This article was written by Belle Townsend. This article was originally published on Queer Kentucky, and is republished on So.Gay via the publishers’ strategic partnership.
Pikeville Pride held its fifth annual Pride event on Oct. 12, 2024, hosting over 50 vendors from across and beyond Kentucky.
The celebration aims to foster diversity, with particular understanding and acceptance of the LGBTQIA+ community in Pikeville.
The Pride event featured speakers and performers, including Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, New York Times bestselling author Willie Carver Jr., Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House, and drag artist Dusty Ray Bottoms, a contestant from RuPaul’s Drag Race. Musical acts included the Kentucky Gentleman, Pumpkin Guts, Wayne Graham, and Slut Pill.
Willie Carver Jr. shared in his speech testimonies from Eastern Kentucky teens on what being from Appalachia meant. A fifteen year old boy’s testimony was, “With Eastern Kentucky, the worst parts are visible, and the best parts are invisible.”
Carver Jr. said, “Today, the best parts of Eastern Kentucky were visible, but I understood what he meant — that pride is hard when we’re told, as Appalachians, to feel such shame.”
He continued, “Pikeville Pride is so important to me because both parts of myself, my queer side and my Appalachian side, are in the light.”
Silas House spoke in his speech about how showing up to Pride in Eastern Kentucky is “an act of defiance.”
House continued, “As recently as 1992, when I was in college, being an LGBTQ person was criminalized in the state of Kentucky, with a possible sentence of one year in jail. If it wasn’t for the Supreme Court decision in 2015 that made same sex marriage legal in every state, we most likely still wouldn’t be able to marry here in Kentucky, even though we pay taxes here, even though we love this place fiercely.”
House said that he could not have pictured “such an active Pride event in Eastern Kentucky” twenty, or even ten, years ago.
He continued, “We are making progress… I love Eastern Kentucky so much.”
Despite being around for five years, Pikeville Pride President Cara Ellis shares that many people have a misconception that the people running Pride are “outsiders causing a ruckus.”
A lifelong Appalachian, Ellis’s response to these misconceptions is that, “Eastern Kentucky, and by extension Appalachia, has always had queer people. We are here.”
Pikeville Pride has never had counter protestors show up until this year. Two men set up next to the main entrance with signs and sound equipment, where organizers of Pride noticed them antagonizing attendees.
This was when Sarah Ratliff, a board member of Pikeville Pride, took to Facebook and the streets. She was determined to find someone who could play “a tuba, a sousaphone, or bagpipes.”
After finding a vendor whose husband plays the bagpipes, Ratliff asked if he could make it over. Ratliffe got busy, but then the vendor caught her attention again. She said, “He’s on his way.”
Within minutes, the counter protestors were drowned out by a local, kilt-wearing musician and ally. The counter protestors left soon after the bagpiper arrived. For Ratliff, this was a “silly way to fight fire with fire.”
This also validated the community support of Pikeville Pride. “If you have a need, sometimes all you need to do is ask,” Ratliffe said.
MaryAnn Fletcher, a board member of Pikeville Pride, testified to the work and love behind the annual Pride celebration in Pikeville. She spent months preparing for the event, including in hand crafting a photo backdrop rainbow flower wall with hand placed flowers.
Fletcher said, “A lot of people look at these mountains as cold and rejecting to people of the LGBTQ community, but in fact, these mountains create warmth around our people. We love and we want to show love.”
Held by the mountains, Pikeville Pride boasted its biggest turnout yet for its fifth year at 2,521 attendees.
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