Future Not Certain For Pride Month Banner Program

This year when the banners came down letters went out, and the program's founder is walking away in part because of backlash to what started as a fundraiser for local scholarships

One of the “Celebrating Diversity” banners that have been hung on municipal light poles in Wenatchee and East Wenatchee during Pride month during the last three years. Photo by Dominick Bonny.

For the last three years, the Wenatchee and East Wenatchee city councils have approved motions to hang banners featuring the Pride flag colors and the words “Celebration of Diversity” on public light poles during the month of June, which is Pride month.

This year when the banners came down, letters from a few folks upset by them went out. The banner program is a fundraiser for a scholarship program to benefit minority students. Each banner is sponsored by an individual, a family, or a local business. And full disclosure, my business, Digital Media Northwest, has sponsored a banner for the last two years.

While I try to avoid making myself a part of the story, readers should know that I was one of the business owners who received a letter from folks who were upset. Don and Sheri Bowers of Wenatchee are two of the four people who sent letters to each banner sponsor, explaining how the “normalize” lifestyles with which they don’t agree.

“As you know, there is significant concern, throughout our nation, that our children are being indoctrinated and that the LGBTQ+ lifestyles are being normalized, (e.g., Target, Bud Light, Disney etc.).,” the couple wrote. “Since the LGBTQ+ population currently represents such a small percentage of our population, we are concerned that the ‘Pride’ movement is given such prominence in our hometowns. Celebrating for one month with banners lining the streets is one way you are celebrating and normalizing it.”

A photo of the letter sent by Don and Sheri Bowers. Photo by Dominick Bonny.

Barb Andre-Van Lith, owner of Ring-A-Bell’s Catering, sponsored one of the banners and was frustrated and angry with the letter.

“I just opened this piece of mail and I am fuming!! Apparently Don & Sheri Bowers don't know what tree they are barking up!!! I am so SICK and TIRED of seeing words thrown around about LGBTQ+ like ‘indoctrinated,’ ‘grooming,’ ‘recruiting.’ It’s disgusting and downright insulting!! JUST STOP! Accusing LGBTQ+ people of ‘grooming’ or ‘recruiting’ children to become gay or transgender is an age-old trope that feeds off fear and I really though(t) we were all better than this as a society,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Guess what Sheri and Don, my wife and I have been together for 24 years. We have 3 dogs, a son and a daughter we had together, a house on the hill, to much yard work, a travel trailer we haul to sporting events, small local businesses, pay our taxes, and contribute to our community. Our daughter is 17 and our son is 15. It's crazy that we as a same-sex couple have raised these two kids flying our rainbow flag, not hushing to bullies like yourself and participating in Pride year after year. Damn, these kids have a mind of their own and are fighting off the ‘grooming’ and ‘recruiting’ tactics. SMH.”

But the banners were never meant to cause division, said Elvis Garcia, who started the Elvis Garcia Foundation, the organization behind the banner. He said he wanted to raise money for local scholarships for minority students. Because of that, the words on the banners were selected very deliberately with the goal of making them as inclusive as possible.

“We very specifically chose the words ‘Celebration of Diversity’ and never once used the word ‘Pride’ because I know how polarizing words can be,” he said.

It was always about celebrating all types of diversity, not just Pride. Our community thrives because of our diversity, he said, “and that includes socio-economic” and racial diversity. It’s something Garcia, a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient, believes in passionately.

“I grew up in Wenatchee as a minority, as an undocumented immigrant, and there was a lot of financial stress,” he said. “I didn’t go to college.”

Garcia wanted to ease the burden of someone with life experiences like his, but the annual backlash to the banners became a heavy burden.

“I would get calls on my personal cell phone from people I didn’t even know and they would be like, ‘My family name is on one of those banners. You need to take it down!’, he said. “And I’m like, ‘A: I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re calling me. Someone with your last name bought a banner. You need to be directing (this) at them.”

Elvis and his partner Teddy said with each June comes stress and anxiety.

“The whole thing made me really sad,” he said. “And I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to own a business. I didn’t want to run a foundation. I didn’t want to be in the public eye. I didn’t want to do anything community-related because of how much people beat people up over helping.”

They’ve even been approached in public by people wanting to lodge complaints.

Teddy and Elvis Garcia, with their dogs.

A few weeks ago while recreating at Confluence State Park a stranger approached Elvis and asked if he would meet with him and “a third party” regarding the banners. Garcia described the encounter as unsettling and “stalkerish,” since the man seemed to know who Elvis and Teddy were and was not merely just bumping into the couple by happenstance.

The letters came too late to make an impact on Garcia’s decision to step away from organizing the program, so they are just a few more straws on top of an already-broken camel’s back.

Garcia said he got tired of being the symbolic minority who some ask for a comment on or explanation of LGBTQ+ and transgender issues. It’s better for the Wenatchee Pride group to provide those resources for people, and he said he’s happy that organization’s board is considering taking up the mantle and organizing the banner program going forward. Other organizations, like the NCW Equity Alliance, are also interested in taking over and that gives Garcia hope the program will continue.

