Thousands celebrate 12th annual Out! Raleigh Pride festival despite heat wave

Fayetteville Street was bathed in color and sun on Saturday for this month’s largest LGBTQ+ celebration in the Triangle, the 12th annual Out! Raleigh Pride festival hosted by the LGBT Center of Raleigh.

With Pride flags draped around shoulders, painted on cheeks and tucked into ponytails, thousands of members of the queer community and supporters flocked to downtown Raleigh despite the nearly triple-digit temperatures.

People milled around the street cooling themselves with rainbow fans and personal water misters. Out! Raleigh Pride provided water and misting stations throughout the festival area and several businesses on Fayetteville Street opened their doors to festival attendees, sharing their sought-after air conditioning.

Ebony Hartsfield-Thorne came to Raleigh on Saturday for her first Pride festival with her 11-year-old daughter Athena, as well as her friends and their two children.

Hartsfield-Thorne and her daughter wore handmade rainbow tutus and beads and brought a rainbow pinata full of candy. The group of friends handed out Pride flags, beads and candy to everyone who passed by.

Hartsfield-Thorne also wore a sign offering “free hugs” to other attendees.

“I feel that everyone should be equal and everyone should be supported,” she said.

As of the early afternoon, Jose Harvey, planning committee board liaison for the LGBT Center, said there were no heat-related illnesses at the festival. There were a few last year, and Harvey said Out! Raleigh Pride was prepared this year with double the number of emergency medical personnel.

Vendors ranged from institutions like Duke Energy and Cisco to health care providers like UNC Health and WakeMed, many giving out Pride flags and fans. Other local vendors included tarot card readers and crystal sellers, along with several churches.

Fayetteville Street was closed from Morgan Street to Lenoir Street, with a beer garden and food trucks on one end and a large stage on the other. In the four blocks between, attendees visited the food trucks and dozens of vendors while talking and taking photos.

Volunteers reminded festivalgoers to wear sunscreen and drink water as the sun’s rays intensified through the day. But the heat didn’t stop the fun.

‘Be out and proud’

The LGBT Center expected 90,000 to 100,000 people at the festival Saturday, with participants from across the state.

“A lot of people in other places have this backward view of our state, but come here and see how much love there is here, and I think you might not think that as much,” Harvey said.

“There’s love in every corner of the state and I think it conglomerates right here.”

Performances on the stage began at noon with Tina & Her Pony and continued into the early evening, featuring local musicians, bands and drag queens.

In the “Kidz Zone” outside the Meymandi Concert Hall, younger attendees played games, enjoyed inflatables, had their faces painted, dabbled in arts and crafts and attended drag story hour with queens Wolfgang Tuck, Satine Allure and Chanel Allure.

Husband and wife Mandy and Justin Scranton, who have lived in Raleigh for more than two decades, held signs offering free hugs from proud LGBTQ+ parents to attendees. They said that when they were growing up, being queer was not nearly as accepted as it is today.

“We are so happy that people get to be out and proud,” Mandy Scranton said.

Ella Sap, a 20-year-old from Sanford, came to the festival prepared with sunscreen and water.

To her, large public events like Out! Raleigh Pride are important for the queer community because they are reminders that “we’re not going anywhere.”

Sap was at the festival with Carmen Miller, from Ashe County. Saturday’s event was Miller’s first time at a Pride event.

“If you’re from a rural area, you don’t see many [LGBTQ+] people,” Miller said. “So seeing so many people, it’s nice.”

For Angie Valentin, a teenager from Fayetteville who wore pink fishnets and died his hair pink for the festival, the Saturday event was his first large Pride event.

Valentin said seeing people with signs offering free hugs was moving.

It was really nice because my mom hasn’t been the most supportive person,” he said. “It was really great to be able to have a hug from a mom.”

Anti-LGBTQ+ presence

On the fringes of the festival, several people held flags with messages like “Jesus is king” and signs asking attendees, “Where will you spend eternity?” while preaching over speakers.

In response, Out! Raleigh Pride volunteers and members of St. John’s Metropolitan Community Church held up bed sheets with rainbow hand prints and messages like “God loves everyone” in front of the demonstrators. Others made noise with slide whistles and fans.

Vance Haywood, senior pastor at St. John’s Metropolitan Community Church, said the church community created the sheets a few years ago and have been bringing them to Out! Raleigh Pride since then. As a gay man, Haywood said he was hurt by the church. Now he shares a message of love as a pastor himself.

“We started noticing that year after year we had a growing number of protesters,” Haywood said. “They come out and are sharing hate messages and putting a damper on the day for folks who are coming out to just be themselves. So what we decided to do was create panels to be able to help us shield people from that so they can have a good time and enjoy themselves.”

One Out! Raleigh Pride volunteer held a sign that said, “Please do not engage with protesters. They want to make you angry and ruin your day. Just laugh and ignore them, then go have an amazing one!”

The group of individuals preaching and holding anti-LGBTQ+ signs declined The News & Observer’s request for comment.