Claremont
“I feel represented,” a young attendee with green hair under a rainbow beanie said upon arriving and glimpsing the sea of tents, balloons and many-hued flags.
Festival-goers wandered through rows of booths staffed by local organizations such as SAU 6 and Rural Outright, a program of the TLC Family Resource Center that helped run the event. Beyond the awnings, a parade of shows took place in front of a pavilion: belly dancers gyrating to techno music, a folk singer strumming a guitar, drag queens strutting on the stage.
People in full-body animal suits roamed the crowd — here, a pink bunny; there, a purple gorilla with fairy wings.
Taking shelter from the 80-degree heat, the occupant of the gorilla suit identified herself as Mikayla Bourque, a board member of SEA/SEIU Local 1984, the state employees union.
Bourque also is chairwoman of the union’s Lavender Caucus, a group dedicated to protecting LGBT rights in New Hampshire. Often wearing the gorilla suit — a mascot, of sorts, that caucus organizers hope people can connect to — she attends Pride events across the state and testifies on legislation in Concord. Bourque and her colleagues lent their support to House Bill 1319, now law, which protects transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.
As a transgender woman, Bourque said she knows how needed the legislation was. She has faced awkward questions while registering to vote with local clerks, who couldn’t reconcile her appearance with her driver’s license. After North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” raised the profile of the transgender rights debate, people here in New Hampshire accosted her as she used the bathroom.
Again and again, Bourque finds herself explaining to people who she is and how to address her.
“You become an ambassador,” she said.
Add to that the pressures of living as an LGBT person in a rural environment, where diversity is sparse and relating to one’s neighbors can be difficult.
Neil Allen, an organizer with Rural Outright, noted that rates of suicide and bullying are higher for queer people in rural communities.
“People don’t understand you,” said Allen, who identifies as a transgender man. “They’re going to go with what they heard on TV and what their parents taught. And they’re going to bully.”
That’s why Rural Outright, a year-old program serving Sullivan County and area towns, has been reaching out to area youth with social groups, creative workshops, film screenings and more events intended to bring together the scattered LGBT community.
“The kids need the support,” Allen said. “The whole community needs it, but especially the kids. It’s hard enough being a teenager. It’s even harder being a teenager and different.”
Skylar Ford, a 15-year-old Stevens High student, helped conceive of Saturday’s event after making the long drive to Portsmouth Pride and wishing that there were support networks closer to home.
“This is a very ‘cis’ town,” said Ford, using the term for people whose gender identity corresponds with their birth sex — as compared to transgender people. “You don’t get a lot of support. I just want people to feel accepted.”
With events like these and the passage of laws like HB 1319, festival participants on Saturday said transgender rights were headed in the same direction as gay rights, despite the current adversarial mood of national politics. Linda Tanner, a state representative from Georges Mills, said that as a gay woman she wouldn’t have considered running for office back in 1969, when she became a schoolteacher in the Kearsarge area. But that was then; now, she’s serving her second term as a Democratic lawmaker in Concord. “I never thought people would accept me for who I was,” she said.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.
Correction
State Rep. Linda Tanner, D-Sunapee, has served two terms in the New Hampshire House. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described her tenure.