Physical Pride marches may be canceled this year because of COVID-19, but Pride will continue to be celebrated in Vermont.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Pride parade, on June 28, 1970, in New York City. It commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots on June 28, 1969.

On June 11, 1999, President Bill Clinton declared that June will forever be Pride month.

The Stonewall Riots are an important part of history for LGBTQIA+ rights. New York City police raided a gay club, the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village and nearly a week of uprising took place.

This year’s COVID-19 outbreak has caused cancellation of Pride parades across the country. But activists are still finding ways to celebrate and support the LGBTQIA+ community.

Taylor Small

Taylor Small, director of health and wellness for the Pride Center of Vermont, moved from Massachusetts her sophomore year of high school. She had family in Vermont and planned to attend the University of Vermont.

The state became a place that embraced Small, as opposed to her hometown in where she said her identity was never accepted and she faced bullying and harassment at school.

“In Massachusetts people would call me gay or say that I was gay. And instead, folks here would ask the question like, are you gay? Which at first was very off-putting, like focusing on the fact that I had come from a background where folks were very aggressive around that identity. I wasn’t in a space where I was ready to embrace that,” Small said.

After living in Vermont for three years, Small said she finally felt comfortable to come out to those around her, senior year of high school. Small came out as trans her senior year of college.

While at UVM, Small began volunteering at Outright Vermont, a non-profit that has been working with LGBTQIA+ youth in Vermont since 1989.

Small’s first interaction with Outright Vermont was at the Vermont Drag Idol competition, an amateur drag fundraiser.

“So often when we think of drag, we think of it within a nightclub scene or a bar, so it’s pretty age-restricted, but also a beautiful place for people to understand and embrace their identity,” Small said.

Small competed for the first time in 2014. There were 12 contestants. She won as her drag persona Nikki Champagne.

“They gave me that platform to be able to, I mean now, do all the drag events in the area,” Small said.

Nikki Champagne has since done drag events around Vermont including Paint: A Drag Cabaret, Glitter and Duct Tape, The Vermont Pride Festival, Queer Pop-Up Dance Party, and SASS, among others.

Last year, Small hosted The Vermont Pride Festival in drag as Nikki Champagne.

Nikki Champagne, Taylor Small’s drag persona. Courtesy photo.

“It was our largest Pride yet, we had over 4,000 people show up in little old Burlington to celebrate our beautifully diverse community. And just standing in Battery Park and being able to see everyone and feel that love and that embrace. There’s nothing else like it,” Small said.

Small noted Black trans women helped lead the original movement.

“I’m so grateful for Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and leading this cause. Trans women from the beginning leading this cause and saying enough is enough. So I stand on their shoulders today and I’m always paying them respect for the work that they’ve done,” Small said.

Small noted that there is still work to do, particularly in today’s world where the Black Lives Matter movement has garnered widespread attention. Black trans women are among those discriminated against.

“So often I think our history has been whitewashed in the way that we celebrate Pride and it feels like that movement is coming. That we are embracing the fact that it is not just about LGBTQ rights, but it is about our collective rights that we all deserve,” Small said.

The Pride Center is working to find a way to take this year’s festival online. Pride Week is Sept. 7-13. There will be a virtual Pride celebration on Saturday, Sept. 12.

Small volunteered at Vermont Pride Center in 2018 when she became unemployed after her employer refused to use the correct pronouns and other businesses refused to hire her, she said. She is now the director of health and wellness there, and is running for the Winooski House seat as a Democrat. If she wins, she will be the first openly transgender preson elected to the Vermont Legislature.

Small is among three transgender women running for house seats this year, according to local media.

John Killacky

Rep. John Killacky, Democrat, South Burlington, moved to Vermont in 2010 to become the Executive Director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. He retired in 2018 and now serves as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives.

Killacky was in high school in Chicago when the Stonewall Riots happened in 1969. He came out when he was 15 years old, but had no positive, public figures to look up to who were gay.

