The 2019 Up North Pride Visibilty March in TC drew more than 6,000 attendees. Photo courtesy of Michael Poehlman Photography.
LGBTQ+ UP NORTH How Far Have We Come?
By Craig Manning In 2019, the Up North Pride Traverse City Visibility March drew more than 6,000 attendees. It’s an event that has become, in the six years since it began, the single largest LGBTQ+ Pride march in the state of Michigan. But Traverse City wasn’t always known for being an open-minded and welcoming community to LGBTQ+ populations, and most other smaller towns throughout northern Michigan still don’t have that reputation. In honor of Up North Pride’s 2020 Pride Week celebrations (which, because of COVID-19, will run virtually in 2020, from June 22 through June 28), Northern Express took stock of where things stand for the LGBT community today, including how far we’ve come over the years — and how far we still have left to go. CREATING A SAFER PLACE
“When I first moved [to northern Michigan] in the early ’90s, it was a very different community,” said Traverse City Mayor Jim Carruthe=rs. “It was not a welcoming community or an accepting community to diversity, at all.”
Jonny Cameron, who co-founded Up
North Pride and serves as its chair, echoes Carruthers’ words. “My wife, Elon, graduated from Traverse City High School in 1991, and she remembers very well how it was here for queer people at the time,” Cameron told Northern Express. “It was not safe. There was not much visibility, aside from maybe a sticker on the door of a bookstore or The Bookie Joint [used bookstore in Traverse City], which I think is the first place I remember seeing a rainbow sticker.” In Traverse City, at least, things have changed a bit in the past 20 years. In particular, Cameron recalls October 2010, when the Traverse City City Commission voted to update the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance. The update made it illegal for employers to fire or otherwise discriminate against employees due to sexual orientation and set similar rules for landlords, apartment complexes, and other housing facilities. One of the people sitting on that city commission was Carruthers, who is openly gay. Carruthers went on to win the mayoral office in 2015 and won re-election to a second term last fall. In 2014, Cameron co-founded Up North Pride. That year, they said, about 250
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people showed up for the first Visibility March. By year two, the event was already expanding into other free programming, from youth outreach efforts to LGBTQ+ storytelling events to a popular drag night at The Little Fleet bar and food truck lot. And every year, the numbers grew, turning Up North Pride from a niche event into one of northern Michigan’s biggest and most beloved celebrations. Today, Cameron says the support from the community is almost surreal. Not only has Up North Pride found partners in the likes of the Traverse City Downtown Development Authority, the Traverse City Arts Commission, and Traverse City Tourism, but Cameron also notes how common it has become to see a rainbow flag or an Up North Pride sign outside a local business. Things today are a far cry from when the only rainbow sticker to be found in northern Michigan was on the door of a bookstore or two. “We really are feeling the love and support of a lot of organizations and institutions in this area that we just didn’t have seven years ago,” Cameron said. “We have them taking steps with us to ensure that this place is going to continue to be more inclusive and
safe. And the allies that have supported us in this movement have been on a learning journey with us. They’ve asked things like, ‘Okay, you’re trans. What are pronouns? How can I be an ally? How can I help?’ So we have been steadily educating a wonderful posse of allies in this community who are taking that work into their workplaces and into their homes.” “TEN STEPS FORWARD, EIGHT STEPS BACK” That’s not to say the battle is won, or that homophobia or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity are things of the past. On the contrary, on both a local and national level, LGBTQ+ awareness, acceptance, and human rights remain areas of major debate and struggle. Last year, the partnership between Up North Pride and the Traverse City Arts Commission resulted in rainbow stripe being installed at 14 crosswalks around town. The art installations drew online backlash and hateful comments from some community members, prompting Carruthers to question how much progress Traverse City had actually made toward LGBTQ+ acceptance — and how much the example set by the Trump White House might be affecting
