Over 1,000 marchers and 7,000 supporters attended the 27th Annual N.C. Pride Festival and Parade, Saturday, Sept. 24 from noon until 2:30. Karen Walters, editor of The Triangle, a Raleigh-based LGBT monthly newspaper, said that there were between 150 and 200 floats at the Duke East Campus site of the parade. The festival continued after the parade, featuring speakers, performers, a rally for equality and hundreds of business and retail vendors along with non-profit LGBT organizations from across the Triangle area and state.
This year's parade carried special significance in the face of the anti-LGBT amendment passed by the N.C. House of Representatives on Sept. 12. The amendment, which is headed for N.C. Senate in May 2012, would ban marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships and other relationship recognition for same-sex couples.
Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt urged North Carolinians to defeat the proposed amendment. Despite opposition from the 10 members of anti-LGBT protesters calling themselves the Soul Patrol, at least nine different LGBT-affirming churches representing all divisions of Christianity (and one "Gaytheist" float) marched in support of equality.
Marchers in the parade represented the Triangle's diversity, from toddlers waving rainbow flags, to IBM, American Express and GSK employees, to rescue bulldogs wearing tutus, to an elderly woman on roller skates dressed like Jesus. Political groups, such as the N.C. Young Democrats,
threw candy to crowds before conducting voter registrations. The crowds were serenaded by the Common Women's Chorus, the Triangle Gay Men's Chorus and the N.C. Pride Marching Band.
Campus LGBT groups from local high schools and colleges showed their school pride as they paraded by, tossing goodies to the crowd. According to English and mass communication professor Brett Webb-Mitchell, about 30 marchers attended from NCCU's three LGBT groups, COLORS, Outlaw Alliance and Pollychromes. "Because of the constitutional amendment, there was a strong outpouring of support," said Webb-Mitchell, "The politics were tangible—it was in the air."
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