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Showing PRIDE

LGBTQ community celebrates 6th annual festival

Pride Fest attendees are seen wearing flags and other rainbow garb. (Journal photo by Trinity Carey)

MARQUETTE — Upper Peninsula Rainbow Pride celebrated its sixth annual Pride Fest Saturday at Tourist Park Campground in Marquette.

“The purpose of the event is not only to try and give people a better perspective on LGBTQ, but really just to try and incorporate the entire community,” said U.P. Rainbow Pride Treasurer Michael Bradford. “We incorporated kids’ activities, an education booth, all this other stuff that you wouldn’t normally see at a pride fest.”

This year’s event was the biggest one yet, Bradford said, and provided more entertainment than previous years. The festival featured keyboard music from Jim Dettlaff, singing by Dawson Merrills, belly dancing by Danz Oasis Caravan, as well as Oriental, Turkish and Armenian dance. Local drag queens and kings took the stage for a professional and amateur drag show and new this year was a headlining band for the festival, Diversion.

It was moving to see the community’s support at the festival, Bradford said.

“For community members to come to this event you’re planting your flag on a social cause that one would hope all would agree with,” he said.

U.P. Rainbow Pride is a nonprofit which aims to provide resources and host LGBTQ-friendly activities and events, its website states.

Besides promoting equality throughout the entire community, U.P. Rainbow Pride hopes to eventually establish a center where the LGBTQ community can seek various services.

“Our big-time goal, a goal that’s been there since the dawn of the organization, has been to build a resource center — a brick-and-mortar location here in Marquette for people to come to who need help or just need to be more educated to a lot of the services. People come to us with legal questions, health, because they don’t know if who they go to is actually going to accept them, which is actually a very big problem in the U.P. A lot of even our own members have been rejected from health care, from lawyers, from local businesses. The whole goal is to break through that barrier and let people know that we’re still people.”

The possibility of providing these resources come from donations, fundraisers and the support of the community at events such as Pride Fest.

“Come to our events, support us, and not even just come to our events, but give us a shout-out and spread the word of what we’re trying to do and what the whole community is trying to do across the entire planet,” Bradford said.

For more information on upcoming events or to get involved in the organization, visit www.uprainbowpride.org.

Trinity Carey can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 206. Her email address is tcarey@miningjournal.net.

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