By Julie BUTCHER

On Saturday, June 27 more than 150 gay activists, allies, elected officials, friends and families gathered at Urartu Coffee on Artsakh Avenue for Glendale’s first ever Gay PRIDE Parade.

“We’re here today to help keep safe every teenager who would kill themselves rather than speak their own truth,” said Reverend Guy Leemhuis of St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church in La Crescenta before his invocation blessing the paraders and sending them off. “We’re here to say, ‘We’re here and we’re queer and we’re not going anywhere.’”

“We call our church ‘the Love Church’ and I wore my collar today because there are some [who] believe God only loves certain people. That’s a lie. We are all favored and sacred in God’s eyes, all one under the Creator. And God doesn’t make any mistakes.

“Do not fall for the trope that dismiss some as ‘those crazy gays.’ Do not allow yourselves to be played, one group against another. We remember Stonewall today. Remember that the Stonewall uprising was started by two trans women. Trans women. That’s who threw those first stones. So often our freedom comes from the most vulnerable among us.”

Organizer Amy Kaufman offered warm words of welcome “to Glendale’s first ever Pride march – we’re calling it ‘Gaywalking’  – on behalf of glendaleOUT. This weekend marks the 57^th anniversary of Stonewall, and we honor those who came before us and fought for our rights. We acknowledge we still have a distance to go, here in Glendale and across the country, particularly under the current administration’s bigotry and lies. We are holding this march because some of our neighbors don’t believe that family values include LGBTQIA-plus people, that we neither have nor care for our families, that families should look a specific way, and that children only deserve love if they uphold cisgender and heterosexual norms, no matter how it damages the kids or makes ‘family’ a hostage situation. We are here to say families look all kinds of ways, and all of those ways are valid. We are here to support caregivers who fight for their kids to be genuinely happy, living authentically as queer or gender nonconforming, and we are here to support and uplift those kids. We are here to show the haters that we belong in Glendale.”

The marchers headed out – loudly with music and noisemakers – strutted up Brand Boulevard, headed west on Colorado Street, then up Central Avenue and through the Americana. Local residents and shop owners clapped and honked their horns. Some people cheered from their windows. After a festive dance break in the diagonal crosswalk near the Americana, the march finished up on Brand, then back to Urartu Coffee.

“I saw this was happening and I live in Glendale,” “Diana” reported, “so I decided I needed to be here.”

“We’re working to build a support system connecting the LGBT community and the Armenian community, an important intersection,” Burbank City Council member Konstantine Anthony explained the significance of the day’s events for him.

Glendale school board member Telly Tse said it was important to show up in support “to show that Glendale is filled with allies who want to make sure it feels like a welcoming place.”

Organizers from glendaleOUT summed up the history and significance of Glendale’s joyous, peaceful inaugural Gay Parade.

 “Since 2023 and the internationally televised riot at GUSD the day they were going to proclaim June as Pride month to today, while things have calmed down from the initial days, it’s never stopped. Having a Pride parade in Glendale is an absolute act of resistance and perseverance for this community, and we are proud to be able to contribute to the continued legacy of Stonewall.

“In Glendale, the LGBTQIA-plus community isn’t a handful of malcontents and their allies; it’s families, kids, neighbors, educators, students and the people who work here and visit here and spend money here. This Pride season, we pay homage to the breadth of our queer community,” the organization shared.