Sonoma County Pride plans big bash in Guerneville this weekend

Just a year after supporters scrambled to stage a parade and festival honoring the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, a newly formed nonprofit group has organized a three-day extravaganza in Guerneville that builds on Sonoma County’s two-decade-old gay pride traditions.

The salute to sexual and gender diversity planned by Sonoma County Pride, the new organization, will include a Saturday night dance, short films, a Main Street parade and a group paddle down the Russian River from Guerneville to Monte Rio.

“We’re definitely taking it to a higher level,” said Chuck Ramsey, president of the all-volunteer group created to host the annual festivities.

The theme this year, Equality Everywhere, acknowledges the region’s acceptance of varied expressions of gender identity and sexual orientation. It is also a nod to the nationwide gains in LGBT marriage rights, and a recognition of the prejudice and oppression that many in that community still face around the globe, Ramsey said.

Thirty-seven states, plus the District of Columbia, now allow same-sex marriage, and the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to resolve the national debate in a closely watched decision later this month.

But Ramsey said the death last week of a 16-year-old bisexual Sonoma youth who took his own life after a lifetime of bullying “is something that’s bearing heavily on our minds.”

He said pride organizers hoped to include some kind of acknowledgment of his struggles.

Supporter Stephen Milk Zollman, last year’s Sonoma County Pride chairman, said, “While it is important to be hopeful that we will move closer to full federal equality this month, it is also very important to keep up the fight in all other aspects of our lives, for example work, schooling, housing, etc. We must continue to build off of our proud history in order to give our youth a world that is fully equal.”

That mission will be advanced, in part, by a booth at Sunday’s Pride Festival where members of a task force for the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights will be launching a survey designed to gather input about needs and issues facing members of the LGBT community. The survey will go live next week, in English and in Spanish, at www.surveymonkey.com/s/LGBTQI_Task_Force.

Gay pride is celebrated around the country each June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in Manhattan, when a police raid on a gay club in Greenwich Village ignited riots that launched the gay rights movement.

Sonoma County began marking the anniversary around 1990, with parades held in Santa Rosa for 14 years and several years of festivals thereafter.

In 2009, the Russian River Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence began sponsoring annual parades in Guerneville. But the time and money needed to hold the event put the group’s other charitable work under considerable strain and it bowed out after 2013.

The new nonprofit group has been working hard to carry on and find sponsors to foot the nearly $30,000 bill, Ramsey said.

The Friday-through-Sunday event is set to include an exhibit of the river community’s LGBT history and its ties to many prominent activists. Those figures include Leonard Matlovich, a Vietnam War veteran who came out publicly in the 1970s to fight the military’s ban on gays; Randy Shilts, a journalist and author who chronicled the early days of the AIDS epidemic, among other topics; and Cleve Jones, co-founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and founder of The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Saturday morning will feature the group paddle, in canoes, kayaks and rafts, from Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville to Monte Rio, with a beach party and barbecue on the Rio Theater lawn and two film screenings in the afternoon. A disco dance will be held Saturday night at the Guerneville Veterans Hall.

Sunday’s parade runs from 11 a.m. to noon, followed by a festival at the Guerneville Lodge featuring food and drink, music and other entertainment.

“We’re really expecting it to be over the top this year and just a very fun-filled weekend,” Ramsey said.

More information is available at www.sonomacountypride.org.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.