Category: LGBTQ Pride

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Podcast: NYC Pride’s Big 2020 Plans, Uganda, Albania, Daytime Emmys, PrEP

The Randy Report podcast

The Randy Report podcast delivers the week's top stories in a quick, convenient podcast - 'the 60 Minutes of gay news - only shorter' In this week’s podcast: • Prosecutors in Uganda have dropped charges against 19 LGBTQ people held in jail for 49 days • A ‘once every two months’ injectable version of PrEP has shown very positive results in clinical trials • Albania bans so-called ‘conversion therapy’ • NYC Pride has announced a huge 50th anniversary Pride television special featuring Billy Porter, Dan Levy, Janelle Monae, and more. • The 2020 Daytime Emmy nominations are out with big love for LGBTQ actors and shows Here’s the link to my recent interview with the Emmy Award-winning creators of the Amazon series ‘After Forever’ • Out singer/songwriter Clinton John’s new single “Cry” taps into those frustrating times when you realize you’re really not over that lost love. Link to download “Cry.” All that in this episode of The Randy Report.

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NYC Pride March Canceled For 1st Time In 50-Year History

(photo via TheOUTfront.com)
For the first time in its half-century history, the NYC Pride March, has been along with all in-person events leading up to the annual June event, has been canceled. From NBC News:

Heritage of Pride, the organization that runs the march, made the announcement Monday, shortly after New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced the cancellation of permits for all large events for the month of June.

“This probably will not surprise you,” De Blasio said at a coronavirus briefing before announcing the cancellation of June’s Celebrate Israel, Puerto Rican Day and LGBTQ pride parades. The mayor promised these events would go on in some format “when it’s the right time.”

“This year is the 50th anniversary of the pride parade, and it’s a very, very big deal,” De Blasio said in Monday’s briefing. “That march is such an important part of life in this city, but this year in particular it was going to be something that was a historic moment.”

That first pride march, held in June 1970 a year after the Stonewall riots, is often regarded as the beginning of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. Last year’s events, celebrating the Stonewall uprising, drew more than 5 million people to the city. This year’s NYC Pride events were scheduled to commence June 14 with Janelle Monaé and Pussy Riot set to perform. Heritage of Pride has announced a plan to coordinate with InterPride, an international organization comprised of local, regional and national pride planning organizations, to participate in a 24-hour virtual, online “Global Pride” scheduled for June 27. “The plan is to have this 24-hour program that will be a worldwide celebration of pride,” said Ron deHarte, co-president of the United States Association of Prides and a member of the InterPride organizing committee. “It will peak in time zones around the world, and in each of those time zones, those regional pride organizations and those local pride organizations will be directly involved in that programming component,” added deHarte. Several major cities in the U.S. have already announced similar news about their local Pride events. Los Angeles postponed, San Francisco canceled and Seattle plans to “go virtual.”

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Palm Springs White Party, LA Pride Postponed Due To Coronavirus Concerns

(image via White Party/Facebook)
Add Pride celebrations to the long list of events now being postponed thanks to concerns about the coronavirus threat. Organizers for Los Angeles Pride announced today that “all events related to the 50th Anniversary of LA Pride that were scheduled for June 2020” have been postponed.

On Thursday, organizers for the first-ever Pride of the Americas in Fort Lauderdale announced the event would be moved to later in the year. Miami Pride has been canceled with no replacement date announced. The White Party in Palm Springs has been rescheduled to October 30 – November 2, 2020.

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New Pride Ad From Sprite Celebrates The Support Of Family

A new ad spot for Sprite, released last week in Argentina to coincide with the 28th annual Buenos Aires Pride, has gone viral for its pro-LGBTQ message. Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, celebrates Pride each year (known as Marcha de Orgullo) on the first weekend of November to commemorate the origin of Nuestro Mundo (English: Our World).  Nuestro Mundo, the first pro-LGBTQ group in Argentina, began in 1967 working to bring awareness to the oppression of homosexuals in the South American country. This year’s Pride event drew an estimated 300,000 people. With Carousel’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for musical background, the ad features several young people preparing to attend the annual Pride festival: A mother helping a son with makeup, a young girl helping her trans brother get dressed, a grandmother helps her grandson dress in drag, a family paints Pride banners and a dad takes his gay son and the son’s boyfriend to the festival. The short video ends with the text, “Orgullo: Lo que sentís cuando alguien que querés elige ser feliz” (“Pride: What you feel when someone you love chooses to be happy”) and “No estás solx” (“You’re not alone”). The look on the father’s face at the end totally lands. On Twitter, the spot has been retweeted over 20,000 times and garnered nearly 60,000 Likes.

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Sydney, Australia, Will Host WorldPride 2023

WorldPride will head ‘down under’ in 2023 as Sydney, Australia, has won its bid to host the biennial LGBTQ+ celebration. Choosing between Sydney, Montreal, and Houston, members of the worldwide InterPride network of Pride organizations gave Sydney 60% of the vote.