“So for me, who came into my gay identity in high school, to read about Stonewall was thrilling because it was these powerful people who are not going to be intimidated by the police. It was the Sylvia Rivera’s and Marcia Johnon’s. Now I have a community that is a fierce community that stands up for itself,” Killacky said.

Killacky moved to New York for college, an area that became an epicenter during the AIDS epidemic in 1981.

“For those who lived through this, it was such a marker in queer identity because no one knew what it was. There was such panic, fear, misinformation and homophobia. It was unbelievable,” Killacky said.

At the time, Senator Jesse Helms wanted to quarantine HIV-positive people. Secretary of Education, William Bennett, said people who were HIV-positive should remain in custody, so that they could not take revenge on society. Conservative author, William Buckley, to tattoo people who tested positive for HIV.

“But even in the beginning, it was a lot like the pandemic response to COVID. The medical establishments didn’t know what to do, so I would visit friends sitting in emergency rooms in the hallways, because there weren’t enough beds. And the medical staff was afraid too because no one really knew what was going on,” Killacky said.

The queer communtiy began to organize their own communities in response to the AIDS epidemic, like the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, AIDS Foundation and AIDS Project of Los Angeles.

“There are very few men who were my friends during college in New York during the 70s and 80s who lived. I’ve spoken to a number of people across the country who talked about how COVID was like a PTSD kick in,” Kilacky said.

Killacky moved to San Francisco with his husband Lawrence Connolly, who is now a lecturer at UVM.

Vermont Rep. John Killacky. Courtesy photo.

In 2008, there was a proposition on the ballot in California that was anti-gay marriage. If it passed, Killacky and Connolly would not have been able to get married. Killacky and Connolly got married at City Hall a week before the vote, which ultimately did not pass.

The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015.

“Legal Rights are important. It’s tax issues. Married couples have different tax advantages than two adults living together. The other thing is, for Social Security, you have to be married for 10 years to be able to draw from your spouse’s Social Security. So these are real issues,” Killacky said.

June 15 of this year – just weeks ago – the Supreme Court ruled that the federal civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from discrimination.

“It is long overdue, but necessary. In a way, this all comes out of Stonewall for me,” Killacky said.

Killacky echoed Smalls’ comment that Black trans women are disproportionately murdered and discriminated against, but oftentimes cases are not talked about in the media.

“We are seeing a number of Black transgendered women murdered and they are not getting the same attention. So, we really have an issue that these women are seen as disposable and it’s a crisis. We have to honor all the lives that have been lost, all of the Black lives,” Killacky said.

Killacky said that the Vermont community welcomed his queer identity and accepted him, when some other places that he has lived have not.

In New York, Philadelphia and Minneapolis Killacky said that the press always called him the gay curator.

“That’s always seemed really odd to me because no one else was called the ‘straight curator.’ Here, it’s never come up in Vermont,” Killacky said.

“I’m in the Vermont House of Representatives and it was incredible to see last year when Outright Vermont came and kids from across the trade came to the Statehouse to meet the out-identified legislators in the House,” Killacky said.

Ninety-one people came to the Statehouse, which included LBGTQIA+ youth and allies.

“It was not a hidden community. It was a proud community, they were a powerful community, an organized community that was using their voice. I would say they are the grandchildren of Stonewall if I am a child of Stonewall,” Killacky said.

Today, Killacky teaches at Champlain College and found that, primarily, students understand pronouns and how to use them, while faculty still struggle with it.

“The rainbow allows people to be who they truly are and not be locked into an identity. The pronoun issue is for many people, a generational problem. We just have to get over it. They is an okay word,” Killacky said.

The Pride Center of Vermont is a place of community and a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community, Killacky said.

“People need to feel safe and to go find community and that’s often where people first go and it’s really important that we get back to getting together in those spaces. I feel like now in isolation, it is important we find ways to reach out to people,” Killacky said.