Charley Beal says he has been fighting his whole life.
When he was six, his mother took him to a Civil Rights demonstration in downtown Lansing, Michigan. At 17, he marched against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, an offshoot of the Vietnam War. In 2000, he attended the inaugural WorldPride in Rome. He was accompanying his late friend Gilbert Baker, the creator of the rainbow flag, who was scouting a gallery space for an exhibit. Beal said emissaries were going around town telling business owners not to do business with gay people.
So instead, Baker held his exhibit on a boat in the middle of the Tiber River, with a giant rainbow flag. Beal has since carried on Baker's legacy as president of the Gilbert Baker Foundation.
"We didn't run away and hide," he said.
Twenty-five years later, WorldPride continues — this year in Washington, D.C. But so does the queer community's fight to be seen, said Beal, now 69. Members of the queer community have expressed fear, hesitation and fortitude as Pride festivities kicked off in D.C., where President Trump signed several executive orders limiting the rights of transgender people, including banning them from the military, banning transgender women from women's sports and ending gender-affirming care for those under age 19.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
"Unfortunately, we have to go in a defensive mode a lot of times, in times like this," Beal said.
But make no mistake — Beal will still be at D.C. Pride. He is appearing on a panel hosted by the Human Rights Conference and will be toting a 1,000-foot rainbow flag in the parade. Though, not everyone is feeling celebratory.
June Crenshaw is the deputy director of Capital Pride Alliance, the nonprofit that throws D.C. Pride annually and has helped produce more than 350 WorldPride events across the city from mid-May to the first week of June. She said she understands that people have to assess their own comfort levels in deciding whether to come.
"We are trans and gender non-conforming, we are Black and brown, we are immigrants, we are disabled. And so the environment that is created for all the members of our community has impacted folks' decision to participate," she said.
The Trump administration has also influenced the participation of corporate sponsors, several of which pulled their funding from D.C. Pride events, Crenshaw said. (In recent months, some private companies have rolled back their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, after Trump ended such programs in various federal agencies.)
On Tuesday, several news outlets reported the National Park Service planned to close DuPont Circle Park, a central area for D.C.'s queer community, the weekend of the parade. According to Fox 5 DC, NPS cited previous cases of vandalism during Pride and said it was keeping with an executive order Trump signed during his first term to preserve monuments. But it reversed its decision in less than 24 hours after backlash from D.C. government officials.
Meanwhile, Capital Pride Alliance and its partners are doing what it can to assuage concerns.
CPA moved its Pride events from the Kennedy Center after members of the transgender and drag communities told the organization they no longer felt welcomed once Trump was appointed chair. Capital Pride Alliance did not receive any directives from the administration, she said.
Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said in a press conference last week that the department spent over a year preparing for the event. Its safety plan includes dispatching an increased police presence across the city and enlisting specialized units and neighboring jurisdictions to help.
She said there are no known credible threats to any Pride events, but the department will continue monitoring.
"Whatever the needs are for Capital Pride when it comes to public safety, we are in lockstep, we're in solidarity and we're going to stand side-by-side with everybody during the parade to ensure that we have a festive occasion," Smith said.
Crenshaw said, "WorldPride is going to happen. This is the year that visibility and showing up and challenging both the narrative and the harm that's being done to our community is more important than ever, and that anyone that is in a position to be here to show up...would be really essential for you to be here."
Jayden Squire, 22, of Australia, was wary about attending WorldPride at first. His parents told him not to go. He is also very vocal politically on social media, having run for town council, and thought his profiles would be screened as he came into the country. They were not, and ultimately Squire has been looking forward to congregating with "similarly minded people from all over the world."
"I really wanted to come because now is the time where we have to show solidarity to queer communities…we can't let gay rights go backwards despite who's in the White House," he said.
After Trump's first election, Dave Peruzza was working at a gay bar and said there was about a 30% drop in sales soon after. Now, he is the owner of Pitchers Bar DC and A League of Their Own, a gay bar and a lesbian bar, respectively. He said he is seeing the usual patronage at his bars for Pride, with expected crowds from the area, as well as Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.
"We have a lot of trans customers, so there's a lot of defeatedness, but then there's also this fight," he said.
Some of his customers consider Pride itself to be a protest, a declaration that the LGBTQ+ community cannot be erased, he said. Amid that protest, Peruzza said he is dedicated to making sure his customers have fun.
"Just come to D.C. and just have a good time and have an open mind. It's gonna be a party no matter what," he said.
Dylan Drobish, a drag performer and federal worker from Baltimore, said he has seen some members of the queer community grow closer since the election while others have distanced themselves. In the drag world, performers have become a bit more reserved. Drobish said recruitment numbers are down for pageants.
"There are still some folks, I think, in the community that are on the side of 'If we just go along with things. It's not really that bad,'" he said. "There's still that divide, and I think the conversations are getting a little more heated just because of the stakes right now."
However, the thought of not attending Pride never crossed his mind, Drobish said. More than anything, he revels in seeing queer people find their place.
"Joy is resistance," he said, "Seeing people's faces when they realize this is where they belong – it's my favorite thing to see at any Pride," he said.
But showing up is a way to honor himself, and much like Beal, he's not running away.
"I spent so much of my life hiding and minimizing myself in one way or another, and I think that every time that something has challenged me this way, even when I say I'm going to give up and want to give up and hide, there's that part of me that never lets myself," he said.
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