As Lady Gaga’s song “Born This Way” played from the stage’s speakers, a group of teenaged friends gathered in front of the stage.
They belted out the lyrics as they jumped up and down and danced wearing pink, yellow and blue-striped pansexual pride flags as capes.
In the crowd seated on Bayfront Festival Park’s grass, Gary Lundstrom of Duluth was also dancing along with the music that was part of Saturday’s events during the 30th annual Duluth Superior Pride Festival.
“Recently I was going, does the majority of people at large realize it’s not like you’re proud you’re gay - that’s like saying you’re proud because you were born Swedish, well, some people are - because we didn’t do anything to merit marriage, but the fact that there’s been so much overcome and people have persevered and now we get what has become this family celebration of pride, I think, is the biggest celebration of all,” Lundstrom said.
Although Lundstrom is celebrating 19 years since the commitment ceremony with his husband Tim Robinson, they were not legally married until Aug. 1, 2013, when they were one of the first couples to marry in Duluth on the day same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota.
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Their four children were joining them for the music later on Saturday and they always attend the Pride Parade on Sunday together as a family. The parade begins at noon on Tower Avenue from Broadway Street to Belknap Street in Superior.
“We’re so glad that the celebration has come into its own and that it’s become so family-oriented. I think that’s been the greatest thing over these last, probably, 10 years,” Lundstrom said.
The Pride Festival began in the Twin Ports in 1986 as a picnic along the Lester River, sponsored by the Main Club, which Bob Jansen opened 33 years ago.
Reaching the 30-year milestone, Jansen said, “shows that we have a strong, integrated, healthy community.”
The Pride Festival’s 30th anniversary is nearly coinciding with a milestone in Harvey Plasch’s life.
“I’m getting married next Saturday … but we’ve been together for 29 years,” Plasch said, explaining that he and his partner decided that they should get married because they now have the privilege of marriage.
Plasch, who has been involved in the Pride Festival for 12 years and was co-chair for three years, said that after same-sex marriage became legal, festival organizers discussed whether the Pride Festival was still needed.
“It’s more a celebration of our history at this point, I think,” he said.
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The festival has evolved over the years, Plasch said. It was changed to a non-profit organization, which meant that it could more easily receive grant funding, sponsors and advertisers to help foot the bill to provide a free festival for attendees. They also began a kid’s corner with games and a bouncy house to become a more family-friendly festival.
When asked if he had any memorable moments in the past 30 years, Jansen replied with a laugh, “They’re all memorable.”
For Plasch, Pride Festival was particularly memorable in 2013, when it came weeks after same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota. Pride Festival that year included a wedding tent for couples wanting to marry at the festival and the newlyweds were then introduced on stage.
Plasch said he also focused on integrating the Pride Festival with the straight community by entering a team in events like the Lake Superior Dragon Boat Festival.
“It was the visibility that I felt we needed. At that time, even not that many years ago, people just didn’t know much about gay people, period, so I was trying to integrate with the community and we got a lot of support,” he said.
The first Pride Festival was called Happy Homosapien Days - the word gay didn’t appear in the festival’s name until four years later.
Jansen noted that he watched a story about the Pride Festival on the nightly news last week followed by a segment on fishing, “where in the beginning years, they’d put the story on and then they’d go to a biker bar and ask people if gay people should exist in the area. Things have changed a lot.”
In those early years, festival attendees wouldn’t want to appear in photos or on camera if the media showed up, Jansen said. They did that out of fear that they could lose their jobs because there weren’t laws yet to protect them from discrimination. He noted that there are still 24 states in the United States where someone can lose their job or their housing due to their sexual orientation.
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“There’s still a long way to go,” Jansen said.
The festival was kicked off this year with the Mayor’s Reception, while for years Duluth mayors refused to declare a proclamation supporting the Pride Festival. The mayors would say they have to “uphold the standards of the community,” and that would preclude them from supporting the Pride Festival, or they would make a comment such as, “I won’t proclaim gay pride the same way I don’t proclaim heterosexual pride,” Jansen said. Mayor Herb Bergson was the first mayor to support a proclamation of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Days in 2006.
Acknowledgement of the transgender community has also become more visible in recent years. Jansen recalled a discussion about 15 years ago on whether the “T” for transgender should be added to the Pride Festival. First, only the word gay was used, then it was gay and lesbian, before it became gay, lesbian and bisexual, he explained. Being more inclusive is an important piece of how the LGBT community has changed over the last 30 years.
“It’s nice to see this year that awards were given out to the Gay-Straight Alliance in the high schools so that kids realize that it’s OK to be gay and that they have straight friends and that’s nice to see, where we didn’t have that in the beginning years because people thought gay people were trying to recruit young kids,” Jansen said.
