My Experience at My First Pride Celebration

I have been away for so much longer than I intended to be. This has honestly been a pretty hard year. Between personal struggles, depressive episodes, lots of school and work, and anxiety, there have been a number of roadblocks. That said, I'm really happy to be back and I'm really happy with where I'm at in life right now.
 

The other week I was the audio/visual technician at a pride celebration hosted in the Great Hall at my school. While walking home from this event, I couldn't stop thinking about it and how I honestly wanted to write about it right that second. The experience was a narration worth telling about.
To preface this story, I want to say that if anything comes off as disrespectful in any way, I apologize. My intention is not to hurt anyone; quite the opposite. I just want to tell the story as it happened, and what it made me think of.
I also feel like I should give context for who I am, to maybe explain how I would see this experience. I am a Christian (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). I believe that marriage is sacred, supported by God, and that it was meant to be between a man and a woman, with complete fidelity to your spouse and yourself before and during marriage. With that said, I want to tell you about my first pride celebration.
I went to this celebration for work. I'm an audio/visual technician, so for almost all on-campus events, any sound or video/lighting equipment needed is set up by us. This pride celebration took place on campus, so we were called in to work for it, and I was assigned to the particular job. I honestly didn't know what to expect.
I think I thought it would be a campus-run event, and pretty casual.. I was wrong. When I got to the Great Hall, there were about three people already there. They were setting up a snack table. All of them were wearing pretty extreme clothing, and it made me quite nervous. I didn't know what I was getting into, and I'm a pretty reserved person. However, I was just there to work, and even though I had to stay through the whole event, I usually wasn't much of a participant in events I worked for, so I just started setting up and figured that was pretty much all I would be doing that evening.
The party requested microphones and music, the latter provided by the hosts. After I got the microphones set up, I asked the host of the party what music he had for me to play. He told me that it was his first time ever planning and hosting a party. I told him that I hadn't worked an event in this space in quite awhile (thus why I was kind of running around like I didn't know what I was doing), so we were at least kind of in the same boat and just gonna get through it together.
I finally figured out where to plug in the device to get his music playing. Soon guests started showing up and I started playing music. He had made a special pride parade for the event. I just had to sit there and let it play. I sat in the back and wrote.
As the hosts continued getting the final pieces of the party ready and people started showing up, I heard the hosts mention a drag show that would be the final event of the evening. That REALLY freaked me out. I think you guys know that I'm not super interested in engaging in sexual things, and definitely not in watching other people engage in sexual things. I was worried about having to leave in the middle of the party if I got too uncomfortable. However, as the hosts discussed this part of the event, they were so respectful. They were making a set list and even asking every participant what they wanted to be called when they performed, whether it was their real name or a stage name. They looked over every song to make sure that it was appropriate, not too explicit or graphic, because this was a family-friendly party; there were a lot of adults as well as a lot of little children there. They discussed telling people to keep their performances clean, and to tell the audience before the drag show started so they could leave if they weren't comfortable with participating. It touched my heart how much consideration they were taking into how other people felt at their party.
Like I said, I don't typically do much during events like this, so I expected to just sit in the back and monitor the music while it played. However, throughout the night multiple people came and requested me to play specific songs. Eventually I asked the host if I was allowed to take requests because I just kept getting them, and he said that was absolutely fine. It was so fun talking to people and finding the songs they wanted me to play, adding them to the queue of music. Not only was I a participant in this event, but I wanted to be, so different from so many of my tech jobs.
Most of the evening was socializing, snacking, and dancing. Friends and families were all gathered together. Contrary to what I thought would be the case, this event wasn't run by the school. It had been put on by a couple of students, so it was just a small community event for people that were interested in coming. Everyone gathering together and having a great time in each other's company was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
Eventually it was announced what time the drag show would start, and pointing out that if anyone was uncomfortable with that part of the event, that was when they should slip out. The host made the announcement that he said he would, that the performers were supposed to keep it family-appropriate. He also said that people that felt comfortable being touched or danced with should sit in the front, and those that did not should sit in the back. Again, I was filled with love witnessing this man's respect and appreciation for his guests and doing everything he could to make them feel comfortable. This was his first time hosting a party? He was doing amazing. I was so impressed.
