It marks the 50th anniversary of the 1969 riots at New York’s Stonewall Inn, considered the spark of the gay-rights movement in America. What Braun loves about Tueller, he said, is “how he leads with empathy, how he leads with such an open heart.”įor many LGBTQ people, and the people who love them, Pride this summer has a special meaning.
He’s moving to New York in June, to live with his boyfriend.) (Ironically, this year might be Tueller’s last Utah Pride Festival for a while. … I felt like I’ve finally got my family to step into my world.” “Our process together, and my desperation for her to accept me and embrace my gayness, was so important to me. “It was the cherry on top,” Tueller said of participating in the parade with his mom.
FIRST GAY PRIDE PARADE IN UTAH MOVIE
Much of the Salt Lake City part of the movie shows Tueller’s interactions with his mother, a devout Latter-day Saint who joins her son in walking in her first Pride parade.
FIRST GAY PRIDE PARADE IN UTAH HOW TO
The movie shows Tueller leading by example, showing his LGBTQ Utah neighbors how to live authentic lives. A few weeks later, on a family outing to a trampoline park, Tueller landed badly and broke his neck. Early that month, Tueller posted on Facebook about being gay - the last step in a yearlong process of coming out to family and friends. In those posts, Tueller talks about being an out gay man in Salt Lake City, and living with a spinal cord injury that put him in a wheelchair.īoth aspects of Tueller’s life trace back to pivotal events in December 2013. … It seemed like these issues are very much alive there, in ways they’re not in places like San Francisco and New York.”īraun and the filmmakers also had heard Tueller’s story, through his self-effacing posts on Instagram in 2017. That’s how we zeroed in on Salt Lake City. Jeffrey Friedman, who directed “State of Pride” with his longtime filmmaking partner Rob Epstein, said that as they were selecting locations for the documentary, “we knew religion would be a big issue, so we were looking for a place where the church plays a strong role in the community. “Ten seconds after driving by the temple," he said, “I saw my first rainbow flag.” The documentary peers through that looking glass in three cities: Tuscaloosa, Ala., a small Southern town where the community still resists the presence of LGBTQ neighbors San Francisco, where Pride is practically a city holiday and Salt Lake City, where tension between LGBTQ people and Latter-day Saint doctrine permeates the celebration.īraun said he felt that tension when he drove around Salt Lake City last summer. “I’ve always felt like Pride is a looking glass into the whole LGBTQ community,” said Raymond Braun, a YouTube personality and activist who is the movie’s on-screen host. That diversity in events, from big cities to small towns, is the focus of “State of Pride,” a documentary premiering Wednesday on YouTube.
Pride differs from place to place around the country, from the massive celebrations in New York and San Francisco to the two-day Utah Pride Festival set for Saturday and Sunday around Salt Lake City Hall. “Pride is, in the face of all that, declaring we’re really perfect the way we are and how we identify.” “Historically, LGBTQ people get the message that there’s something wrong with them,” Tueller said. “It’s like a reclamation of worth,” said Tueller, 29, a board member of Affirmation, a group that tries to provide a bridge for LGBTQ people who grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Croix Valley MN/WI | St.For Carson Tueller, going to a Pride festival - whether in his home state of Utah or elsewhere in the country - is a big declaration of who he is.
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