The <a href="; target=_blank>Utah Pri Ftival</a> kicked off Saturday, wh thoands of LGBTQ people and their alli celebratg 50 years sce the start of Ameri’s gay-rights movement.
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GAY PARTI & EVENTS
By Kastalia Medrano, Thrillist -- Utah’s first Gay and Lbian Pri March, 1990, drew maybe 250 people. It went more or ls unopposed. The biggt issue ran to was that the route took marchers past a bunch of parked horse rriag, the sort tourists ri around the downtown. “We were marchg by, chantg and screamg,” says Connell * gay pride slc 2019 *
Utah’s first Gay and Lbian Pri March, 1990, drew maybe 250 people.
“We were marchg by, chantg and screamg, ” says Connell “Rocky” O’Donovan, the march’s founr and a man troduced to me as “the lol gay historian. ” The hors, naturally, were startled -- prumably at the sight of a vol gay march Salt Lake Cy, or perhaps at the ck self.
* gay pride slc 2019 *
Obvly, somethg had to Dilsiz/ShutterstockGay pri Utah (before there was Gay Pri Utah)In the late 1980s, the different factns of Utah’s queer muny were loosely anized unr an umbrella anizatn, the Gay and Lbian Communy Council of Utah. By mocratic procs, each group across the state uld vote to send three members to what amounted to an LGBT summ to reprent their vote var matters of the gay agenda, as were. Th was that 1990 he led that first Gay and Lbian Pri March, the precursor to what would later bee the Salt Lake Cy Pri Para.
O’Donovan stcted Queer Natn to form a le ont of the neo-Nazis -- who were bearg swastikas and chantg “Sieg Heil, ” some of them full Nazi Party uniform -- and keep them away om the state's unique relig inty has ma the cy's Pri so bold and so prent were a few addnal protters who did not appear to be Nazi-affiliated, but who led around wh signs nouncg homosexualy general (“oh, you know, ‘AIDS IS GOD’S PUNISHMENT FOR FAGGOTS, ’ that kd of thg, ” O’Donovan says). Then, 1994, a small handful of activists stepped forward to pick up where he’d left off, and the Gay and Lbian Pri March was reborn as the Salt Lake Cy Pri Para. “This is who gay pri is for, after all.
“Now, Salt Lake has the reputatn of beg one of the iendlit plac for gay people. That clus the cy’s current (sce 2015) and first openly gay mayor, Jacquele Biskupski, who grew up Catholic.