The celebration, comprised of cultural activities, parades, and festivals, will take place at the same time as the 2023 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. With its winning bid, Sydney becomes the first city in the southern hemisphere to host the event. In 2021, WorldPride will be hosted by two cities in two countries for the first time. The events will be held from August 12-22 in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark and the Swedish neighboring city Malmö in the Řresund Region. The two cities are a short 15-minute commute from each other. This past summer, WorldPride was held in New York City to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, long considered the birth of the gay rights movement.

Back in 2012, during my first visit to Sydney, I made this travelogue video about the gorgeous men city:

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World Pride Closing: At The Crossroads Of The World

World Pride Closing
Melissa Etheridge kicked off the festivities (photos: Lawrence Pfeil Jr)

By Lawrence Pfeil, Jr.

There could not have been a more ideal setting for World Pride Closing Ceremonies than Times Square at the “crossroads of the world.”
As twilight fell across New York City and Pride marched on down in the Village, thousands gathered for a star-studded finale to Pride Month for one last official celebration of the LGBT+ Community where it all began.
 It was electric, fabulous, fierce, funny, emotional, and PROUD.
Grammy Award winner, Melissa Etheridge took to the stage opening the evening with her brand of ferocious acoustic music which has inspired both the LGBT+ community as well as cancer survivors for decades.

Melissa Etheridge

Comedian Margret Cho brilliantly hosted the evening with hilarious observations on gay men.

Cho said she “prefers being a ‘Bear Hag’ because she knows there’s going to be food, with “twinks there’s no regularly scheduled meals.” She also pointed out that “twinks are having so much work done, they look like a “queer caught in headlights.”
Later, Cho did a full discussion of her “fat pussy” with surprisingly detailed descriptions of different kinds, ie Keto, sandwich, etc. Watching the muscle-stud ASL interpreter sign her graphic descriptions was hilariously horrifying.

Hunky sign language guy

 

More of hunky sign language guy I think Lawrence was trying to tell me something 😉

Broadway’s The Prom stopped by strutting their stuff in a celebration of Love is Love with the entire cast thrilling the audience with the show’s finale, “It’s Time to Dance.”

Mel C – ‘Sporty Spice’ – of the Spice Girls

Big electrifying numbers from MNEK, Spice Girl Melanie C with Sink the Pink, and Jake Shears wowed the capacity audience, but it was an unexpected small moment that spoke to the occasion.

Accompanied only by a guitar closing out his set, Shears sang:

Why are there so many

 

Songs about rainbows
And what’s on the other side
Rainbows are visions
They’re only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we’ve been told and some chose to
Believe it
But I know they’re wrong wait and see
Someday we’ll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me

 

Jake Shears

Those who came together last night as a global community united in pride were not prepared for what happened next.

In a flowing white gown, Deborah Cox took the stage like a twister hitting Dorothy’s farmhouse with “Absolutely Not,” and from her Broadway debut in Aida at the Palace Theatre across the street, “Easy as Life.”

Cox talked about spending 18 months touring in The Bodyguard the Musical in Whitney Houston’s iconic role. On the giant video screen, a rainbow ribbon could be seen on her dress.

She explained, it wasn’t just a rainbow ribbon but an “Orlando Ribbon,” given to her by a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre. Dedicated to their memory she sang, “I Will Always Love You” as tears streamed our cheeks.

I don’t know if at Pride Island they could hear what was happening in Times Square; but if they did, what they heard was, “Madonna, go home and try again.” Deborah “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here” Cox Threw. It. Down. and blew it up! Taking a crowd from emotional heartbreak to ecstatic joyous dance party like it’s nothin but a thing takes a fierce dancefloor diva. It was a feat not many performers could pull off. Deborah Cox didn’t just drop the mic, she dropped it, buried it, never to be seen again.

 

Empire State Building lit up in rainbow for Pride

 

Special thanks to Lawrence Pfeil Jr. for his awesome work this weekend as special World Pride correspondent for The Randy Report!
 
Make sure you click over to his own site, theOUTfront.com, for more of his uplifting pride and prose.

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The World Comes Home For Pride

For the first time in its twenty year history, World Pride is being celebrated in the United States, as part of the Stonewall 50 celebration in the birthplace of Pride, New York City.
Cyndi Lauper performs at Opening Ceremony of WorldPride NYC

By Lawrence Pfeil, Jr.

For the first time in its twenty year history, World Pride is being celebrated in the United States, as part of the Stonewall 50 celebration in the birthplace of Pride, New York City.

Last night, Brooklyn’s Barclays Center played host to the Opening Ceremonies of World Pride with enough high NRG, glitter, and sequins to be seen across the East River on Christopher St.

