A Community Exhausted
By Sue Robbins
Pride Issue guest editor

Welcome to City Weekly's 2022 Pride Issue. June is LGBTQ Pride Month, and this is certainly a big year for it. After two years of limited events due to the pandemic, we are going to make a huge return. The need for coming together is clear.

The attacks on our community continue to increase in this divisive political climate. Across the nation, proposed legislation targets our community, and especially our precious transgender youth. We've seen many of these bills pass, blocking transgender youth from participating in sports and from receiving necessary medical care.

We've seen our community's very existence attacked in schools, from the attempts to block discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms to the removal of books, flags and "safe zone" stickers that help our youth to feel welcome and safe and allow our educators to demonstrate solidarity and support.

School board meetings have become war zones where small, hateful groups target the LGBTQ community and its allies, using terms like "grooming" and "indoctrination" to frame us as abusers.

Outside of laws and school board meetings, we've seen extremely harmful attacks through executive action by state governors across the nation. In Texas, state employees were required to turn in the families of transgender youth for investigation by child services; in Florida, the passing of the "Don't Say Gay" law has deepened divisions and spawned political infighting across the state.

Based on the leaked draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion suggesting that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, it's reasonable to expect that hard-won LGBTQ rights will also be fully in the crosshairs of the political right. Judicial uncertainty is cause for alarm in our political environment as it opens the door for other rights such as marriage equality to be targeted.

This is how we find our nation as we celebrate Pride Month in 2022. Protesting and standing up for our rights is a mainstay of our history beginning in 1966 at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin district and later at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969.

Leaders such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Harvey Milk—among many others—gave us messages of resistance and protest. Their leadership brought us together to fight through the AIDS/HIV pandemic that's ravaged our community since 1981, through the fight for marriage equality and, now through modern-day attacks on our communities by legislatures across the country. Efforts to defend our rights are ongoing, as we are drawn into battles aimed at us throughout the year.

But then, each Pride Month, we come together and celebrate. We march and rally. All of these elements of Pride are important. We rally and march so we can increase our visibility and raise our voices. And we celebrate because we deserve to share in the joy of who we are. It's a time to lift and heal from the battles we have endured throughout the year.

There's an ever-evolving discussion about whether Pride Month should be primarily a celebration or a protest. Pride Month is aligned with the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and our marches have a long historical meaning to us. Coming together to celebrate also has helped heal our community and has given us a place of belonging. Pride Month is important to each of us in our own way, and I invite everyone to participate in the activities and celebrations that speak to you.

Pride Month is also a time for us to reflect on all that is happening and what we may be facing in the coming years. With all we are going through, community is our strength. Together, we are stronger, louder and more impactful. Let's move forward with the power of a fully connected and supportive community.

If you are an ally, thank you for being here. The advancement of a marginalized minority community is aided when others recognize horrific wrongs being done and choose to not sit idly by. We need each one of you, we need you speaking up in our defense, and we absolutely need you lifting our voices.

I thank City Weekly for this Pride Month edition. Now, let's fill the month with our love of community. And let's rally, march, protest, educate, celebrate, fly our colors proudly and then, continue fighting like the amazing and fierce people we have always been.

Sue Robbins is a woman who is transgender, intersex and pansexual. She is currently a member the Equality Utah Transgender Advisory Council and is a past board chair of both the Utah Pride Center and Transgender Education Advocates of Utah.

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Don't Call it a Comeback
Salt Lake's Pride celebration finds new urgency in an old fight.
By Benjamin Wood

It's a timeworn cliche to describe something as "Back—and bigger than ever," but the adage feels unavoidably appropriate as Pride Week returns to Salt Lake City.

COVID-19 saw organizers at the Utah Pride Center pivot to a more intimate and solemn gathering with its story garden, a self-guided outdoor exhibit celebrating the LGBTQ community. But in 2022, Pride is back to a full-throated roar with the traditional two-day festival at Washington Square, an expanded parade route through downtown and a packed schedule of events that's already underway as of press time.

"It is eight full days of Pride events, which is something we've never done before," said Pride Week director Emily Walker. "It's been three years since we've been able to do something big. This is a chance for our community to come back out and be together and feel safe and heard. And [to] understand that they have support and are part of a community that is way bigger than they think it is in Utah."

That mission is as important as ever this year, with a surge in anti-LGBTQ hostility within the political right and a national backtracking on legal equality after a period of rapid progress. Transgender children have been the target of a particularly aggressive legislative assault. And an emboldened conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled it is ready—if not anxious—to peel back seemingly established constitutional protections.

"There are a lot of rights that are under assault," said Benjamin Carr, co-CEO of the Utah Pride Center. "The climate is incredibly conservative in this state. It's really important for the Utah Pride Center to stand up and be heard."

Upcoming Pride Week events include the traditional Thursday evening interfaith service at First Baptist Church (777 S. 1300 East, SLC) and Friday's rally and march at the Utah State Capitol (350 N. State, SLC). Friday's rally will also be bookended by a rooftop after-party for adults at Club Verse (609 S. State, SLC) and Youth Pride at Washington Square prior to the march at the Capitol.

"It's a place for the youth to be in their own space before the festivities," Walker said.

Pride Week culminates with the marquee weekend events: the two-day festival opening on Saturday and the Pride Parade, led this year by transgender youth, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Sunday.

A new, 13-block parade route encircles the Washington Square festival grounds, giving most spectators a 2- to 3-block walk to the festival afterward. The new route also enhances accessibility, Walker said, allowing space for three "anchor" locations with an emcee, first aid and water stations and seating for passholders and individuals with disabilities.

"A lot of people who require ADA access and struggle with a mobility disability really struggle at our parade," Walker said. "We wanted to make sure they had a specified, designated place where they wouldn't be trampled or stood in front of."

Portions of 2021's story garden will also be on display throughout the week at the Salt Lake City Main Library (210 E. 400 South, SLC).

"We're showcasing poignant pieces from last year's event that we did in place of Pride," Walker said.

Another holdover from the pandemic years will be the virtual streaming of most Pride Week events. And Carr noted that outside of Pride Week, a primary function of the Utah Pride Center is to provide counseling and mental health services, which are increasingly available in a hybrid format.

"During COVID, we obviously had to go online for most of that programming and therapy," Carr said. "That is continuing now, so there are ways for people across the state to participate."

Walker said that in future years, the Pride Center hopes to organize flag-raising events outside of Salt Lake County with the help of local partner organizations from Logan to St. George. She emphasized that while the main Pride events in Salt Lake showcase the size and strength of Utah's LGBTQ community, regional events and even individual demonstrations of solidarity carry an outsize weight of cultural support.

"Pride Festival has always been good at underlining that, right? We're here, we're proud, there's lots of us. But it also gives us a chance to show the community that we have a lot of allies in this state and a lot of people working toward better equality," Walker said. "Put a flag up! Get one of our lawn signs and show support throughout the month."

As conservative as Utah is known to be, both Walker and Carr remarked on the high level of LGBTQ support in the state, and particularly in Salt Lake City. Carr joked about moving to the area and getting used to the volume of Pride flags that appear during June.

"I thought to myself, are all these people gay?" he said. "There is a segment of the city who is very much in support of LGBTQ rights. There definitely is a backlash to the conservative climate, which is really empowering to see."

Walker said an important part of Pride Week is announcing the presence of LGBTQ people in Utah. And after so many years apart, she expects this year's announcement to be particularly loud, and proud.

"This is a record-breaking sponsorship year for the festival," she said. "Utah is a lot more progressive than people think. We're changing and we're evolving. And people are realizing that they have a bigger voice than that of their parents."