Full Spectrum parades through Warren | News, Sports, Jobs – Youngstown Vindicator
Pride parade participants toss candy from a float traveling along Mahoning Avenue NW on Saturday afternoon in Warren’s Courthouse Square. Full Spectrum Pride in the Valley was in part about visibility, drawing many in vivid dress who were talking, laughing and complimenting one another. Staff photo / R. Michael Semple
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WARREN — Of all the festivals held annually on Courthouse Square, Full Spectrum Pride in the Valley is almost undoubtedly the most colorful.
Throngs of people Saturday with rainbow shirts and multicolored hair, wearing an array of Pride flags like capes, moved through the rows of bright tents — talking, laughing and complimenting one another.
It was just the kind of vivid scene one would expect from an event focused on being seen.
“This event is all about visibility,” said Daniel Tirabassi, vice president of Full Spectrum Community Outreach, an LGBTQ+ resource center based in Youngstown.
Tirabassi said the LGBTQ+ community in the Mahoning Valley doesn’t have the same level of visibility as it does in other similar-sized areas.
LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and “plus” — everyone else who falls under the umbrella of the community.
“We’re not technically celebrating,” Tirabassi said. “The first Pride was actually a riot.” The 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, New York City, which inspired the modern Pride festivals, began with the gay community protesting a police raid.
Tirabassi said the local LGBTQ+ community is larger than most people realize and is made of up people’s neighbors, friends and family.
“You can’t tell who someone is by looking at them,” Tirabassi said.
GROWING PRIDE
Saturday marked the fourth Pride in Warren, though 2020’s event was virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tirabassi said he noticed an increase in attendance since last year, when the pandemic still was looming. This year’s event attracted people of all ages, including a large number of preteens and teenagers who said they were excited to embrace who they are.
“A lot of the people here are really nice. All of the outfits, they’re so beautiful,” 11-year-old Rilee “Toru” Nunemaker, said.
Rilee, who wore a pink-and-orange striped lesbian flag over her shoulders, attended Pride with 10-year-old Macie Ifft of Warren, as well as her mother, Nicole Nunemaker, her sister, Jazmyn, 9, and family friends, Nora, 7, and Brandi Besednjak.
She said she was lucky she got to spend the day with her girlfriend — and that her family is supportive.
Nicole Nunemaker and Brandi Besednjak also said they appreciated the event and agreed they couldn’t imagine something like Pride happening on the square 10 or 15 years ago.
“Even just to have a community like this, you’d have to go to a bar,” Besednjak said. That wouldn’t be an option for an 11-year-old, she said.
Taylor Smelko of Cortland, a trans lesbian who was attending Pride for the first time this year, said the thought of even being out 15 years ago would have been “scary.”
“I’m glad that we’re moving in the direction that we are,” Smelko said.
Smelko said she didn’t know what to expect coming to Pride, but she was having fun and had come back to the event a second time in the afternoon with her daughter.
“We need more of this,” Smelko said.
FREE HUGS
The fun of the day was briefly disrupted when a man with a bullhorn stepped on stage and shouted at drag performers in the Rust Belt Theatre Company Kids Show around 4:10 p.m., a few minutes after the show had begun. The man felt the program disagreed with his religious views, Tirabassi said.
It was the first time Warren’s Pride event has been disrupted in such a way. Tirabassi said the incident was dealt with in about five minutes, and police escorted the man away.
“It did nothing to the mood. They went right back to having fun,” Tirabassi said.
One part of Pride that could weather any storm was the ample availability of “free mom hugs.”
“I’m normally not a hugger,” said Heather Anderson of Poland, a mom volunteering with Free Mom Hugs, a national organization focused on education and visibility for the LGBTQ+ community.
Anderson’s sister, Allison Bugzavich, who also was giving free mom hugs, said sometimes people in the LGBTQ+ community aren’t accepted by the people who should love them the most.
The pair said they had given out lots of hugs Friday.
“You can’t put words to some of the reactions,” Bugzavich said. “Something so simple can make somebody’s day.”
Free Mom Hugs was founded in 2015 by Sara Cunningham, a Christian mother of a gay son in conservative Oklahoma, who wanted to spread love to the LGBTQ+ community, parents and allies.
Erica Putro of Warren, the state chapter leader for Free Mom Hugs, said her advice for parents of children who come out as part of the LGBTQ+ community is to listen.
“A lot of times what our kids need is for you to accept them, love them and listen,” Putro said. “A safe person they can count on — that’s the best start.”