This small-town Pridefest in the middle of Trumpland is giving us hope
I’ve lived in New York, Philadelphia, LA, and San Francisco—two blocks from the corner of Castro and Market—so I’ve seen my share of well-funded, high-style Pride celebrations.
I wondered what I’d find at the second annual Pocono Pride Fest in Stroudsburg, PA (population 27,000), close to where I’ve been holing up since the pandemic began.I was there with a message: My super-progressive Episcopal church not only “accepts” LGBTQ people, we celebrate them.
After all, Jesus had two dads, spent years living with a dozen other dudes, and he didn’t even know that homophobe Leviticus.As I packed up our “Love Is Love” postcards and headed to the town square, I wondered about the level of support for Pride a place surrounded by red counties in three directions.
They say Pennsylvania basically boils down to Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the West, and in between, “a whole lotta Alabama.”Related: These Pride princes drowned out a homophobic protester in the most amazing way possibleBy afternoon’s end, the teens, seniors, punk rockers and drag queens had given me renewed hope for the future.