Hosted by fierce, long time, LGBT advocate Whoopi Goldberg, the three- hour plus extravaganza showcased entertainment, tributes to the people who fought for equality, and highlighted organizations insuring another fifty years of Pride.

The festivities began with Cyndi Lauper rising from a sparkling globe singing, “True Colors.”

What could have easily been a treacly, cliched, ‘been there done that’ moment, turned into an extemporaneous singalong. The Barclays Center awash in a dazzling rainbow, thousands of strangers gathered from around the world, were singing in one voice, as a united community.

After the opening, Whoopi took to the stage and took the house to church asking New Yorkers to welcome the “tourist next to them.” She went on telling, “everybody hold somebody’s hand as we remember those who for many different reasons are not alive and with us today,” a moment bringing unexpected silence to the arena.

Tony Award winner, and TV actress, Sara Ramirez, paid tribute to the 2019 Pride Luminaries on stage with a soaring rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” Throughout the night Pride March Grand Marshals, the cast of FX’s POSE, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah of UK Black Pride, Gay Liberation Front, The Trevor Project, and Monica Helms were recognized and honored for their work.

Drag queens were in the house and werked it in a mega-production number. Each queen took her turn on the runway for moment in the spotlight, including Bob the Drag Queen. Her lip-sync of Julia “The Terminator” Sugarbaker’s speech, recounting “The Night the Lights went out in Georgia” complete with baton twirler.

Inside the Barclay Center (photo: Lawrence Pfeil Jr.)

Proceeds from World Pride Opening Ceremonies benefit three organizations:

• SAGE (www.sageusa.org) the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older people.

• Immigration Equality (immigrationequality.org) the nation’s leading LGBTQ immigrant rights organization, representing and advocating for people from around the world fleeing violence, abuse and persecution because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status.

• The Ali Forney Center (aliforneycenter.org) the nation’s largest and most comprehensive agency dedicated to LGBTQ homeless youths

These organizations do lifesaving work every day of the year for the Community and were introduced to audience by video and with stirring remarks.

Most notable were those by Ali Forney Center’s founder and Executive Director, Carl Sicilano. He spoke of the homeless queer street kids at the time of the Stonewall Uprising who were thought of as trash by well-off people. Those kids found their own community and a solidarity amongst themselves, when “an attack on one was seen as an attack on all.

Sicilano implored those present last night to adopt that same solidarity from 50 years ago in today’s Community.

The Grand Finale was none other than the force of nature and pride himself, Mr. Billy Porter who blessed the house with an encore of his heartbreak performance of “Home” from Season 1 of the acclaimed FX series, Pose.

Porter then raised the roof old school, gospel-style, with his new single, “Love Yourself” in a glitter fabulous, rainbow Pride spectacular before sending his children off to make the world a better place.

Check out more via Instagram:

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SWIPE TO WATCH! Look at how far we’ve come in 50 years. The room last night was pure magic bursting with #lgbtq pride. Thank you @nycpride for having me at @barclayscenter for the opening of #worldpride2019 hosted by #EGOT diva @whoopigoldberg and for putting together such a fierce show full of legends. It was a dream to perform my single “Love Yourself” backed by the magnificent @bivoices choir wearing custom @theblondsny covered in 50k @preciosacomponents crystals which reflected all of the colors of pride. We’ve got to love each other and most certainly love ourselves. Happy Pride hunties. #pride 🌈 📸 by @santiagraphy Creative Direction and Styling by @sammyratelle for @rrrcreative Agency Grooming by @lasonyagunter Wearing @theblondsnyA post shared by Billy Porter (@theebillyporter) on Jun 27, 2019 at 7:32pm PDT

I am often times very hard on myself and rarely find moments when I feel genuinely proud of myself.. lastnight I made a surprise appearance at the opening ceremony of World Pride in New York City with some of my favorite queens from @rupaulsdragrace While I’m performing, I’m usually in the zone and sort of black out for a bit. When @juniortorezani showed me this video lastnight, I was mind blown and was able to take it all in. Something that started in my small studio apartment as a fun outlet for me turned into this.. I felt proud, proud for the space, the freedom, and the permission I gave myself to express and create freely in the way my heart desired. I never could’ve imagined it would have led to all of this. I am SO grateful I am able to share my heart, my passion, and my joy with the world! Thank you for embracing, accepting, and supporting me through this fun, rainbow-filled journey! Happy Pride my beautiful friends!!! 🤗❤️🌈 (Also, not sure where the wigs ended up but whoever got them, have fun with my babies! I’m expecting dance videos in them! 😆❤️🌈) #pride #loveislove #lgbtq #pridemonth #pride🌈 #worldpride #wig #cuttothefeelingfriday #rainbow
A post shared by Mark Kanemura (@mkik808) on Jun 27, 2019 at 11:15am PDT