One of the few places to score worse than Aberdeen on LGBTQ-inclusive law and policy is Pierre, which scored a 0 out of 100, compared to Aberdeen’s 18, on the Human Rights Commission’s 2017 Municipal Equality Index. Some folks in Pierre are trying to catch up with Aberdeen and the 21st century.
The Pierre Area Center for Equality just launched a new website to advertise their activities, particularly their Pierre Area Pride Festival, planned for July 7 in our capital city. To raise money for that event, PACE is selling these snazzy t-shirts, with logo designed by PACE organizer Joshua Penrod.
PACE has lined up Pierre singer/songwriter Katie Dwyer to perform at the July 7 festival. To help people stretch out and rejuvenate after a long festival, PACE is also planning a rainbow yoga event on July 8 led by Democratic District 24 Senate candidate Amanda Bachmann. It will be interesting to see if incumbent Republican Senator Jeff Monroe and any of the other District 24 Legislative candidates have the flexibility to attend rainbow yoga and the other PACE events this July. It will also be interesting to see if PACE’s efforts to raise awareness of LGBTQ issues in Pierre will lead to local government adopting better anti-discrimination policies to raise our capital city’s Municipal Equality Index.
Nice t-shirt. Kudos to the LBTG folks in Pierre for putting on this celebration. I hope they get lots of support from all around SoDak. It’s great that Amanda Bachmann will attend.
Ignorant and/or hateful SDGOP politicos won’t because they’re afraid it may be catching. Their gender specificity is so fragile they can’t take any risks, especially the males.
It will be interesting to see how many people show up since Pierre is full of state employees that hail to the antilgbt GOP. Then people that do work for the state but want to support the LGBT will dare not to for fear of sticking out like a sore thumb. That is what one party regime does. Definitely the closet employees will stay far away.
Hey, Pierre has great people, too, along with some who aren’t. I’m sure there will be folks who come around just for the music, if nothing else. There have been closeted, or at least not publicly out, gay Republican officeholders elected statewide. And I’m not talking about Pressler, who was not gay.
Denny and Linda are moving out next winter; maybe they could afford to drop in the company town and say a few inclusive words.