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This weekend’s NEPA PrideFest promotes tolerance through drag shows, music and more
Protesters from out of town showed up at PrideFest last year.Maria Dubiel will perform at PrideFest.
Protesters from out of town showed up at PrideFest last year.Maria Dubiel will perform at PrideFest.
Attendees at last year’s NEPA PrideFest.Drag shows are just one of the forms of entertainment set for PrideFest this year.
Attendees at last year’s NEPA PrideFest.Drag shows are just one of the forms of entertainment set for PrideFest this year.
Shawn Ebert, aka “Miss Estella Sweet,” is a drag queen. He — or she, if you prefer — will be leading Queens of NEPA, a performance at NEPA PrideFest on Sunday, Aug. 9 at Kirby Park in Wilkes-Barre.
Words like “queens,” “pride” and “drag” clearly signify “gay.” But, for Ebert and many other members of our area’s gay community, PrideFest is not a gay event.
“I think the major message for Pride is tolerance,” Ebert said. “A lot of people assume that we’re there to celebrate the fact that we’re gay, and that’s a misconception. The celebration is the fact that we are accepted for who we are.”
The event, presented by the nonprofit NEPA Rainbow Alliance and GayNEPA.com, started as a Pride picnic but became PrideFest last year. For 2008’s PrideFest, organizer and Rainbow Alliance Executive Director John Dawe planned for “350 people, max,” he said. Instead, he said, “We had about 500 people come out for the event; it was amazing.” (The Weekender is the exclusive print sponsor of PrideFest 2009.)
CREATING A NETWORK
With entertainment, food and vendors, PrideFest is designed to be a fun, community event near the end of the summer. But there’s more — a lot more, actually — to the get-together in the park.
“We’ve done a lot of surveys, and we determined that one of the things that’s missing for the community is a networking event,” said Dawe. PrideFest, he said, provides a venue for nonprofit organizations to promote their programs to the local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. These include legal, financial and counseling services. The Rainbow Alliance has also cultivated a thriving online community, using social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
Echoing the concept of working as a part of the larger NEPA community instead of as an isolated segment, Dawe noted that a lot of gay rights issues can be compared to the civil rights movement of the 1960s or even women’s right to vote.
“Women couldn’t change that,” he said. “You needed men who could vote to pass the 19th Amendment. The gay and lesbian community is not going to just be able to enact sweeping changes (alone).”
The hot-button issues are gay marriage, President Obama’s pledge to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and same-sex partners’ health benefits, but there are some other battles bubbling beneath the surface. One of these issues, Dawe said, is hospital visitation for people in same-sex relationships. More than 80 percent of Pennsylvanians believe that a same-sex partner has the same visitation rights as a husband or wife, Dawe said, but that isn’t true. He told the story of a local man whose partner was hospitalized, and doctors could not tell him if his partner was alive or dead.
“The (patient) had to give consent,” Dawe said.
Gay rights issues are seen by many as strictly a liberal or Democratic movement, notwithstanding the existence of the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay and lesbian Republicans.
“I think that’s a perception,” Dawe said. “I think if you’re smart about it, you realize the concept of political thinking is much more diverse than that now. Some Democrats are fairly conservative, some Republicans are conservative, some are liberal, at least regarding free-speech issues.”
AIMING FOR ACCEPTANCE
In NEPA, life seems to be improving for the gay and lesbian community.
“For the most part, it’s a very tolerant area,” Dawe said. “I wouldn’t say we’ve gotten to that next step of acceptance.”
The city of Wilkes-Barre, he said, “has been very supportive” of PrideFest. After last year’s event, city police told him “you really have a nice event, and we want to protect the participants in your event.”
And despite the traditional influence of Catholicism and conservative social values in NEPA, something else telling happened last year.
“The protesters, they came in from out of town,” said Dawe. “They could not get any locals to protest this event.”
The vendors’ booth at this year’s PrideFest will boast everything from Barnes and Noble to Caring Communities for AIDS to political candidates’ campaigns to churches. Entertainers will include dance music, magic, singer/songwriter Maria Dubiel, poetry and the aforementioned drag show.
“It’s an artistic expression of ourselves, and again, it promotes tolerance,” explained Ebert, who is also the talent coordinator at Michael’s Lounge in Edwardsville. “Drag queens have played a major role in the gay movement. It basically lays the roadwork for others to be who they are. If we can put a dress, a pair of heels and makeup on and dance in front of 500 people, then somebody that’s afraid to come out will have more confidence and more room to be who they are and not be afraid of who they are.”
Like everyone interviewed for this story and the accompanying sidebar, Ebert said the NEPA community has become more supportive of gay people in recent years.
“My major message this year is we’re not a religion, we’re not politicians, we’re not Democrat, we’re not Republican,” he said. “We’re human beings, and we’re here to let people know that it’s OK to be who they are, and who you take into your bedroom shouldn’t determine what people think of you.”
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