This City Had Quietly Celebrated Pride Before. In 2023, That Was Not an Option.
As dozens of cars snaked their way onto the grounds of a refurbished horse farm on a sweltering June afternoon in Franklin, Tenn., a few volunteers stood at the entrance, cheerfully welcoming visitors to the local Pride festival.
The greeting, the volunteers said, also gave them a chance to spot any person who didn’t wave back or smile, someone who might harbor more malicious intentions.
There were bag searches and scans with a metal detector. Across the street, a man in a white nationalist fight club T-shirt carried a poster with a homophobic slur.
A SWAT team waited on the outskirts of the celebration. The layers of precaution underscored what had become an unexpectedly volatile situation not only in Franklin, a city 20 miles south of Nashville, but also across the country as right-wing activists have assailed established Pride celebrations and commemorations as a threat to children.
