Annual pride parade celebrates victories, looks to future

Last weekend’s annual OutReach Pride Parade was both a celebration of recent victories and a reminder thatWI-521 Chair Cabell Gathman, with her daughter (Gretchen Christensen/Madison Commons)
there is still a long way to go for equal rights.

The August 9 event brought together 40 vendors, 60 marching units and approximately 2000 attendees overall, according to OutReach Executive Director Steve Starkey.

Starkey said that bringing together the LGBTQ+ community is important for showing the social, economic and political power that a large and vocal group can possess. 

“The OutReach Pride Parade brings together dozens of LGBT organizations and thousands of individuals for one day to celebrate our pride and power as a community.  It helps to develop relationships between individuals and organizations and promotes cooperation and collaboration to make our community stronger,” Starkey said.  “It is a visible statement of our presence and our determination to fight for our legal, political, and human rights.”   

While this year marked a celebration of the legalization of gay marriage, the parade’s grand marshal Christina Kahrl said that victories don’t come from the government but from individuals and are achieved  by being oneself.

Kahrl, a sports writer for ESPN, came out as a trans woman 13 years ago.  She said that with so few people out, it was important to her to try and erase negative stereotypes by being out, being open and being herself. 

“Many people have the idea that trans individuals “are fabulous, or whatever,” she said. “It’s important to take power and create a new understanding of what it means to be trans.”

Speaker Darla Lannert, a trans woman and Navy Veteran, also spoke at the event about being transgender, telling the crowd that she is “a strong, powerful, transgender woman…[and] the T [in LGBTQ+] is no longer silent!” 

Lannert spoke about Caitlyn Jenner’s recent coming out and urged the crowd to remember that Caitlyn didn’t create the movement – every single person before her made a statement and deserves to be remembered.

Members of the Abbey of the Brew City Sisters, with the Skirt of Blessings (Gretchen Christensen/Madison Commons)

For one group, this year has not been one of huge milestones. WI-521 is Wisconsin’s statewide advocacy organization for bi and pan people. Chair Cabell Gathman said that, as a group, bi and pan individuals tend to have very little representation in the media and elsewhere. While she feels that pride events have become more inclusive, bi and pan individuals still face significant obstacles.

“It’s important to be seen,” Cabell said.

Sister Causa de Change of the Abbey of the Brew City Sisters also wanted to change perceptions.  The Brew City Sisters aim to spread joy and erase stigmatic guilt and shame in LGBTQ+ individuals, and Sister Causa de Change was carrying the Skirt of Blessings, which has been touring the country collecting signatures and well wishes from people at pride parades across the United States. They, she said, along with the Missionary order of Perpetual Indulgence, will present the skirt to the pope when he comes to Philadelphia, in order to “show him how to bless our queer family.” Since there are so many barriers that still need to be overcome, Kahrl said, each LGBTQ+ person becomes an accidental activist simply be existing and loving on their own terms. 

“Love itself is a revolutionary act,” she said.  “We achieve a victory each time we turn to our partner and say, ‘I love you’…. Victory is protest and freedom and pride,”

The OutReach Pride Parade will continue to be an annual event here in Madison for the foreseeable future, according to Starkey.