Posted on 06/28/2025 3:37:47 PM PDT by lightman
Around 10,000 people gathered in and around the Lancaster County Convention Center on Saturday for the 17th annual Lancaster Pride Festival, the largest gathering in the festival’s history and the first to be attended by a Pennsylvania governor.
Fifty-six years to the day since the Stonewall uprising in New York City renewed the gay rights movement in America and 10 years since the United States Supreme Court established marriage equality, Gov. Josh Shapiro joined local elected officials and festival organizers onstage to celebrate Lancaster’s LGBTQ+ community. Sights from Lancaster Pride Festival 2025 [photos]
“Here in Pennsylvania, we fight for equality every single day. No matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love or who you pray to,” Shapiro said from the downtown Lancaster event’s main stage. “You have a place right here in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Shapiro made a brief appearance at Lancaster Pride, alongside state Reps. Izzy Smith-Wade-El and Nikki Rivera, as well as Lancaster City Council member and Democratic candidate for mayor Jaime Arroyo.
Shapiro said that though the festival was a celebration, he understood members of the LGBTQ+ community were worried about recent trends in national politics.
“I know sometimes it can feel like, when it comes to progress, we take two steps forward and then we get knocked back a step,” Shapiro said.
Just a day prior to Lancaster Pride, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parents who have religious objections can pull their children from public school lessons that use LGBTQ+ storybooks.
The Supreme Court’s current makeup has issued similar rulings over the last several years. In 2023, the court ruled that businesses have a right under the First Amendment's free speech protections to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings.
Shapiro assured the crowd gathered outside the convention center Saturday that they had his support as governor.
“Your governor loves you, and I got your back,” Shapiro said. “So as we go forward, we’re going to keep working together to make progress, and we’re going to stand up to those bullies in Washington to protect your fundamental freedoms in Pennsylvania.”
According to Lancaster Pride organizers, this year’s event was the first time a sitting governor has attended Pride in Lancaster County. This year’s event also had free admission for the first time in several years due to an abundance of sponsors and Lancaster Pride's fundraising efforts with last year's ExtraGive event.
'Remembering our history'
Local LGBTQ+ history was at the forefront of Saturday’s festival. Lancaster Pride organizers said the theme for this year's festival, “Owning Our History,” was chosen to highlight how far the community has come while highlighting the work that still needs to be done to create true equality.
“We wanted to honor those iconic people throughout queer history who have made our community what it is,” said Julya Nichols, vice president of Lancaster Pride.
Lancaster Pride has partnered with the LGBT Center of Central PA to launch the Lancaster Queer History Project. The project aims to preserve Lancaster’s LGBTQ+ history through artifacts, documents and oral histories while making them publicly accessible.
In the spirit of the project, this year’s event highlighted both national and local figures, from San Francisco politician Harvey Milk to early 20th-century artist Charles Demuth, who worked at a studio just blocks away from the convention center on East King Street in Lancaster.
The festival also highlighted more recent members of the local community.
Jeff Roane, a sponsorship coordinator with Lancaster Pride, who Nichols described as a co-founder of the annual event, and Ashton Clatterbuck a student and political activist from Martic Township both died in 2024 and were honored at this year’s event with signs inside the convention center telling their stories. An image of Clatterbuck also was included as part of the event’s logo.
“We wanted to honor them today, especially for everything that they’ve done in their activism for the community,” Nichols said.
Nichols said she hopes the 2025 festival and Queer History Project bring attention to a local history that has largely been undocumented for decades.
“We need to make sure we are remembering our history and where we’ve come from,” Nichols said regarding the project. “It’s important to honor everyone that has come before us who have allowed us to be who we are today and have the rights that we do.”
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What an UNholy perversion of William Penn's "holy experiment"!
It makes total sense that Shapiro is invested in the ‘pride’ movement .... part of his ancestry.
He’s talking exactly like Obama.
Ask any of the attendees to describe what they are celebrating. They won’t or can’t. Simple: sodomy and the end of the human race in one generation if taken to its logical consequence.
Governor ShaHomo.
“Your governor loves you, and I got your back,”
That can be taken several ways.
Lotta Amish trannies in Lancaster - you betcha
Romans 1:24
I’m sure the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Amish are thrilled.
Lancaster has a very large ghetto like downtown area. It’s nowhere near amish Lancaster. Several miles away
Downtown Lancaster City has been occupied by brown gang-bangers for decades.
TMI post: The power bottoms are flexing
Will Shapiro be going to Gettysburg this week...?
Yep, no originality.
Do they have these events in Dearborn, MI and Paterson, NJ?
Okay he can do that. But the Democrats won't allow him to run for President. He was on the record for being "pro-Israel". Do you think he'll get support from AOC?
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