By: Faith Bryan
Minneapolis, MN (The Hollywood Times) 6/30/2024 – We celebrated Pride in the Twin Cities this weekend, and as always, it was a fabulous event. The Twin Cities Pride Festival is Minnesota’s second largest festival – behind only our state fair, The Great Minnesota Get-Together – and the largest free Pride festival in the state.
Pride Month has a special meaning for me. I grew up in the very conservative community of Bakersfield, CA, the child of staunch Eisenhower Republicans and devoted Southern Baptists. So when I came out as transgender in the summer of 2012, I immediately moved to southern California, where I had friends in the trans community and was less likely to draw violent attention.
I attended my very first Pride the next year, in Long Beach. I actually rode on a float for T-Girl Nights and Hamburger Mary’s, the event and nightclub that hosted the trans community in Long Beach every Saturday night. I rode with about a dozen girls, some of whom I knew from Mary’s, some I didn’t know when the parade started but knew by the end.
It was a watershed moment for me. I spent 59 years hiding in a persona that I did not own. I married three times, had two children, worked in newspapers as a reporter and editor for more than 30 years. I taught college and university communications at my alma mater, CSU=Bakersfield, at a nearby community college, and online.
All as a balding 6-foot, 5-inch, 350-plus pounds man. But inside, I was someone else, and when I came out on August 4, 2012 – my rebirth date – I was finally able to embrace the person that I knew I’d always been since around the age of five.
All those years, I hid from everyone, mostly my Republican, Southern-Baptist family, and waited until my parents were gone before coming out, just to spare them the difficulties families face when a child transitions. I was afraid to tell them, but I loved them and didn’t want to drive a wedge between us.
This is why Pride is a special thing for me and millions of members of my community. Frankly, it is an opportunity for us all to make up some ground for all the years we spent denying our authentic selves to make others comfortable. And our allies can also stand up and show their support among those who genuinely appreciate them.
Of course, every year the conservative right in this country wants to know why there’s no Straight Pride. Well, there is. It’s called life. Nobody is trying to erase them and take away their opportunities in business, education and housing. Our LGBTQ+ community is under constant attack, so we march and we celebrate the rights we have gained and demonstrate that were are regular people at our core.
I moved to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in 2015 in order to be nearer to my older son. I had been a member of the Human Rights Campaign’s Orange County/Long Beach/Palm Springs volunteer steering committee, and when I got to Minneapolis, I was welcomed to the Twin Cities committee.
My job with HRC was as membership chair, which meant Pride fell under my purview. I recruited and scheduled volunteers for the festival booth, worked with the HRC national office to make sure we had all of the resources we would need for the event, and recruited and coordinated folks for the parade. I also worked in the booth every hour it was open, both days, as well as working to help set things up the night before.
The first year, in Long Beach, I did a lousy job, but the folks from the national office were there to make sure we didn’t fail completely. And I got to learn how to do it from some folks who are true pros at setting up and running these events.
So when I got here, I was ready to shine. Twin Cities Pride highlights the best in LGBTQ+ entertainment on four stages, features more than 650 vendors, including LGBTQ+ and Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) community resources, artists, and businesses. It is one big party for two solid days.
And in 2016, HRC has a stellar Pride, surpassing its new-membership goal for the first time in many years. The booth at beautiful Loring Park venue was abuzz with activity for two solid days and things went off without a hitch.
The parade … not so much. Most of the volunteers didn’t show, so our decision to enter a float rather than a marching contingent saved the day.
Shortly after my first Twin Cities Pride, my health began to spiral downward. Doctors had discovered an aneurysm in the aortic arch where it enters the heart, and I was told to limit my exertion as much as possible, as the aneurysm could burst before it reached a size that allowed doctors to fix it.
So I resigned for the steering committee and stayed ion bed for most of the next two and a half years. I stopped walking for exercise as I was told I could only walk about a block at a time. I was terrified that I would die without warning.
That meant Pride was no no-go for me, and I languished each year after that at home as the festival came and went. In 2018, doctors repaired my aneurysm as well as performing a single bypass to get around a blockage in my right coronary artery, and I look forward eagerly to getting back to my normal level of activity.
Fate had other plans as I contracted a bacterial infection in my lower spine in January of 2019, fusing my L1-L4 vertebrae and putting me in a wheelchair. I am 70 years old now and still in the chair. It is quite likely I will end my days here on Earth in it.
A pair of surgical interventions in 2021 did little to help, and each year, Twin Cities Pride has come and gone without me. But every year, I celebrate as well as I possibly can, show my Pride with flags and banners around my apartment, on my wheelchair and on my clothing.
You see, you don’t have to go to a Pride festival to celebrate the season. We do the festivals and parades to highlight those in the community at large who help make our city great. And we do it with flair and fabulousness! And we make sure people know who we are. For example, this year, the TC Pride committee created stickers to identify vendors who are BIPOC, BIPOC LGBTQ, or LGBTQ owned or operated, so attendees can be informed about who they are making purchases from and getting information from, celebrating and supporting our diverse community.
And as the recreational use of cannabis products was legalized in 2023, TC Pride set up a groundbreaking experience at this year’s festival with its first-ever cannabis garden. This exclusive lounge area features a variety of THC beverages, edibles, and tinctures for festival attendees to enjoy.
This year’s parade featured 134 organizations, including all of the state’s professional sports teams – the NFL’s Vikings, Major League Baseball’s Twins, the NBA’s Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Lynx, the NHL’s Wild. Groups representing the media, public works, business, special interests and community clubs dotted the colorful lineup as it proceeded down Hennepin Avenue to the Loring Park festival grounds.
And I signed up to help carry the giant Transgender Pride flag in the event. But once again, a health issue kept me grounded in Spring Lake Park, the beautiful suburb where I live. So I celebrated with my friends here at the senior community in which I now live.
I am proud of who I am, who I always was, who I have become. And as we close out June, the official Pride Month, I urge you all, no matter where you fall in the alphabet soup that is our LGBTQ+ identity to the world, to celebrate it. Be proud of who you are, who you love and who you support.
