The fifth annual Baton Rouge Pride Fest attracted people from all over Louisiana to celebrate diversity in all shapes, sizes and colors of the rainbow.
Complete with food, face painting, entertainment and a resource fair, Pride Fest hosted hundreds from different backgrounds and orientations in a family-friendly environment.
Shad Duplessis, resource fair coordinator, said the success of this year’s event can be attributed to timing and the spirit of participants.
Pride Fest began as a small group of people who wanted to celebrate their identities, Duplessis said. The first Pride Fest included a picnic in the park for several hundred members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
The celebration has since changed, growing to a gathering of about 3,500 people in the Belle of Baton Rouge atrium.
Duplessis said the amount of new attendees and the variety of entertainment has kept Pride Fest fresh.
“At one point we made an announcement asking who had never been to Pride Fest before,” Duplessis said. “Fifty percent said it was their first year attending. Having new fresh folks coming in along with entertainment keeps it different.”
Adrian Serio, biological engineering senior and co-vice president of Spectrum, the University’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer student organization, said some members of Spectrum were closely involved in Pride Fest.
“It’s a great event for our community, city and state,” Serio said. “It reaches a large demographic of Baton Rouge, and it’s a big step in welcoming straight counterparts.”
In addition to food, entertainment and family-friendly activities, Pride Fest also featured a resource fair. Vendors from Baton Rouge and beyond set up tables during the event.
The resource fair educates people who are not connected with the community or who may be new to the area, Duplessis said.
“There are so many people that attend — from human rights [organizations] to ACLU to Dow and Cox, letting the community know they can patron these places because they are supportive,” Duplessis said. “If you’re looking for a therapist or doctor or realtor, you can come to the resource fair and find a gay-friendly realtor.”
The fair also offers free HIV and STD testing. Despite concern about protecting privacy, Duplessis said people line up to get tested every year.
“Because of our generous sponsors and donors, everything we do is 100 percent free — and not every pride festival throughout the country can offer that,” Duplessis said. “We even added blood pressure screening this year, so people can get a complete health checkup.”
Alex Moore, Pride Fest volunteer, said he attended the event for the first time and feels Baton Rouge is accepting and open to the LGBTQ community.
“Pride Fest is different from some other gay events that only concentrate on the sexual side,” Moore said. “This is a more mature venue, with performances and tons of information from different organizations.”
Duplessis said Pride Fest started out five years ago as an event targeted toward the LGBTQ community, but he believes the next five years will focus on families.
“We all have families,” he said. “We all have people supportive of us in every aspect — people who should be educated on the LGBT community. It is not a negative, sinful community, it’s actually one of culture and entertainment and pride.”
Serio said the welcoming environment is a valuable aspect of Pride Fest.
“I personally like seeing all types of people attending with their families,” Serio said. “That really moves me.”
Next year’s Pride Fest is already scheduled for June 30, 2012.
“People come and they get to be themselves, as individuals who don’t have to pretend to be what everyone expects,” Moore said.
 
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Contact Morgan Searles at [email protected]