10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE June 3, 2011

Cleveland Pride

Continued from page 1

equality," he said. "When I came out five years ago," he concluded, "you gave me a community that accepted me for who I was, and I will never forget that. Thank you."

State Rep. Nickie Antonio of Lakewood, Ohio's first out legislator, was the keynote speaker of the rally. She quoted the late Audre Lorde, telling the crowd, "When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

She then asked the crowd, "Are you powerful? Are you afraid? We are in this together, and we can do this together."

Antonio has introduced anti-bullying legislation in Columbus that specifically enumerates LGBT students, something that is currently lacking in Ohio's bullying laws. She also pointed to the passage of same-sex marriage in New York as proof that proequality legislation can pass, even with Republican majorities. In New York, four Republican state senators stepped over party lines to support marriage equality.

"In Ohio, we have a Republican-run House... and Senate. What I am saying is, anything and everything is possible."

The Cleveland Special Events Corporation, the group producing the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland, won for largest contingent, and Bottoms Up bar took best float.

After the parade, attendees noticed something different this year at the festival: shorter lines at the gates because a second entrance was added, leading directly to the food booths. Also, instead of stopping and having a Pride volunteer put a disposable wristband on them, fairgoers were handed an orange Gay Games commemorative rubber wristband which they were asked to put on themselves, streamlining the entry process.

"There was a big queuing issue" in previous years, said Pride president Todd Saporito. "Instead of banding people, we handed them the bands to put on themselves and asked them to keep moving."

•

www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

"In 2010, something happened during the parade where the tempo must have gotten clogged," he continued. "The whole clump of people came in all at once."

"We literally cut the entry time in half to get people in without any queuing per se," he noted.

Pride staff noticed three major waves of people coming into the festival: one immediately following the parade, one at around 4 pm, and another at 6:30 pm, in time for a house ball competition, now in its third year.

"The competition only allowed the first ten people to compete, with three $100 prizes," Saporito noted. "Eight hundred to 1,000 youth were captured by the competition, which is just incredible.”

Front and back, it was the youth who took center stage. Many of the entertainers were quite young, and with youth both at the house ball and as the grand marshal, it was obvious that Pride had something in mind.

"It was really important for me," Saporito said. "I really do believe that if we're going to make any further progress in our rights, it really is about the youth, getting them involved."

Saporito also pointed to drag diva Brionna Brooks and director of entertainment Lois Elswick as a great part of the success of the festival. Elswick did the schedules and arranged the stages, while Brooks brought Cleveland's sizable drag community to bear as performers and emcees to keep everything flowing smoothly all day long.

This year's Pride was, to a great extent, the beginning of a road to a very specific destination.

"The goal is to use Cleveland Pride over the next three years to gather our allies and the LGBT community and grow it proportionately, leading up to 2014," Saporito noted, adding that the idea is to have Cleveland Pride 2014 roll seamlessly into the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland.

HOOK UP FAST

Call. Cruise. Connect.

NEW

Cleveland

Tell-AFriend REWARDS

216.912.6000

Columbus

614.888.7777

Akron

Strongsville

330.315.3000 440.879.3600

Canton

Toledo

330.437.0100 419.873.3000

Cincinnati

513.821.4500

Dayton

Try it

937.395.9001 FREE!

Mentor

440.445.0445

USE FREE CODE 5363

For other local numbers call

1-888-MegaMatesTM

1-888-634-2628

MegaMatesMen.com

*Most Features Free. Some Fees Apply.

Part of that is to sell Cleveland to Akron, Youngstown, Columbus, Toledo and other cities in the area.

"I think we had a lot more people this year coming up from Columbus and down from Detroit," he said. "How can those enticements of your programming for the entire day increase that?"

And that promotion goes both ways, as representatives of Toledo Pride were present, promoting their event at the end of the August.

"I really see the impact Pride can have when you use it as a tool to bring the community and allies together," Saporito said. "It really is quite amazing."

BRIAN DEWITT

A kick line formed as the North Coast Men's Chorus sang "New York,

New York" to honor the marriage law passed hours earlier.

News Briefs

Continued from page 3

May that mandated civil unions.

Judge Fernando Henrique Pinto ruled that a gay male couple's civil union could be converted into a full marriage, citing the Supreme Court decision and the Brazilian constitution.

A lawyer for the São Paulo state attorney general gave Pinto an opinion that samesex marriage was legal.

"The federal constitution establishes as a fundamental objective of the Federal Republic of Brazil to promote the good of everyone without bias of gender or any other form of discrimination," wrote José Luíz Bednarski, according to the Associated Press. "This certainly includes the choice or sexual orientation of a person."

Seeking such an opinion is standard practice in the Brazilian judicial system.

Pinto's ruling came down on June 27, just days after Judge Siro Darlan in Rio joined 40 couples in a mass civil union ceremony.

According to the Global Post's Taylor Barnes, the judge quoted St. Paul's epistle, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud," adding, "Love does not tolerate prejudice."

The mass ceremony was held above the Central do Brasil train station in municipal offices, the largest same-sex union ceremony in South America's largest nation.

Two arrested at Budapest Pride

Budapest, Hungary-Two Austrians participating in the Budapest Pride parade on June 18 were arrested after neo-Nazis told police that gay rights marchers attacked them.

Judith Götz noted, "It was already after the parade, we were walking back to our bus to travel home to Vienna when we were physically attacked by around 15 people, including with terribly smelly sprays."

"While we escaped into the bus, the neonazis told the police, who was also present, that they would have been attacked by us. The police then brutally dragged all 50 of us out of the bus, we had to hand over

our passports and were put, one by one, in front of the group of neonazis so that they could 'identify' those who had allegedly attacked them," she continued. "The neonazis then picked randomly two of us as having attacked them."

The pair were released the following morning.

Obama criticized for marriage stand

New York City-President Barack Obama was mildly heckled at an LGBT banquet in New York on June 23, with one woman yelling "Marriage!" at him repeatedly.

Obama said that he believed that marriage should be up to individual states, but restated his opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act.

The event, a day before New York lawmakers passed a full marriage bill, saw about 600 donors descend on the Sheraton Hotel. They heard Obama again state that his views on same-sex marriage are "evolving."

Columnist Maureen Dowd, who is nationally syndicated and appears in the New York Times, responded by calling Obama "bi."

"Not bisexual. Not even bipartisan. Just binary," she wrote in a June 25 column.

She pointed to Afghanistan, Libya, the budget and the other side of the aisle, then noted, “Obama is 'evolving' on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe."

"While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, 'I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,' even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide," she noted.

Compiled by Brian DeWitt, Anthony Glassman and Patti Harris.