Pride was loud and proud on Main Avenue and in Buckley Park for The Four Corners Alliance for Diversity’s annual pride festival Saturday in downtown Durango.
By noon, nearly 200 people visited the park where a number of vendors had set up booths. Live drag shows featured the likes of Aria Pettyone, DaVaiVai, Myster E and others, in between guest speakers.
With the pivotal 2024 presidential election in full swing and, in some minds, the very fabric of democracy at stake, politics was front and center on some attendees’ minds.
Durango resident Mark Wiener, who moved to the area from New York, did not shy away from sharing his thoughts on the presidential election.
He said former President Donald Trump as a business mogul had always aligned his politics, to the extent he was involved in them, with the political environment he was immersed in.
Trump kept his politics on abortion and LGBT issues, for example, in line with the Democratic Party, Wiener said, considering New York City is primarily a Democratic stronghold.
Now that Trump is surrounded by anti-gay, anti-trans and anti-immigrant Republicans and conservatives, his politics reflects that, he said.
“I don't think the whole GOP is against gay rights,” Wiener said. “ … The problem is that Trump is cultivating the support of a dangerous segment, a significant segment, of what has become the Republican Party. And since ‘gay’ has for many people in America been normalized, now the focus is on vilifying trans people who are still marginal.”
Wiener said he is confident Trump will lose the election in November. He repeated several times he is a fan of President Joe Biden. But after the presidential debate in June, where Biden’s floundering did not go unnoticed by the press, the people and the Democratic Party, he wrote to the White House the next day asking for the president to step aside.
“(Biden’s) too far past his prime to serve out another four years. He ultimately did the right thing,” he said.
When it comes to gay rights, he said America has a good thing going on right now. There are some places he “wouldn’t dream of stepping foot in,” including Russia and some Arabic countries.
And he denounced Trump’s most fervent supporters, who he said support the former president because he doesn’t pay taxes, has “trophy wives” and because “he becomes richer and more powerful the more he cheats.”
“There are regular people who lead smaller lives who applaud Donald Trump for all that. Want to be Donald Trump and admire the fact that he's said ‘screw you’ to the liberals, ‘Screw you to everybody,’” he said.
Wiener said events like the Alliance’s annual fall pride festival are important for visibility because the moment the LGBT community falls off people’s radar, it becomes more susceptible once again to the gradual elimination of rights.
“This event actually is representative for the best part of this country. That is for everybody. … It's so important. America is for everybody,” he said. “We have to respect people who view the world and political ideas, policies differently than ours. But they have to respect us too. We’re all part of a glorious experiment that is coming up on 250 years old in two years.”
Greg Weiss, who’s lived in La Plata County for 24 years, said pride events are important, particularly in rural Colorado, because they make LGBTQ people visible to those who don’t necessarily have a sense of community.
“The Four Corners is great. It's got a lot to offer it and people are very open and accepting,” he said.
He said there’s too much hateful rhetoric coming from one side of the political aisle, adding that unity is the solution.
“People are just afraid,” he said. “ … Things like this (the pride festival) make a big difference, especially in our rural communities.”
Growing up, Weiss had no reference to LGBTQ culture like television shows such as “Will and Grace” or “Ellen.” There were no pride festivals to attend, and far fewer people came out in the 1970s compared to today.
“Finding myself was a very difficult process, and that's why I think pride festivals and just awareness is so important, so that people don't get lost,” he said.
Weiss said American culture and society has come a long way and has become more accepting of the LGBTQ community. Still, suicides occur more frequently among LGBTQ people than straight people.
Gary Meisner with Axis Health System, which had a booth set up at Buckley Park for the pride festival, said the same.
“People who identify as LGBTQ typically have more days where they define their mental health as poor,” he said. “We've recently started to do some more outreach to the LGBTQ community where we're trying to connect people to care as part of our behavioral health equity program. And also, we're just working to make sure that everybody has access to the care that they need.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
