Thousands pour into downtown for Raleigh Pride, declaring ‘Equality Hurts No One’
Thousands filled Fayetteville Street Saturday for the 13th Out! Raleigh Pride festival, turning downtown into a colorful celebration of diversity and acceptance while rejecting what many called a rise in hateful rhetoric.
Pride’s second day drew a family-friendly crowd as a counter to a Friday-night dance party, and festival-goers walked the 90-degree streets under parasol hats, waving rainbow-colored folding fans.
“I just wanted to show that I’m out and I’m proud and I’m visible,” said Timothy Kinney, a Durham retiree, sporting a unicorn-shaped hat and multi-colored beads in his mustache. “It’s important this year because our community is threatened by the Trump administration, saying he’s going to do this and that.”
Saturday’s festival came as policy and legislation widely viewed as targeting LGBTQ+ people continues to emerge both across North Carolina and nationwide.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration has announced it will no longer fund the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline’s services aimed at helping LGBTQ+ youth.
Health officials at the state level issued a statement about the change Friday “to reaffirm North Carolina’s commitment to serving everyone who calls 988 for crisis care.”
“The need for mental health care for young people in North Carolina has never been greater, and we are committed to reaching every person in every community in every corner of our state,” said Kelly Crosbie, director of mental health for the state Department of Health and Human Services. “More than 8,000 North Carolinians call the 988 Lifeline every month for support.”
Meanwhile, Johnston County is now considering a ban on gay pride flags in its schools and removing language from its anti-discrimination policy that specifically protects LGBTQ+ students and employees.
Also, the North Carolina House approved a bill this past week that would bar adoption agencies from denying prospective parents from adopting a child because they oppose gender-affirming care for that child.
Another bill making its way through the legislature would declare there are only two sexes and extend a deadline to file medical-malpractice lawsuits related to gender transition care for adults.
Both bills are up for possible votes in the state Senate on Monday.
Pride brings crowds, churches to downtown Raleigh
The Pride festival is free to attend but donations represent an important fundraiser for the LGBT Center of Raleigh. Volunteers offered free testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and multiple connections to counseling. The SPCA of Wake County offered free engraved ID tags in honor of “Purrrrrrrride.”
Vendors lined the streets offering T-shirts with Pride-themed slogans: “March to the Beat of Your Own Pronouns” and “Equality Hurts No One.”
Melinda Ewbank showed off hand-made watercolor greeting cards painted with Pride-related puns: “I Have So Mushroom in my Heart for You,” and “Not All Happy Endings Need a Prince.”
“Just being silly,” said Ewbank, whose business is named Happy cabbage. “I think it’s important to celebrate diversity and inclusion in an environment that doesn’t always feel safe.”
More than a dozen Triangle churches set up booths to welcome LGBTQ+ parishioners: Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite and several United Methodist, including Saint Francis of Cary, which hung a banner announcing, “Christ invites all to the table.”
At the Pullen Memorial Baptist booth, Sean O’Neal offered “free dad hugs” to all passersby.
“If your dad won’t hug you, I will,” he said, noting that he is a Dragon Dad, or father to an LGBTQ+ child. “The tough part is the people who come up to me and say, ‘My dad never hugged me after I came out.’ Those are the ones you don’t let go of first.”
At around 1 p.m. a street evangelist wearing a sandwich board painted with a verse from the book of Hebrews began loudly denouncing homosexuality as an abomination. The crowd largely ignored him, but as he began walking through the thickest part of the crowd, festival-goers surrounded him with a banner that read “We Won’t Listen,” mostly blocking him from view. More street preachers followed, and the crowd responded by holding hands and singing around them.
As the crowds got thicker, Sari Sterling drew attention with a rainbow-colored umbrella big enough for a patio table, which she carried at the end of a pole rising 10 feet high. She hung strings of colorful puff balls that dangled around her head, and every few minutes, an excited group would crowd around her and pose for pictures underneath.
“I did it because it’s just so hot,” she said, smiling, “but also this is good for my emotional health. I’m from Durham and Raleigh Pride is so well-attended. It’s a community that cares and shows up.”
This story was originally published June 21, 2025 at 3:17 PM.