Pride takes over Portsmouth streets: 'Celebrate love'

PORTSMOUTH — Pride swelled the city's downtown streets as a large crowd, perhaps the largest ever, showed up to march in the 10th annual Portsmouth Pride Parade Saturday. Rainbow bubbles spilled over the crowd as marchers gathered on Pleasant Street with rainbow clothes, hats, costumes, flags, banners and balloons.

“We’re thankful to be celebrating 10 years of Portsmouth Pride,” said Heidi Carrington Heath, executive director of Seacoast Outright, which organizes the parade. “It’s so wonderful to have this space and joy for the LGBTQ+ community.”

She’s lived on the Seacoast for 10 years and attended Pride many years before becoming Seacoast Outright’s leader this year. “This is our biggest year ever,” she said.

Community turns out to show Pride

Bridget Amero of Nottingham brought her 7-year-old daughter Maggie, who was wearing a unicorn crown, to see the Pride parade.

“I came and brought my daughter to teach her how to start being an ally and to celebrate love,” Amero said.

Mary Fudge of Exeter came to march in the parade with her 8-year-old son Oscar, who she said is bigender. They were marching with Seacoast Outright’s Little Outrighters group for elementary school-age youth. She wants to create a safer world for children like her son. “Just safety, that’s why I’m here. I want to make sure he’s safe.”

Becca Kelley of Somersworth marched to show support for the younger participants.

“I’m just here to lend support to the upcoming generation,” Kelley said. “I was a baby gay and there was just no one.”

Seacoast native Ray Townsend sat on a bench waiting for the parade’s start. “It’s important to show our pride, but it’s also scary,” they said, referring to recent incidents at the Baltimore’s Pride parade. “It’s important to remember that originally Pride began as a riot in support of LGBQT+ rights.”

Oel Leo, 16, who is a member of the queer disabled community, said, ““It makes me feel there’s more people like me especially where I live,” they said. “The queer disabled community is the most accessible and accepting community I’ve every been in.”

Elected leaders, businesses speak up for LGBTQ+ community

U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas, D-New Hampshire, the state's first openly gay member of Congress, joined the marchers Saturday.

“We’ve seen the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community continue. It’s important to recognize that when this community does better, we all do better,” Pappas said. “That’s not too much to ask and it’s part of the American bargain. We need to pass the Equality Act and ensure protections in housing, in employment and in all the ways that people interact with their community.”

Maggie Fisher of Newburyport, Massachusetts, brought her friend Kari Stephens of Fremont to march with the Liberty Mutual group.

“For Liberty, it’s important to bring your best self to work and that means feeling supported in your community,” Fisher said, noting Liberty Mutual supports Seacoast Outright with donations, “But it’s important to give back to them by being present for them.”

The Leftist March Band entertained marchers with songs like “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and “Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These.” Rainbow-bedecked parade marshals and majorettes stepped off from the intersection of Pleasant and State streets to lead the parade past crowds lining both sides of State Street.

Groups such as ArtsReach, the Portsmouth School Board and Out for Biden-Harris, and businesses such as Hannaford supermarket, Riverworks, Revision Energy and Bangor Savings Bank, among many others, marched behind colorful banners.

Monte Bohanan, the city of Portsmouth’s director of communications and community engagement, marched in the parade coming straight from the Fill The Hall event at The Music Hall. Always falling on the same June Saturday as Pride, the Fill The Hall food drive and fundraiser was also celebrating its 10th anniversary. The community response to the drive this year is bigger than ever, Bohanan said.

“Our biggest Fill The Hall was in 2020, when everyone responded to the pandemic,” said Bohanan, who is one of the co-founders of the event. “We raised $76,000 in food and donations that year. This year, we’re on track to raise $150,000.”

Heading down State Street to Atkinson Street, the parade’s destination was the Pride Celebration on the Puddledock Lawn at Strawberry Banke Museum. Featuring more than 100-plus vendors and live music all afternoon, the celebration began with speeches of support.

Asking for a “10th Anniversary Applause” from the crowd, Portsmouth Mayor Deaglan McEachern welcomed everyone, residents and visitors.

“This is the city of the Open Door, we are always open to new people, new ideas and communities,” he said. “I want to thank Seacoast Outright — this is one big thing they do — for all the things big and small they do for our community every day.”

He also thanked Jim Splaine, who has been assistant mayor, a Police Commission and School Board member, state senator and representative, and a trailblazer as an openly gay man.

“He has fought on a local level for decades,” McEachern said, noting because of Splaine’s work, New Hampshire was the first state in the nation to pass the Marriage Equality Act without a court ordering the state to do so.

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“It’s a day to celebrate allowing people to be themselves and love who they want to love, and to remember that it hasn’t always been that way,” McEachern said. “Home of the free means all of us.”

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, also recognized Splaine’s work for the LGBTQ+ community.

“Advocating for LGBQT+ rights is critically important and the advocating by everyday Granite Staters who said ‘This is the right thing to do’ has made the difference,” she said. “If all are free, we all flourish together and get to be our best. This is what makes us the Life Free or Die state.”

Pappas also spoke, “The fight is not over, but look how far we have come. When I was growing up in New Hampshire in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I never thought I could represent you as an out and proud congressman.”

Pride celebration goes beyond the march

Long lines of people stretched across the lawn from food trucks Claude’s, The Kitchen Table, Whoa Nellie and Cheese Louise. Throwback Brewery hosted a large beer tent. Booths lined the lawn with artisans, community groups, schools and businesses all showing their support for the LGBTQ+ community with Pride crafts and artwork for sale, promotional items for free and a chance for conversations with members of the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. There was also a Family Zone with activities and games for children, and a Drag Queen Storytime with Juicy Garland.

Pride Day was scheduled to stretch into the evening with a free after-party for youth at the Community Campus, an adult happy hour at The Wilder in Portsmouth and an adult after-party at Auspicious Brew in Dover.

Chloe LaCasse, a volunteer for Seacoast Outright, served as MC for the ceremony and live music. From the stage, she urged those in attendance to call Gov. Chris Sununu and “fill his voicemail with opposition to the four anti-trans bills now on his desk.”

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“When people meet a queer person, it changes their life. They think ‘Oh wow, that woman was trans. She was so cool,’” LaCasse said. “They realize their fear is illogical. That moves the bar.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Pride takes over Portsmouth streets: 'Celebrate love'