![first gay pride parade in utah first gay pride parade in utah](https://assets.simpleviewinc.com/simpleview/image/upload/c_limit,h_1200,q_75,w_1200/v1/clients/saltlake/mm_2018_Jun_Pride_Festival_1494_ae4b6190-1f03-4023-bf0f-958300546584.jpg)
Wilson says "there's no symbolism to being at Washington Square. "People were really freaked out," O'Donovan says, but he and Williams say things stayed largely peaceful.įreedman also made the decision to bring the celebrations back into Salt Lake City's downtown, Williams says, moving Pride Day to the Gallivan Center and then, about 1997, to Washington Square, where it has been ever since. Their presence also attracted more sinister protesters: In 1991, the first year the marchers ended in Washington Square, Neo-Nazis were standing on the steps of the City and County Building, waiting for them. O'Donovan says the '90 and '91 marches he organized were "more of a protest kind of experience rather than a celebration," but also a "presence, to show that we're here, we're queer," Williams says, finishing O'Donovan's sentence from his seat across the table in the Utah Pride Center. But once Freedman was elected to the chair of the Gay and Lesbian Community Council of Utah's Gay Pride Day committee in the mid-'90s, he made the events more celebratory, increasing turnout. Bruce Barton reinventing the Pride March and Rally and morphing it into a Gay Pride Parade in 1994, Williams says Gay Pride Days in Utah were more political. Prior to Jeff Freedman, Bruce Harmon and Rev. " the early Pride days, it was a statement for people to even attend," Williams says of the few people who were "brave enough" to go. The following year, the Gay Community Service Center organized the first community-wide sponsored pride celebration, shuttling people from local gay bars to and from City Creek Canyon, where the "Gay Freedom Day" was held. "One of the reasons they went out there, was they didn't think they could have a public gathering of that many gay people who wanted to be seen," Ben Williams, retired schoolteacher and writer for QSaltLake Magazine, says. The roots of the Utah Pride Festival-which includes the Pride Parade, the state's second-largest behind the Days of '47 procession-stretch back to 1974, when Joe Redburn, owner of the former Sun Tavern, sponsored an event in which some 200 people went to the Great Salt Lake's "Bare Ass Beach" to celebrate Gay Pride in Utah. So, the route-from the Capitol to Washington Square-changed in 1991, foreshadowing the City and County Building's status as a sort of focal point for LGBTQ pride, and continues to serve as ground zero for this year's festival.
![first gay pride parade in utah first gay pride parade in utah](https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2021/06/2021-06-26T180000Z_1995720032_RC2F8O9XIXTO_RTRMADP_3_GAY-PRIDE-TURKEY-1024x735.jpg)
The march ended at the amphitheater just south of Abravanel Hall, and the police later contacted O'Donovan and told him they couldn't pass the horses the next year. So we had to divert the parade," O'Donovan recalls.
![first gay pride parade in utah first gay pride parade in utah](https://i.natgeofe.com/n/b4af3226-7b72-429d-9c14-11ddadedbe03/GettyImages-83647140-resize_3x4.jpg)
We terrified the horses: they were bucking and stuff, and the police were freaking out about it. "There used to be a stop at the horses and carriages. "I wanted to make a statement."īut when, on that June day, the crowd turned onto South Temple and passed Temple Square's south gate, things went buck-wild. I grew up Mormon, and they tortured me, and wounded me really deeply," O'Donovan says in a conference room in the Utah Pride Center's new Main Street digs, almost 30 years after organizing that march. "It was important to me to kind of flip the finger at that church. The day after Gay Pride Day in Sunnyside Park, about 200 people congregated on the State Capitol's steps to hear speeches from prominent gay and lesbian leaders, then marched down Main Street, turned right onto South Temple and passed the Salt Lake Temple. The previous year, in 1990, O'Donovan had organized Salt Lake City's first Gay and Lesbian Pride March, commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It wasn't symbolism, imagery or beauty that made Connell O'Donovan decide to finish the second annual Gay and Lesbian Pride March at Washington Square, the esteemed park and home of the jaw-droppingly gorgeous City and County Building.