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Jacob Courtney
Hello Aurora!
I come before you seeking a bit of charity in the form of a sympathetic eye and open mind towards the words I write today. Some may be turned off by the headline or the fact that I talk openly about a part of my existence so sadly politicized.
On Saturday, I attended my first Pride parade in Aurora. It was a day of joy and other, more complicated, feelings that may bleed through the ink in this article. It was at once everything I had hoped for and there was a yearning for more.
After covering the other grand event of the day, the A’ROR’N Days parade, full of pride for community, well deserved in the view of a humble migrant, I went to the city skate park next to Refshauge Park.
I showed at the requested time for volunteers, though there was some confusion on who did what or what needed doing, so it was mostly a time to orient myself with others. I don’t blame the organizers as events like these always have a whiff of chaos around them that makes it all the more exciting.
There were plenty of colorful characters around, all kind and willing to talk. There was a couple, one in a glittery dress, the other had his torso covered in glitter that adorned him as if he were a statue made of molten sand. Some had makeup on that covered their faces like war paint, others subdued or gothic in appearance. Most wore their own faces, of all the shapes and beauty that humanity shows when it comes to gather.
I speak not to their own journeys of gender identities or the kinds of people they feel most easy to love; I know that they came as themselves.
Out of the hundred or so who came out, all were received with affection. There was a man who described himself as a Republican trying to connect and support his family even if he did not fully understand the identities they marched for. A mental health support group just starting out in Grand Island was also represented. I spotted Nebraskans for Peace and a genuine Quaker (insert oats joke). The most comical scene was a child whose happiest moment was pressuring his poor mother and all those around him to place the lad on a curved piece of the skate park that served as a slide for his everlasting amusement. He somehow always managed a last time on the makeshift slide. There was not so much pride as there was love that filled the town that day.
There seemed to be an outpouring of a lot of out-of-county folk, which is a blessing, though it took a while to make connections with people who one might run into day to day.
After the mingling, I was assigned the gay male flag (shades of blue stripes on top, white in the middle, to shades of green on the bottom). A flag, I must confess, I had never seen in my life. I found out later it came from a blog in 2019, to differentiate gay men from the rainbow flag which serves as more diverse representation of the LGBTQ+ spectrum in some people’s view.
One must keep in mind, though the spectrum existed for eons in humanity and nature, the language, symbols and culture of this modern group is still new. It is riotous and rupturing like the magma that brings up young land upon the turbulent sea. Still, I carried the flag, proud.
There were comments by delegate Brandi Bosier, who gave a speech that is covered in a news article elsewhere in this week’s edition. It was fine if a bit overly cheerful about advoacting for a party that does too little, in my opinion.
The pallor of the recent Supreme Court decision hung over the speech. That could be its own column if I wanted varieties of bricks and shards of glass in abundance. I will say that the comments of Justice Clarence Thomas, calling for the dismantling of court cases relating to the right of same-sex couples to marriage, private consensual acts and even for every married couples’ right to get contraceptives, show the interconnected nature of rights. Each one connects to the other, with the struggle never ending at one fortress taken in culture war.
Like a ray of sun through a dusky cloud, the parade started: filled with cheers, inside jokes, laughter, hoots at a honk of a horn and making sure the flags twirled in the wind rather than around their own flag pole or trees, though that might be my own experience.
It went on 16th Street, up to a little past the Bremer Center before turning around, back to where it began to fizzle out. It is an event I will never forget and there is hope that there will be greater and greater numbers, to showcase the open hearts that rural Nebraska can cultivate.
JACOB COURTNEY can be reached at features@hamilton.net
