The LGBT event calendar was jam-packed last weekend with parties, galas and dedications, culminating in the 25th-annual OutFest. While each function was its own picture of success, one theme was threaded throughout the weekend: that the LGBT community has triumphed, and will continue to triumph over hardships.
Both William Way LGBT Community and Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutritional Alliance celebrated their anniversaries — their 40th and 20th, respectively — with galas over the weekend. At each, tribute was paid to the storied histories of each organization, the many people each has touched over the past several decades and the countless community members who have helped to make that work possible. The packed tables and hundreds of thousands of dollars generated in fundraising were testaments to the indelible mark that LGBT-affirming organizations have on our community.
The Philly Trans* March saw record crowds. Trans, gender-nonconforming folks, LGBs and allies all joined forces to call for trans visibility, an effort that was shadowed this year by the murder of local trans woman Kiesha Jenkins. Jenkins’ name and image were frequently invoked at the event, mobilizing and energizing the participants to demand justice for her and the many other trans victims of violence. However, the event also exhibited an air of celebration and pride in the progress that has been made for trans rights.
There were also remembrances of two others our community lost over the past year: Brenda Torres and Gloria Casarez. Torres was memorialized in a community gathering at the site of the former LGBT bar she owned in North Philadelphia, a diverse showing of community members and allies who came together to fundraise for Torres’ daughter’s education. A likeness of Casarez, the city’s first director of LGBT Affairs, was unveiled at a mural-dedication ceremony in the Gayborhood last Sunday. The event attracted city officials, community leaders, family, friends and more, who collectively sought to remember Casarez and use her example to move the community forward.
That theme of fusing the past and future was also ever-present at that day’s OutFest celebration. The 25th incarnation of the street festival featured awards to longtime community leaders as well as recognition for the community’s youngest members. The streets of the Gayborhood were teeming with a vast swatch of the community — from teens to seniors, representing myriad orientations and identities — who seamlessly celebrated alongside one another.
If you caught any of the LGBT events last weekend, or even if you stepped into one of the rainbow-clad bars dressed up for the festivities, you surely appreciated the enhanced sense of community that abounded. Although the special events have subsided, hopefully the inspiring and infectious spirit will not.