Philly’s Pride March and Festival draws thousands to celebrate the beginning of Pride Month

Sunday’s daylong celebration began with speeches that urged solidarity and attendance at protests to denounce a scheduled gathering in Philadelphia of a national anti-LGBTQ group, Moms for Liberty.

by Michaelle Bond

Published June 4, 2023, 4:46 p.m. ET

A sea of rainbow flags billowed among joyful faces as strong winds whipped at the corner of Sixth and Walnut Streets on Sunday morning. Chants and cheers burst from a crowd wearing rainbows on cheeks, clothing, and headpieces. Signs proclaimed messages of love and support.

Thousands and thousands of people celebrated queerness and the start of Pride Month at the Pride March and Festival in Center City as right-wing groups nationwide continue to attack LGBTQ people and their rights. Sunday’s daylong celebration began with speeches that urged solidarity and attendance at protests to denounce a scheduled gathering in Philadelphia of a national anti-LGBTQ group.

» READ MORE: Philly's Pride Flag Explained

One of Sunday’s speakers was Rue Landau, a housing and civil rights attorney who is poised to become City Council’s first openly LGBTQ member after winning a nomination in last month’s Democratic primary. The milestone toward more political representation has been decades in the making.

“We have to unapologetically tell folks in power that our rights are worth it. That we are here, we are not going back, and that we are here to stay, and we are getting louder and stronger,” said Landau, who received the first same-sex marriage certificate in Pennsylvania in 2014.

After a series of speeches, chants, and drum performances, the Pride March, which anyone could join, began shortly before noon. Its starting point at Sixth and Walnut was a block from the Liberty Bell, where a series of gay rights demonstrations in the 1960s were held as some of the first major such demonstrations in the country. At the front of the march, dozens of people carried a 200-foot-long Pride flag — the largest in Pennsylvania.

The march ended at a festival in the Gayborhood with resources for LGBTQ people, vendors, food trucks, DJs, and live performances — including some on Pride’s first Latinx music and dance stage. At festivalgoers’ feet were refreshed, more inclusive, and more permanent rainbow crosswalks that the city installed last month at 13th and Locust Streets.

This year’s event was organized by the LGBTQ services organization Galaei and had the theme “Love, Light, and Liberation.” Galaei’s website says, “Every PRIDE festival is a crucial opportunity for our communities to join together in celebration, find family, get resources and share the love, art, and joy that are hallmarks of our community.”

Em Auerbach, who is queer and transmasculine and lives in East Falls, volunteered to help at the event that he called “a really beautiful day to do intergenerational love and care and be with community.”

“I’m just really excited about all the young people that I see,” said Auerbach, 30. “And that they feel safe and good and grow up in a world with this, that I didn’t grow up with, necessarily.”

Megan GoldMarche, a rabbi and executive director of Tribe 12, which aims to build community for young Jewish people in Philadelphia, wore a shirt at Sunday’s festival advertising free “mom hugs.” She and her wife, Paige, brought their 2-year-old and 4-year-old daughters, who wore shirts that said, “I love my two moms,” to their first Pride event.

The Mount Airy couple, who moved from Chicago a year ago, tried to take their children to Pride there once, but it was not kid-friendly, GoldMarche, 38, said. So she and her wife were happy to see that Philadelphia’s Pride event welcomed young people “to show our children that they’re part of something special and important.”

“We as cisgender lesbians are really feeling the generations who have fought for our rights,” GoldMarche said. “And now it’s our job to fight for so many people — especially transgender youth, who in a lot of places around the country are just not getting the rights they deserve.”

Across the country, state politicians have been ramping up coordinated legislative attacks against LGBTQ people over the last few years, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization. The ACLU has tracked almost 500 bills active in state legislatures this year that attack LGBTQ people, especially transgender youths.

Target and Bud Light are among businesses that recently have faced right-wing backlash for queer inclusivity in their products and marketing.

In Philadelphia later this month, Moms for Liberty, a controversial parent group that has advocated for book bans and against discussions about racism and LGBTQ materials in schools, plans to hold its national summit, where it will train school board candidates.

The Philadelphia Gay News reported on Tuesday that members of Moms for Liberty plan to protest the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Pride Month programming.

At a time when right-wing groups nationwide have attacked the concept of drag queens reading books to children, Visit Philadelphia has created a Pride Month public service announcement that features drag queens reading to children in front of Independence Hall. The city’s tourism marketing agency has said it wants to send “a message that our city is an open and inclusive destination.”

In the Pennsylvania legislature, State Reps. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) and Greg Scott (D., Montgomery) are two of the prime sponsors of a bill that would expressly prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation in the state based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.

The legislation would amend a state law that bars discrimination based on factors such as race, sex, religion, and disability. It passed out of the state House last month and is now before the state Senate.

The bill was first introduced more than two decades ago.

Philadelphia is among the Pennsylvania municipalities that have local anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ people.

At South Juniper and Irving Streets on Sunday, a blank wall quickly filled with messages of love for LGBTQ people written in chalk.

Laura Love, 34, of Pemberton Township, wrote “Love Yourself!!” in bold blue letters. Sunday was her first time at a Pride event. She had off from work, so she brought her niece and her niece’s friend.

“I’m here to support my group. I’m bi. I love women, I love men,” she said. “You gotta love yourself, who you are. Be natural to what you are. Don’t let nobody else tell you who you are. You only know who you are.”

Sunday’s festival ends at 7 p.m. Other events planned to celebrate Pride this month include the Philly Pride Run, Pride Day at the Philadelphia Zoo, Philly Queer Flea, and bird-watching with Philly Queer Birders.