Aurora hosts Pride celebration
Aurora hosted its inaugural Pride celebration Saturday, bringing together LGBTQ folks from the state’s third-largest city for a more intimate celebration of the community.
The first-time event, at the Aurora Municipal Center, was thrown by the recently formed Out Front Foundation, an offshoot of the local LGBTQ magazine Out Front.
Pride will be used as a fundraiser for scholarships and programming that the foundation plans to do.
“It’s a really fun event,” Out Front editor Ryan Howe said. “Aurora boasts itself as the most diverse city, so why not have pride here.”
Aurora has about 350,000 people. Of those, one of five were born outside the U.S. The foundation estimates that the city is home to about 40,000 LGBTQ people.
Booths displayed rainbow flags and pride memorabilia. One booth, from the Gender Identity Clinic, displayed a giant white board where people could vote yes or no on whether transgender people should be allowed in the military — early poll returns were overwhelmingly in favor. Other groups came to show their support, including the Aurora Police Department, U.S. veterans and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Going on all day, different drag queens, DJS and dancers entertained Pride-goers. Additionally, there was a stage specifically for youths. A booth for the GLBT Community Center of Colorado’s youth center, Rainbow Alley, was conveniently set up immediately to the right.
Howe said the festival wanted to invite all communities, especially as LGBTQ people spread across a vast array of groups.
The state has other Pride festivals, including Colorado’s biggest celebration in Denver and others in Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Fort Collins. But there has never been one in Aurora. Howe speculated that it’s probably because the city is so close to Denver. But now Aurora has grown into its own entity and it’s time for the city to have its own Pride, he said.
He wasn’t the only one to think so. “It’s actually time,” Aurora resident Matthew Jessen said. “They should have had this long ago.”
His friends RJ Manrique and Clyde Mitter agreed. They all said they wanted to support Aurora. Manrique said he purposely goes to Prides across the state to support the small-town communities.
Although those three are all Pride veterans, another trio nearby was there for the first time. Fatimah Abd al Rauf, Kai Jackson and Christina Starboy, all 13, were excited to be at Pride, saying that kids at school are mixed when it comes to accepting LGBTQ people.
“I just wanted to be myself, honestly,” Abd al Rauf said.