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Charlottesville hosts Pride Festival

City celebrates LGBTQ community

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Thousands of people from Charlottesville LGBTQ communities and their supporters came together Saturday in Lee Park, adjacent to the Downtown Mall, for the third annual CVille Pride Festival.

Amy Sarah Marshall, CVille Pride Community Network president, said the event was an opportunity for LGBTQ people to feel a sense of belonging.

“The festival gives people, not just in Charlottesville proper but the region, an opportunity to be in a safe place, where they know that being in this park on this day for this many hours, they can be completely themselves without fear of recrimination,” Marshall said.

The festival began at 11 a.m. with a statement from Attorney General Mark Herring, who expressed his support LGBTQ people rights.

“I truly believe that we are on the doorstep of a landmark case that will end the marriage discrimination and these bans all across the country,” Herring said. “When we win, we will continue to fight discrimination in adoption, in the workplace, in housing and wherever we see it in our communities.”

Festival goers enjoyed a variety of food vendors and live music. Various LGBTQ allies also set up booths at the festival to provide information about their organization as a safe space for people of all sexual orientation.

“We’re a very safe space for the LGBTQ community,” said Carrie Ryan, community relations chair for Charlottesville Derby Dames — a roller derby club. “People are people, is kind of the way we look at it. We welcome anybody.”

Marshall said more than 70 vendors were at the event, including religious organizations, businesses and social organizations.

When the festival in Lee Park ended at 5 p.m., the celebration moved to the Main Street Arena for Pride After Dark — an afterparty lasting until 2 a.m. The event featured acrobats, a drag show and performances from musical acts Wicked Jezebel and DJ Grind.

Cville Pride was formed in 2012 and began holding the Pride Festival at Lee Park that year. Close to 4,000 people attended last year’s festival. Marshall said final numbers were not in for this year, but she suspected several thousand turned up, despite the inclement weather.

Marshall said a large number of those in attendance were heterosexual, which was an important part of establishing Charlottesville as a welcoming community for LGBTQ people.

“I really thought when I first started this that it was about gay people for gay people,” she said. "Most of the people who are super excited and putting it on their calendars are all these heterosexuals."

This year, in support of the event and organization, the Charlottesville City Council declared Sept. 13 Pride Festival Day in the city. The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors also expressed its unanimous support for the festival.

Many of the groups who attended the event have made an effort to reach out to University students in order to get them involved with LGBTQ communities. But third-year College student Virginia Hart said the responsibility to reach out lies on the University itself.

“I think U.Va. should be reaching out more,” Hart said. “We have this beautiful wonderful place that we live in, and we don’t take advantage of that.”

The festival comes in the wake of a tumultuous change for same-sex marriage policy in Virginia and the United States. Herring said he will refuse to defend the current law banning same-sex marriage, and will support the process to reverse it.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled the gay marriage ban in Virginia unconstitutional earlier this year, but the case will likely go before the Supreme Court before marriage licenses can be granted.

Virginia, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma and Indiana all have petitions concerning gay marriage waiting to be decided during this session.

In 2006, 57 percent of voters in Virginia ratified an amendment to the state constitution that proclaimed marriage to be a union between a man and a woman. Virginia House Minority Leader David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said the change in public opinion was “the fastest switch I’ve seen in all my years in public service.”

Toscano said the House of Delegates, a traditionally conservative legislature, is not easily swayed by the public opinion on the issue. But, he said, the House is “very different” from a few years ago and is beginning to change.

“I think Charlottesville is far more accepting than other parts of Virginia, but I think Virginia in general has a ways to go,” Hart said.

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