LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations spring up in rural areas

Pride parade in Murray, Ky. (WKMS photo by Matt Markgraf)

Rural towns across the country are increasingly putting on, or allowing, LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations.

"Advocates say it’s a hopeful sign of shifting public attitudes toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents in Kentucky and other parts of rural America, where more than 2.9 million LGBTQ residents live," Chris Kenning reports for the Louisville Courier Journal.

In Kentucky alone, Pride festivals have sprung up in nearly 20 towns and rural communities across the state in recent years. Murray held its first ever Pride march last Saturday, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The event was peaceful and well-attended, though there were a few protesters, Matt Markgraf reports for WKMS-FM.

M.C. Lampe, the LGBT coordinator at Murray State University, told Markgraf that it's important for people to see that "there are people here that are LGBTQ-identifying and are supportive, because it can feel very lonely in a small town." Lampe, who moved to Murray from Louisville two years ago, said "I've been so impressed with the work being done on a rural level. More, honestly, than I ever did in a city."

Athens, Ohio, recently held its weeklong Pride Fest for the third year in a row, Keri Johnson reports for The Post, a student-run publication of Ohio University in Athens. Chris Nevil, an Athens native and assistant executive director at Southeastern Ohio Rainbow Alliance, said Pride "used to be a big city thing . . . So it's important now to see pride in smaller, more rural areas."

Franklin County in western Massachusetts is also holding its third annual Pride festival this year, Melina Bourdeau reports for the Greenfield Recorder. The first one was fairly small and quickly organized, but this year the event is larger and has more support from local businesses.

In La Grande, Oregon, near the northwestern corner of the state, student organizers from the Mountain Queers club at Eastern Oregon University are organizing the town's second annual Pride festival, Andrew Jankowski reports for Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon. "I think people who aren't from more rural areas don't realize that it's not necessarily outright homophobia that we have to deal with so much as just feeling invisible," the club president, who goes by C, told Jankowski. "We've got queer people, of course, but the sort of thing that Mountain Queers is doing where we're just out there, not being subtle, celebrating our existence, is something you don't really see in Eastern Oregon much, and that's why we're doing it."

The increase in rural Pride events reflects changing attitudes. A recent Pew Presearch Center report "showed sharp increases in support for LGBTQ people and issues since 2004 among many groups," Kenning reports. "Nationally, about 52% of rural residents support same-sex marriage (compared with 64% of urban residents)" according to a 2017 Public Religion Research Institute survey.