Youth to head Gay Pride March

By LAURIE LOISEL, Staff Writer

(NORTHAMPTON) - When the annual Gay Pride March sets off down Main Street this Saturday, it will be led as usual by hundreds of balloons strung together into a colorful rainbow arch.

What will be different this year is the contingent leading the march. For the first time, a group of teen-agers who call themselves gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning and straight - which covers about everyone - will head up the march as it steps out at noon, trekking from Crafts Avenue to Main Street to the fairgrounds on Bridge Street.

The youth group, known as Pride Zone, is a support and educational group that meets twice a month in Northampton. Its members on Saturday will convene the first-ever Western Massachusetts Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Youth Rally.

The rally begins at 9 a.m. in the parlor of the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, at 220 Main St. Its main agenda item, aside from bagel-eating and socializing, will be to create the signature rainbow arch for the Pride March.

Northampton resident Heather King, who is co-adviser for Pride Zone, said she hopes at least 50 youths ("more would be great," she says) from all over the state will turn out for the rally and subsequent march.

King said the rally took shape because there is now nothing of its kind geared towards youths in western Massachusetts.

"The state sponsors a gay, straight youth pride parade in Boston, but many of the kids here can't go because they have sports or their parents won't let them go to Boston," King said. "We just figured we need something out here."

Her co-adviser with the group is Northampton resident K.J. Nichols.

King said she approached the organizers of the Northampton march, who asked if the youth group would lead the parade.

"We're very excited," she said. It can be intimidating for young people to participate individually in a pride march, especially for the first time.

This way, she said, "they're not going to get lost in the crowd, they're going to be with kids just like them."

King said Pride Zone has been meeting for about two years to offer a place for young people to receive support and education around issues of sexual identity. It also serves as a place to socialize and make friends.

Funded with grants from the state Department of Public Health and the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, it is the community-based equivalent to the gay-straight alliances found in many high schools today, she said.

It is also a way for youths to make connections with teens from high schools other than their own, she said.

"It's a place where they can walk into a room and they know that everyone in that room is either an ally or somebody who is just like them. It's just a safe environment. When you walk into a high school room, you don't get that," she said.

Participating in Northampton's annual pride march, she suggested, can help teen-agers feel a sense of connection to the wider community.

"We've had kids in our group who have been victims of hate crimes. Even though it's such a tolerant area, it's hard for them," she said. "For them to be able to do this and have a day that's just for people like them, it's an amazing thing for them."

King said she hopes the youth rally will become an annual event.

Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 3, 1999

5,000 join city pride march

By THEO EMERY, Staff Writer

Saturday's Northampton Pride March, an event that draws members of the gay community and supporters from throughout the region, brought in one of the largest crowds in its 18 years, organizers say.

As many as 5,000 people gathered on Crafts Avenue to march down Main Street, police estimated. They walked behind several parade floats and gathered at the Three-County Fairgrounds for an exuberant celebration of equal rights for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

Despite high spirits, a record turn-out and an air of festivity, there were words of caution and calls for political action from organizers. One urged a boycott of a local radio station alleged to have aired anti-gay comments. And several community leaders and politicians - including Mayor Mary L. Ford - urged continued support for civil rights and vigilance against violence.

Stacy Roth, an organizer of the event and president of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Political Alliance of Western Mass., said that celebration - the theme of the Saturday event - took many forms.

"There's no doubt that it's a day of celebration, but there are a lot of ways of celebrating - and political action is one of them," said Roth.

City Councilor Michael R. Bardsley, who was elected in 1991 as an openly gay councilor, urged listeners at a rally inside the fairgrounds to work to find ways to counter the threat of violence.

A guidance counselor at Amherst Regional High School, Bardsley said he is as worried as he has ever been about school violence, not just against gay and lesbian students but against any student on the margins of popularity.

Citing the apparent friction between mainstream and marginalized students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., Bardsley said that the public should pay more attention, not less, to students who feel ostracized.

"Violence should be in everybody's mind, but it's definitely on the minds of people on the fringes of society," said Bardsley, who introduced a half dozen gay and lesbian ARHS students to the crowd, which cheered with approval. "A lot of the time, violence is directed against people who are different."

Roth called on people to contact their elected officials to urge rejection of a bill proposing to ban same-sex marriages in Massachusetts. That bill is to be heard at a May 18 hearing before the house judiciary committee.

The bill, introduced by state Rep. John W. Rogers, D-Norwood, would prevent any future legal consideration of same-sex marriages.

For others at the event, the day's importance was less overtly political, but significant in other ways.

Kimberly Broderick, 40, said the day was important because it allowed her two children, ages 11 years and 18 months, to see other gay and lesbian parents with their children.

"It's nice as a parent to be out and relaxed about it with kids," said Broderick, as she pushed her younger child through the fairgrounds in a stroller. "There are other kids in the school who have gay and lesbian parents ... but it's good for him to see other kids with two moms or two dads."

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