This parade starts at the Great Plaza, and moves from Front Street to Market Street before turning onto 7th Street.
In addition to workshops and other events, the festival includes a large parade. Philly Gay Pride Weekend is now one of the largest events of its type in Pennsylvania. In 2018, the organization celebrated the 30th anniversary of the event. Several hundred people came out for the first parade and festival in 1988. The Lesbian and Gay Task Force established a small office in Love Park in the 1980s and decided to host a Philadelphia Pride event that was open to the public. The Philly Pride Festival usually takes place from Friday to Sunday every year, and always promises a colorful scene! It encourages guests to share their own stories and experiences about coming out and to help others in need. One of those events is Pride Day, which takes place on the second weekend of June. Society is evolving, and anything we can do to move that forward is important to all of us regardless of race, color, creed and sexuality.Philadelphia is home to some of the oldest events associated with LGBTQ pride in the United States. “And we’re all part of humanity and we all need to be respected. “It’s not left, it’s not right, it’s humanity,” Rohrer said. Some argue that sports teams and leagues should keep their support of Pride out of the public view because “politics don’t belong in sports.” Even if you think that, Rohrer argues supporting the LGBTQ community isn’t political. Most recently, social media lit up with praise for the Texas Rangers for their refusal to host a Pride Night this season. Smatterings of this kind of rejection are part of the path toward inclusion. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen negative reactions to sports’ support of the LGBTQ community. “But that’s still a lot of people who have some learning to do.” And out of millions and millions of people who follow the NFL’s Instagram, how many negative comments are on there? It’s a pretty small percentage.
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“A lot of people are going to say this is proof pro sports aren’t ready for gay athletes, but I think it’s proof the NFL is ready,” O’Callaghan said. O’Callaghan was quick to point out that, while it’s important to continue to point to corners of homophobic nonsense in sports, this doesn’t mean a gay NFL player would be rejected by the league, its teams or most fans. “A lot of people are going to say this is proof pro sports aren’t ready for gay athletes, but I think it’s proof the NFL is ready.” -Ryan O’Callaghan
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Rohrer came out publicly in 2018 shortly before marrying his husband, skin and beauty expert Joshua Ross. It makes no sense for people to be upset at the league for showing some pride and respect for the ex-players in the NFL who are gay.” “The gay community is a huge supporter of all sports, there are a lot of gay athletes in every sport, football being one of them. “It’s a shame for people to reject the NFL for embracing the gay community,” Rohrer said. The reactions haven’t sat well with former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jeff Rohrer. Of course, fans like this almost never leave after their toothless threats. Other fans said they would leave their NFL fandom behind, at least temporarily during Pride month, as a form of boycott: This creative fan turned himself into a “dislike button” and got over 10k “likes”. He now knows otherwise.Īnother popular meme has been pointing out that another team’s fans are so gay (because being gay is bad) that they must love Pride month:Ĭomments like that weren’t just pointed at the Philadelphia Eagles - It seems at least somebody from most teams’ fan bases got in on that incredibly “original” act. He didn’t think he could ever live as an out gay man. Throughout his NFL career and time playing football at Cal, O’Callaghan hid he was gay, assuming everyone in football would reject him if they knew. “The response shows people’s lack of understand and ignorance,” he said. This comment got over 15k likes:įormer NFL player Ryan O’Callaghan, who played three seasons with the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs, thinks supporting Pride has everything to do with the NFL. A post shared by NFL many fans have endorsed the display of support for the LGBTQ community with many thousands of likes and shares, others have resorted to some old tropes pushing back against the LGBTQ community with threats of boycotts and other annoyed expressions.Ī common theme amongst the naysayers on the NFL’s Instagram post was questioning what Pride has to do with football.