“It should be a community effort,” Garcia said. “It shouldn’t be an individual doing it.”

There’s nothing currently set in stone, but whoever takes over will have to start organizing soon because the banners must be approved by both city councils each fall, well in advance of the following June.

Going to city councils and lobbying for approval of the banners each year was another aspect of the process Garcia didn’t relish. Last year there was some pushback that prompted supporters of the diversity banners to speak up at an East Wenatchee City Council meeting.

And for folks like Rachel Todd, executive director of YWCA NCW, objections to banners as innocuous as these are thin veils over a pervasive anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry that some in our community embrace and even relish to the point of openly expressing violent fantasies.

After the YWCA supported Pride Month events last year, she received an irate visitor who expressed that he would like to murder members of the LGBTQ+ community.

“‘If I wasn’t afraid of going to prison I would shoot those (sic) people if I saw them walking down the street,’” Todd said, quoting the man.

You can watch a video of Todd’s remarks and an interview with her after the meeting above.

The speech wasn’t merely an academic exercise made to a group of totally unbiased public officials. East Wenatchee City Councilman John Sterk last May resigned from the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center’s board because that organization was going to host an event featuring drag queens.

Sterk is also pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in East Wenatchee and he, along with other notably-controversial local pastors, took out an ad in The Wenatchee World warning of “the consequences” of what they perceive as sinful behavior.

The “ad” the pastors, including Josh McPherson of Grace City Church and John Smith of Cashmere’s Evergreen Baptist Church, co-signed.

While the design of and statement made in the photo above would not fit most publications’ standards for advertising, The Wenatchee World printed it and it prompted some backlash. Local TV show host and devout Christian Mike Magnotti penned an op-ed in response to the “ad.”

For some members of the local LGBTQ+ community, these are messages they find emblematic of a deep-seated issue that yet to be fully addressed in our community.

Local elementary school librarian Robbie Schott yesterday related experiences that give insight into what it’s like to live as an out gay man in Wenatchee.

“First it was getting called homophobic slurs for walking our dog down the sidewalk, then it was just for doing yard work in our own yard and screamed at for having a picture of my husband and I in the library,” he wrote on Facebook. “Today another frightening incident driving through a parking lot: A guy in a big truck (of course) tried to go around the speed bump and pass us coming up behind us at a very high speed. He nearly slammed into us blaring his horn. We continued to a parking spot while he circled the parking lot and then parked behind us and started yelling at us. Unable to drive away, we had to sit there and listen to his yelling until he called us another awesome gay slur and sped off.”

A screenshot of Schott’s Facebook post.

The banners Garcia hoped would celebrate diversity have become just one more front in a local culture war that is usually fought verbally in board rooms. But as Todd and Schott can attest, sometimes the simmering resentment and bigotry held in the hearts of some threatens to spill out in real and potentially violent ways.

The future of the Pride month diversity banners is yet to be determined, but one thing is certain. If they cease to exist it will be a victory for people like the Bowers, Gene Helsel, John Smith, Jay Caron, Stephen Whitney, Adam Harris, Timothy Winterstein, Josh McPherson, Adam James, Kent McMullen, Kyle Strong and John Sterk.

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My Two Cents

This is obviously not just a local issue. We’re just one small part of a national culture war fueled in part by national political trends, including elected leaders and media personalities who find it politically expedient and financially lucrative to vilify those in minority groups. The LGBTQ+, and especially the transgender, community are the current focus of much of the rightwing/evangelical media’s bilious loathing for the moment. So some of those who consume a steady diet of that content are more likely to lash out at members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Most of the time that lashing out manifests itself as hate speech, but sometimes it can take the form of actual violence.

What am I keenly interested in is where the communities located in North Central Washington fit on the national spectrum. Are we average? Are we an outlier? Does the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric coming from some pulpits in the Wenatchee Valley and other parts of NCW fuel instances of hate speech or/and violence?

I’ve spoken with many who say the messages of some pastors in North Central Washington absolutely contribute to hatred and bigotry in our communities. I’ve spoken with more than a few folks who identify as gay, lesbian, non-binary and/or transgender who say they moved from the region because of anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry.

But it’s hard to tell what the impact really is in the region without more data. So I created this form to collect folks’ stories and experiences. If you or anyone you know have experienced instances of hate speech or hate crimes, please fill out the form and share your story.

This is primarily a data-collection endeavor and I will not publish anyone’s story without their full consent beforehand.

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Update as of Aug. 7, 2023

Wenatchee Pride President Marlene Curiel reached out to me this week and wanted to let folks know that they’ll be taking point on this program and will most likely partner with the NCW Equity Alliance and the YWCA NCW to ensure it endures. She said she has meetings with the leaders of both those organization this week and will have an update on the future of the Pride banners soon.

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