Yer boy Hank here thinks we should focus on that for now. Because frankly, it's just too damn hot and muggy out to get riled up about that other stuff right now! Dozens of towns and cities like Seward, AK; Park City, UT; Little Rock, AR; and Prattville, AL all held their first-ever Pride parades, rallies, and celebrations, drawing not hundreds, but tens of thousands of attendees who battled heat and homophobia to show their Pride and allyship.

Organizing our county’s first public Pride festival for our community gifted me with a deep understanding of what Pride means to me. We expected a couple hundred people to attend the festival and had over 3,000. The community showed how they truly feel about the LGBTQIA+ population, and it was much different than the loud voices that we were used to hearing. Idaho is ready to become more accepting, and our event really proved that. (Van Knapp, co-organizer of Canyon County Pride held in Nampa, Idaho.)

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A post shared by Michael Dean Shelton (@michaeldeanshelton)

Some events were what you might expect, with a large parade, a stage, and performers and speakers. And some came in a more petite size, but no less powerful, like what you see below in this IG video post from Henderson, KY.

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A post shared by Lauren Smith-Reed | Midwest Portrait & Wedding Photographer (@lauren_kayy)

Some would argue that it's in the small towns like this where Pride shines the brightest, because it is the most necessary, and faces the most challenges. Yes, the homophobes came out of the woodwork across the country and across the social media sphere as they always do, from anti-trans demonstrators to assaults, drag show bomb threats to the CO GOP's official X/Twitter account blasting out a request to "Burn all Pride flags." Of course, they got dragged to filth for that.

But the GLAAD report states that although they logged 110 anti-LGBT incidents this past June, this is actually down 25% from June of 2023.

Attacks and threats on Pride symbols and events are meant to intimidate, harass, erase and silence LGBTQ people and our allies, but they are largely unsuccessful. More people are attending Prides, more companies are sponsoring Prides, more communities are organizing and hosting Prides because they are amazing ways to show solidarity and support for all in the community and especially to express a community’s values of welcome, safety, diversity and acceptance. (GLAAD CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis. )