Baxter Jones relaxed on a bench and grinned quietly at the colorful, noisy, celebratory scene buzzing all around him in Esther Short Park.
“It makes me feel great,” Jones said while surveying the crowd assembled for Saturday in the Park Pride, Clark County’s 24th annual gay pride celebration. “Every year it’s bigger and bigger. It’s all about bringing community together for a good cause and a good time.”
Jones is a longtime organizer and volunteer at Martha’s Pantry, Clark County’s food bank and community center for people with HIV/AIDS and one of many community groups, nonprofit agencies and businesses that brought booths to Saturday in the Park Pride. Martha’s Pantry has a direct connection to the local LGBTQ population and its needs, but many others were there simply to demonstrate support and friendship — and to underline the presence of LGBTQ people in the public, visible mainstream.
U.S. Bank was there to introduce its Pride business resource group, which focuses on LGBTQ customer and employee outreach, support, education and safety; this was the first time the banking giant took part in the Vancouver festivities, according to staffer Robert Ruiz. Hewlett Packard was there too, showing off its 3D printer technology and taking souvenir photos of Prideful participants.
Unions were there. Local governments were there. Churches were there. Ethnic social groups were there — like Utopia PDX, which helps connect queer and trans Pacific Islanders in the Portland area, according to organizer Manumalo Ala’ilima. Political leaders and candidates for office were there. Renewal by Andersen, a regional window company, was there, and so was national wholesale giant Costco.
“I’m here because I want people to know I believe in fair housing and I’m part of this community. And I’m a lesbian,” said Realtor Ricki Anaya. “The best way to reach out to our clients is to be out. It used to be, don’t talk about it, don’t show it. Well, forget that.” Anaya was drumming up business by handing out flyers featuring the very made-up face of a drag queen and the motto “Moving shouldn’t be a drag!”
According to Simona Matteucci, “lesbian visibility” was the point of the third annual Dyke March, illustrating Anaya’s point. The march is a special parade within the event that circled the park several times, lead by a pair of solemn drum majors. Matteucci steered a motorized wheelchair and held up a sign reading “Italian lesbians: deal with it.”
Given the rightward tilt of today’s political landscape, Matteucci said, the push for visibility feels extra urgent this year. “It’s a scary time for us,” she said. “We just want to show people we are here and we are no different than anybody else. We’re teachers, lawyers, doctors, garbage collectors. We’re just a normal part of life.”
Normal and special
Try telling that “normal” part to Nick Sabatasso of Portland and Tom Racioppo of Vancouver, who obviously felt as special as can be while strolling the park on Saturday. You could see it in their beaming smiles and their tightly clasped hands, which never unclasped — even when a reporter started asking them nosy questions.
Two men holding hands in public is far more acceptable than it used to be, they agreed — but that doesn’t mean it’s fine everywhere. At Saturday in the Park Pride, though, it obviously felt fabulous to the couple. “It feels great to feel so confident about holding hands with my loved one,” Sabatasso said. “It is very validating.”
Ron Rasmussen was there in military fatigues with two other members of Veterans for Human Rights; they formally presented colors at the start of the event (after kids from Metropolitan Performing Arts sang a ukulele-accompanied national anthem): a U.S. flag, a Washington state flag and a rainbow flag.
Rasmussen, who has presented colors at many pride events over many years, said he loves seeing the “awe and wonder” in the eyes of LGBTQ people as they realize that serious symbols of patriotism and national pride belong to them too.
Saturday was a first-ever Pride gathering for 15-year-old Skyler Anderson of Vancouver, who sported a homemade T-shirt with rainbow lettering that declared Anderson’s magically inclusive attitude: “If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one should live in a closet.”
