In the heart of Hot Springs, Pride Parade participants found friendship and fun and an evolving relationship between the community and the church and family dynamic.
By Lana Pierce
Hot Springs is never short on events, festivals, fairs, or markets. If you didn’t know better, you might have mistaken this year’s Pride Walk and Festival as just another festival, but instead of livestock and rides, there were live performers and rainbows, food and vendors, people, pets, and perfectly-manicured Queens.
Not the county fair kind of queens, but those fierce and flamboyant stage artists, their King counterparts, and a handful of “newbies” trying their first-ever performance on the kindest of crowds: the alphabet community and their kids.
This year’s Pride Walk, a June staple downtown, expanded with the help of City Director Erin Holliday. Hosting a safe area near the corner of Orange and Quapaw streets, hundreds of families gathered in support of love, kinship, clergy, and allyship. What makes the news: protests, rallies, and violence. But here in the heart of Hot Springs, we’ve found friendship and fun and an evolving relationship between the community and the church and family dynamic.
As a volunteer medic at this year’s event, I noticed a vibe shift: more children and teenagers showing up, showing out, dancing and crafting and being themselves within the protective village of friends and family. Beyond that, another important showing: faith communities who arrived to remind everyone that fear is a fault, God is Good, and Jesus is Love. It’s been a long time since I’ve personally seen this kind of fellowship on such a large scale.
From the religious side, Tim Looper summarizes his drive to serve as an “absolute need for family, faith, and community… a coming together for support and safety for all the Creator’s children.”
I’m reminded of the promise in our preschool songs, when we sang how Jesus loved all the little children of the world. For me and for Looper, there is no shame in family, for, as Looper recites, “We are all made in the image…and that’s what being Christlike is about. [It is] acceptance and inclusion into the divine, an unconditional and loving grace” that defines Christianity.
He explains that “if we do not show love to every individual, then we fail to follow our own interests or Jesus. Unconditional is unconditional love.”
Hot Springs is a happy anomaly in the South: our traditions (shaped over decades by worldwide travelers) insist we invite the outsiders, the unincluded, and the ignored. But no matter the flag we fly alongside our American flag, a spirit of camaraderie is an asset to our people, our businesses, and our reputation.
Perhaps we’ve grown accustomed to loving our neighbors a bit more than the average Southerner. Maybe it is the hard work of local allies and volunteers, their voices and their convictions, that have put us on the Alphabet Map.
Lana “Lana Mama” Pierce is a straight cis married Christian mother of two who will defend, protect, and love this local alphabet community forever. *free neck hugs*
