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Pride 2010

June 25, 2010 on 2:38 pm | In Main Category | No Comments

Come join us at the 2010 Pride Parade on Sunday, June 27.  Enjoy the warm sunshine, colorfully extravagent parade, and energetic festivities that fill this very special day.  Don’t forget to stop by the Project Open Hand beverage booth on the corner of McCallister and Polk!

Here’s a letter that provides a great description of Pride…

Dear friends,

No matter how many Pride seasons come and go, it’s still amazing. Calendars grow thick with events, rainbow flags sprout from rooftops and windows, the film festival packs them in at the theaters. Even the downtown mall across from Horizons’ office has our colors in a street-level window. And then there’s the parade, which, whatever complaints there may be about gaps between contingents or commercialization, has few rivals – anywhere, at any time – for sheer exuberance and creativity.

Yet Pride goes beyond some whirl of events and seas of rainbow flags; it’s more than marching in a parade. Part of Pride is intensely personal – it’s about who we are and what we believe about ourselves. It’s about having overcome a million messages that we’re sinners, deviants, criminals; it’s about the families we create, and the children we raise to love rather than to hate.

Another part of Pride is – inescapably – political. Defiantly, unapologetically political. I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering my first big Pride (mine in Chicago) and being lit up by a dizzying, almost dreamlike sense of connection and community. A sense of movement, even power. In a world where equality remains elusive, simply living our lives as out, proud people makes a political statement with every breath we take.

And Pride is about more than just a day or even a week in June. Pride is donating to an LGBT organization. Pride is volunteering our time. Pride is helping an elder, a neighbor, a young person. Pride is talking – really talking – with family and friends about why full equality matters to us. Pride is about holding hands wherever we choose, or supporting an out candidate for office, or talking with our LGBT friends about why contributing to the community is so essential.

Pride is what you do every day. Every time you give, every time you put pride into action in any way, you move us all a bit closer to the day when equality no longer eludes, when acceptance replaces fear, when love between people is never cause for contempt but always and only for joy.

As ever, thank you for everything you give and do for our community, and have a wonderful Pride.

With pride and gratitude,

Roger Doughty
Executive Director
Horizons Foundation