The Famously Hot SC Pride parade and festival returned to Main Street on Saturday, offering attendees a packed day of events centered around promoting and celebrating Columbia’s LGBTQ community.
SC Pride is a yearly event that features a parade, musicians, guest speakers and many different vendors and food trucks. For many, SC Pride is an event where people who might normally be afraid to be open about their sexuality can go and be themselves without fear of being harassed or judged.
“I think it’s really great that people can come out and be completely open about this,” Alex Billotte said. “The police come and make sure it’s a safe environment for everybody, it’s sponsored, it’s just really heartening especially for people who may be afraid to come out and things like that.”
The day kicked off with the parade made up of various groups who marched and drove through downtown Columbia wearing colorful costumes and handing out cards, flags and other items to the large crowd that gathered to watch.
The parade featured local social justice groups such as the Irmo Gay/Straight Alliance.
Also in attendance were Greenville chapter representatives of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This international organization began in 1979 in San Francisco. It boasts chapters in 43 North American cities and in 14 other countries.
When a Sisters representative who goes by Evelyn Tensions was asked what their favorite part of Pride events was, they said that it was “feeling all the love and joy that’s spread throughout the gay community.”
“People are … constantly fighting for diversity and getting overwhelmed with oppression and depression,” Tensions said, “but when you get around a bunch of people that are like-minded, you feel the love and joy.”
Another representative, Sister Bjorn DeSway, described Famously Hot Pride as a “safe space for the LGBTQ community.”
“It shows that the LGBTQ community is here and we’re here to stay, and we’re not afraid,” DeSway said.
Members of the LGBTQ community and their allies were plentiful, including some USC students. First-year pharmacy student Annie Savely came to show her support and pride.
“It makes you feel accepted all the time, and it’s awesome,” Savely said of SC Pride. She is a member of USC’s Individuals Respecting Identities & Sexualities and the Feminist Collective. She says she has been attending Pride events for three years.
Another student, fourth-year accounting student DeMarcus Marable, also attended the event ready to support the LGBTQ community.
“It’s just a really cool thing to do in Columbia on a Saturday,” Marable said, “and to be supportive of the local community.”
Marable says that Pride is “accepting, and that’s what we, as a ‘Bible Belt’ community need, is to be more accepting of people who aren’t like us in any manner.”