Of course I had been initially nervous for the drag show. However, it wasn't really a drag show. Only one of the performances made me uncomfortable, so I just chose not to watch that one. The others were pretty much just people dancing, interacting with the audience, singing, having a great time together. One guy even brought his roommates and their instruments and performed a few songs. It was what a party should be in my eyes, the more chill version of the parties that One Direction sings about but that you've never actually been to. Between every performance the host hyped up the previous performer and introduced the next one. At one point, a woman went up to sing a song that she was extremely nervous for. To reassure herself, she kept saying, "You're with family." The audience cheered, encouraged, and supported her throughout the entire performance.
As the evening went on, one of my old professors asked the two gentlemen who put the party together to say a few words. She was so grateful for them for putting this event together.
The gentlemen said that they were just hanging out one evening when they casually mentioned how they should put together a pride celebration. As they kept talking, the idea became more and more of a reality until they finally realized they were going to actually do it. They expressed so much joy and gratitude, and maybe that wasn't even verbal; but the way they were glowing was so significant to me. I think it was one of multiple times that night that I got choked up.
The last thing our host said was that living in Cedar City (a small town with not much cultural diversity), he was pretty sure that a lot of members of the LGBT+ community felt alone. To that he said, "Look around! We're all here." They had a lot of friends around them, and there were more people with them than they had realized. They really did have a community in their town.
After the event, before I cleaned up, I did something I don't think I've ever done before at a job: I congratulated him on how well he did, which he really appreciated. I knew he had been anxious for the event, how much work and care he had put in, and that I had genuinely enjoyed the party. It was some of the most fun I'd ever had working an event.
For those of you that want a summary of what the celebration of pride month is all about, I'd say my host friend said it best in his closing remarks. It's just to let people know they're not alone. Sexuality aside, beliefs aside, it is about what everything should be about: showing people they are not alone.
You all well know what I believe. I stated it at the beginning of this post. What I believe, however, can be well summarized by a few simple verses from the Bible, dictating the wise words of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Matthew 22:36-40):
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The most important things in the world to me are loving God and loving His children. To love God, I worship Him and follow His teachings. To love His children, I show them compassion and support, no matter what they do. At the end of the day, I believe almost everyone is trying to do what's right, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But I know if people judged me based on every time I tried to do the right thing and failed, I would hope they would show me compassion, because that happens quite frequently. I'm a Christian because I'm a sinner, which means I need help to get better. All of us fall short. If God shows me grace, the least I can do is show grace to everyone else. Quite honestly, what other people do is none of my business. I can only control how well I take care of them. I believe it's my responsibility to take care of others the best I can.
One of the education classes I took last semester was schools, society, and diversity. We talked about different aspects of identity in this class and how we could help our students in all of the different identities they come from. During the weeks that we talked about sexual orientation, the question came up (I think multiple times) of how to support our students even if we disagreed with their actions. The answer is so much simpler than people realize, or maybe than they're ready to accept. I learned when I was about sixteen years old that supporting someone and supporting what they do are two different things. Thinking otherwise means that your love is conditional, and love shouldn't be that way. It is none of my business what other people do, just like it is none of their business what I think/feel about what they do. When it comes to love, it is irrelevant. I still believe in traditional marriage, but when someone trusts me with an important part of who they are, there is no reason for me to tell them. I know so many people do things like that in an attempt to love and support the person while still making it clear what they believe, but when a person is in a vulnerable moment like that, it just makes them feel unheard and unloved, whether that is the intention or not. If someone asks or it comes up, that is of course fine to bring up, because there's nothing wrong with sharing what you believe in a comfortable and appropriate situation. But the overall priority is to make people feel loved. To love somebody, you do not have to understand them or justify what they do.
A small example is my dear friend Lily and I. She was my last mission companion, and you have never met two people that are more different. Everything that's true for her, the opposite is true for me. We even navigated our way through a personality quiz with the other sisters that lived in the building. Our personality types were literally exact opposites. But she is one of my best friends to this day, one of the companions I was the closest to. Just because we loved each other. And I think we could even recognize that the things that were different about us, the ways that we saw the world, they made us stronger when we worked together. We loved each other before we did anything else, and that is what makes any relationship good.
There's another passage from the Bible that speaks to the theme of pride month is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
If you want to love someone, be patient and be kind. We're all just out here trying our best, and we're all just out here trying to not feel alone. Let's all do the best we can to help each other out.
Thanks and much love!