Amid hostility to LGBTQ rights in some schools, youth say Pride is essential in 2024

One after the other, the teenagers strutted up the catwalk at Loring Park, struck a pose and began dancing.

Twelve-year-old Maydi Loftus drew applause and several screams of excitement while lip-syncing to "Mrs. Potato Head" by Melanie Martinez, leaping into the air and landing in the splits. The performance was part of a youth drag show that kicked off Youth Night on Friday at Twin Cities Pride.

"I just love seeing all these people," Maydi said. "I can relate to almost everyone here. It's awesome."

The youth-centered event is a first for Twin Cities Pride. The celebration, according to Executive Director Andi Otto, came about after a surge in interest for programming targeted at LGBTQ youth.

"I wanted to have a space for everyone to be," Otto said. "We have the beer gardens and everything like that for adults. But we wanted to engage the youth."

The inaugural Youth Night is also a response to the swell in anti-LGBTQ sentiment in classrooms across the state and nation in recent years.

In Minnesota, particularly in the suburbs, school board elections have been marked by campaigns opposed to equity efforts, especially programs that support LGBTQ youth.

The Anoka-Hennepin school board nearly ground district operations to a halt when three members announced they would oppose any budget funded diversity programs. Those board members eventually agreed to decouple programming debates from budget discussions.

The Worthington, Minn., school board also voted to remove Pride flags from its classrooms earlier this year.

"For some reason people feel emboldened right now to push in that direction," Otto said.

Kate Bitz, program manager at the Western States Center in Portland, Ore., said the trend in Minnesota mirrors what's happening elsewhere. Leaders of Western States, which tracks extremism and bigotry across the United States, published a guide earlier this year that teaches Pride festival organizers how to deal with anti-LGBTQ protests and threats against their events.

Bitz noticed an uptick in online vitriol aimed at LGBTQ folks amid the COVID-19 pandemic as parents across the country began rallying against lessons and policies that center on inclusion. Those protests metastasized, she said, and became pillars for school board campaigns throughout the U.S.

"What we're now unfortunately seeing is a result of just how much that has spread into our communities and become quite normalized," Bitz said.

Anti-LGBTQ activists have latched onto conspiracy theories that claim a perceived increase in youth identifying as trans is proof that schools are indoctrinating children. What's actually happening, Bitz said, is that trans children have become more comfortable coming out as educators learn how to support them and they find community among other queer youth online.

"People are just seeing more visible LGBTQ-plus people in their communities," Bitz said.

Kai Kilanowski, a rising senior at Hopkins High School, said school has always been a somewhat hostile environment for LGBTQ students. But harassment and violence gets more attention than it previously did.

Kilanowski attended a rally in support of a trans teen who was attacked in a bathroom on campus in late May. The protest, he said, illustrates how galvanizing those events are in an era when students are constantly in touch via social media and can organize demonstrations against them.

"I'm glad there are people who are now recognizing that this is not OK and stepping up to say, 'This should not be happening,'" said Kilanowski, who is also trans.

Still, he's read news stories about anti-LGBTQ sentiment taking hold on school boards and protests against Pride festivals in Minnesota and elsewhere. That's why Kilanowski and other LGBTQ youth say those celebrations are so important this year.

"I believe it is very important to go and be out there and be seen," he said.

Evan Ghergich, whose father Jesse Quick drove him to Minneapolis on Friday from their home in Duluth, said he'd been looking forward to performing at the youth drag show for months. Ghergich was ecstatic to be one in a crowd of LGBTQ youth.

"It's great because he can live fully," Quick said. "We don't have to negotiate when we walk out the door."

Otto, the executive director of Twin Cities Pride, said he hopes the celebratory and accepting crowd at the weekend's celebration illustrates the power of visibility for LGBTQ youth. He's been increasingly approached by folks looking to organize their own Pride festivals in small, conservative communities from northern Minnesota to central Alabama, proving that LGBTQ folks are everywhere. They're just more visible than ever before.

"We're not about to go back into the closet, so to speak," Otto said. "People have said, 'Enough is enough,' and they're going to support their community members."