Faith and LGBT communities cross paths at Logan’s pride festival
This was Faye Haynes and Tony Atkins’ first pride festival, but more importantly — their first pride festival together.
Atkins just recently moved up to Logan, where Haynes, her partner of six years, attends Utah State University. Atkins said it was “to escape.”
Atkins and Haynes came from one religious place to another, from Montgomery, Alabama to Logan. But the two said they’ve had very few issues with locals concerning their sexuality.
“Down there, it’s Baptist and they are incredibly homophobic,” Atkins said. “It’s awful.”
But Faye interjected that Logan has been “a welcome relief.”
The parking lot behind Logan’s more-than-a-century-old Bluebird Restaurant was very different Saturday. Dozens of booths and tables touted rainbow flags as the casual and the colorful people of the festival visited, played games and listened to politicians, poetry and local musicians
Zan Burningham excitedly propped up a poster and took a video for her daughter to see that, yes, there was in fact a Logan Pride Festival.
Her daughter once played volleyball for Skyview High, leading the nation in kills, and is now bedridden from a degenerative bone disease at 40 years old.
“She’s gay and married,” Burningham said. “I wanted her to see this monumental event in Logan — conservative, little Logan.”
Burningham said she spent the day volunteering at an asexual booth and afterward donated to her favorite politicians, “So they can do well, especially Misty Snow.”
While Burningham reveled in the fact that she was in Logan at a pride festival and Faye and Atkins basked in a new town, which they felt was far more accepting than the one they had both moved away from, others were at the pride festival fighting for a sense of community in a town filled with members of a church that often finds itself at odds with its LGBT members.
“You know you’re loved,” USU student Joshua Blake said while smiling and hugging two random festival-goers. “You guys are great.”
Blake had been at the festival all day stationed at a Mormon hugs booth. He said he’d easily given out 200 to 300 hugs. He hadn’t planned on staying at the booth. He wasn’t even an official volunteer. He said he showed up in a shirt with a big rainbow heart with the words “I’m a Mormon” emblazoned inside, saw the booth and knew he had to stay.
“My dad came out last year,” Blake said. “He’s known his entire life, of course. But my mom — this is a very lucky experience — is the only women he has ever loved, ever felt attracted to.”
Blake said his dad, who helps run the same booth for the pride festival in the District of Columbia, was received warmly by their family’s LDS ward in Virginia.
“It’s amazing how much love could be shared with the Mormon community if people would just set down their traditions and open up their heart to Christ and open up his heart with them and love everyone,” Blake said.
In 2015, the LDS church clarified its position on same-sex marriages, saying that members of the church who enter into a marriage are subject to excommunication through a disciplinary council. The move made national headlines and a swift backlash from the LGBT community and its supporters — with hundreds of members formally renouncing their church memberships within the week
Earlier that year, the LDS church had been praised by the LGBT community for its involvement in passing an anti-discrimination law, a bold move since its support of Proposition 8 in California, which the church defended as an “opportunity for church members to stand for the principle of marriage between a man and a woman.”
Blake said after one year of college he plans to serve an LDS mission so he can spread his message there as well — despite not knowing how well it will be received.
“Right now I’m getting mixed reviews from different Mormon friends,” he said. “Some are very accepting and some are very standoff-ish about it.”
Blake said he’d stay near his booth until 5 p.m. so he could give out as many hugs as possible.
The booth, which is run by Mormons for Equality, a national LGBT organization, was run by other local LDS support groups.
Mama Dragons, which is made up of LDS mothers, was helping to give out hugs at the event as well.
One member, Lisa Glad, said she’s received a lot of positive feedback from church members, but sometimes struggles with the church she’s been a part of for so long.
“I have chosen to stay active, at least right now,” she said. “I teach nursery. It’s been really hard because there are things that the church does that doesn’t match what my answers to prayers have been.”
“I feel like I need to be in the church, at least at this point, so I can be there for the kids who are trying to figure out who they are when they don’t fit into the Mormon box,” she added.
Peter Harrison, a spokesperson for Mormons for Equality, said while the organization’s message of full equality for the LGBT community can be difficult, it’s important.
“This is the perfect place to be,” he said. “Cache Valley is so predominantly LDS and I think a lot of people in the LGBT community don’t know that there are Mormons who are accepting and affirming and believe in equal rights and there are those people and we just love everyone.”
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@jackwhoisnice