Thousands of people are expected to celebrate diversity and participate in the Honolulu Pride Parade and Festival this weekend.
The parade will begin at Ala Moana Park on Saturday at 4 p.m., proceed along Kalākaua Avenue, and end at Kapiʻolani Park. There will also be a festival with activities for keiki and kūpuna at the Waikiki Shell at 5 p.m.
Parties and other events celebrating Pride are also planned throughout the weekend.
"We want to include all folks to be able to participate in these events. But really, what we always want to make very clear is that these are safe spaces for communities to kind of coexist together, whether that you are a part of the LGBTQ community or if you are just an ally," said Zabrina Zablan-Duvauchelle, Honolulu Pride chair.
"Allies play a huge strong role for us, and so we want to make sure that we are creating safe spaces for all to feel included, to be able to celebrate what it means to be queer and just really gather as a whole."
June is Pride Month nationwide as it commemorates the Stonewall uprising of 1969. However, Hawaiʻi has its Pride celebration in October to align with various LGBTQ holidays.
"We do recognize and celebrate Pride in the month of June. But we also celebrate it in the month of October to coincide with LGBT History Month, National Coming Out Day, which is actually on Oct. 11, and Spirit Day, which is the third Thursday in October," she said.
Zablan-Duvauchelle said the event will be led by the organization's grand marshals: Dr. David McEwan, David Brustein, Bill Char, M. Puakea Nogelmeier and Sheri Mann.
"Part of the reason why our grand marshals this year are our founding members is because we wanted to really hone in on where we started and kind of give honor and homage to the folks who really paved the way so that our organization can be the organization that you see today," she said.
In past years, the organization has focused on achieving marriage equality, she said, but having marriage equality now does not mean there is nothing to fight for. The organization is advocating for the Vote Yes on 1 initiative.
On Hawaiʻi ballots in the November general election, the first state constitutional amendment question asks the voter: "Shall the state constitution be amended to repeal the legislature’s authority to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples?"
Currently, Article 1 Section 23 of the state constitution reads: "The legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples." If the ballot question receives enough "Yes" votes, that line will be removed from the constitution.
"So while we're present day able to celebrate and have more equity within the communities that we are a part of, we are still fighting that fight and that's still something that's at the forefront for us," Zablan-Duvauchelle said.
Zablan-Duvauchelle said that since this is an election year, the organization is "mindful of what that means" for the LGBTQ community.
"I would be remiss to say that knowing who our two candidates are, there is the sense of nervousness that I have, personally as somebody who's actually, my profession is in the wedding industry — knowing that this is something that could be on the docket is something that is very close to myself," she said.
"I think that when we're looking at it as an org, we're looking at it from the perspective of us just creating safe guidelines, safe measures, and just continuing to fight to make everybody feel included and equitable."
The Honolulu Pride weekend celebration will be headlined by Marina Summers, star of "Drag Race Philippines" and "RuPaul's Drag Race UK vs the World," and Nymphia Wind, the Taiwanese-American winner of the 16th season of "RuPaul's Drag Race." For more information, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Oct. 17, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Tori DeJournett adapted this story for the web.
