‘Just a bunch of acceptance.’ LGBTQ Pride returns to Biloxi after COVID-19 hiatus
On Saturday, Pride was back at Point Cadet.
Hundreds of people mingled among local vendors and watched musical performances on stage. Some wore LGBTQ and transgender pride flags as capes; others wore T-shirts advertising “Free Vaccinated Mom Hugs.”
After a year’s hiatus during the pandemic, Pride Day, first held at Point Cadet in 2017, returned to Biloxi for the fourth time. By noon, an hour after the start time, hundreds of people had arrived.
And, unlike during previous Pride celebrations, there were no protesters.
We asked attendees what Pride means to them here in south Mississippi
Bill Myers
Bill Myers, who is nearly 70, wants younger LGBTQ people to know their history, and to remember that pride “is not just a party, it’s a protest as well.”
“Now, it kind of seems like we’re on a cruise,” he said of the shift toward acceptance and legal protections for LGBTQ people. “But it’s not done.”
Myers grew up in Moss Point. At one point when he was in his 20s, he and a friend heard a rumor of a gay bar in Gulfport. They drove all around town searching for it, hoping to find a community. They even called the operator, who said she knew of no such thing in Gulfport.
“We never did find anything,” he said.
When he came out, he was the only openly gay person he knew. He moved to Denver and built a career as an artist. Then the AIDS crisis claimed many of his friends, some of them people like him who had viewed larger urban areas as havens.
“We left little towns so we could be out in big cities,” he said.
In the 1990s, having seen so many people he knew die, he came back home, first to New Orleans and then to the Coast. He’s attended Pride events for decades, and has been at every Pride Day in Biloxi since its launch.
He still remembers the first one he attended as a young man in Denver.
“I didn’t really understand Pride until turning around and seeing 10,000 people behind you,” he said.
Bernie, Ava Suit, Rebecca Leonard and James Taylor
A group of Gulfport High School students was thrilled to be introducing two friends to Pride.
“It’s a level of comfortability like you will never get anywhere else,” said James Taylor, attending his first Pride.
Ava Suit, who identified herself as the group’s token straight ally, said she was excited for the opportunity to vocally support her LGBTQ friends. And also to see drag performances, which are normally held in bars where you have to be 18 to enter.
The friends are involved in theater, band and chorus at their school, which they said is generally accepting of LGBTQ identities.
But they recognized limits, too. Bernie, 17, didn’t want to give her last name.
“Because old people read the newspaper and old people don’t know,” she said.
“With it being a conservative state, it’s very hard to be prideful,” Taylor said. “And there’s such a stigma with being young, that you don’t know who you are. Pride lets you now that you know who you are and what you stand for.”
Aja Spurr, 36
Aja Spurr’s primary reason for attending Pride was standing right next to her. “My bisexual daughter,” she said.
Saturday was their third time attending Pride together. Spurr also has many LGBTQ friends, including her best friend Savannah Turner, who was also there.
“It’s just a bunch of acceptance, everybody loving everybody,” she said.
As if to demonstrate her point, a man passing by shouted, “I love your shirt!”
“Thank you,” she replied. The shirt read “Kiss whoever the f*** you want.”
Spurr grew up in Pascagoula and now lives in D’Iberville. She’s seen attitudes toward LGBTQ people change over the years.
“There’s always going to be close-minded people,” she said. “But there’s a ton of people that are straight, just here to support their friends or family.”
Destin Holmes, 24, and Savannah Turner, 29
At 24, Destin Holmes is already a part of Coast LGBTQ history. She sued Moss Point School District in 2013, after suffering years of bullying and harassment from both students and teachers because she is a lesbian. The bullying was so severe that she attempted suicide several times.
In 2015, the district settled and promised to make policy changes to protect LGBTQ students in the future.
“It felt great,” she said on Saturday. “I didn’t do it for me. I did it for the next kid after me.”
On Saturday, she attended Pride with her girlfriend Savannah Turner. Both women said their parents are supportive, but Turner’s extended family members who are “really big into the Bible” don’t accept her sexuality.
“They believe we’re all going to go to hell, and that’s OK,” Turner said. “But the God of my understanding, he still loves me.”
Holmes said Pride was an opportunity to see community support, and recognition of one basic fact: “It sucks being in the closet.”
Javier Marchee and Cyrena Mczorn
Javier Marchee and his wife Cyrena Mczorn were attending their first Pride in five years together. They brought a young niece and her friend.
Marchee moved to the Coast from Alabama five years ago, while Mczorn has been here almost her entire life.
Mczorn said she was impressed there were no protesters.
“The fact that we can do this in 2021 in peace” was a sign that attitudes were changing, Mczorn said.
Harry Johnson
Harry Johnson and another friend from Alabama were making a tour of Gulf Coast pride festivals. They’d gone to a celebration in Alabama, and Johnson is plotting to get them to Southern Decadence in New Orleans.
“The changes are dramatic from the past to the present day,” he said. “The freedom and liberal attitudes are growing. The profiling and stereotypes don’t work.”
But another friend in the group couldn’t share his name because he’s not out at work in a south Mississippi town.
Johnson summarized the spirit of Pride with two words: “Do you.”
Megan Craven
Craven sat under the tent for Gulfport’s First Christian Church, one of two LGBTQ-affirming churches at Pride. She was raised Southern Baptist in Jones County, and she came to Pride with her church to share a message.
“This hate that is spouted isn’t Christian,” she said. “And it isn’t God’s love. We welcome everyone as God welcomes everyone.”
When she came out, her father was a deacon in the church. It took her parents time to become “open and accepting.” And now, they’re also accepting and love their daughter’s wife, Regina Rhodes.
What does Pride mean to Craven?
“Visibility. Openness. Acceptance.”
