“A lot of people don’t have support in their families, a lot of people don’t have any support system. “I think it will always be important to have spaces where people can be themselves for a few hours. An LGBTQ + beach volleyball league will meet every third Thursday of the month to play in downtown Myrtle Beach, and Pride Myrtle Beach will continue to host its matches at Tidal Creek Brewhouse every third Monday of the month. The LGBTQ + community will not have to wait until next October for their next meeting. “But we really didn’t have any kind of indication from the community that there would be any of that … and we tried not to let things overshadow the day.” “It’s always at the back of our minds, when we meet, about safety,” McGee said. The group had a safety plan to stay safe, but their concerns never materialized. With issues like anti-transgender legislation across the country, McGee said he was a little concerned about the presence of protesters at Pride in the Park or something else that may have disrupted the festivities. Knight says this shows how much support LGBTQ + youth still need today, six years after the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. In the past year, lawmakers across the country, including in South Carolina, have proposed anti-transgender legislation that would restrict the rights of trans youth to receive necessary health care or play sports that match their gender. Knight wants to continue to focus on improving events and programming for LGBTQ + youth. Anyone with input for next year’s event can visit /contact-us. The nonprofit organization’s board is meeting next week to discuss choosing a date and to begin contemplating what they want to change. Pride Myrtle Beach is already working on its plans for next year. And I thought they were there, they were rock stars.” We just walked into the crowd and all the kids loved them and the adults love them and people are screaming for them. What really hit her, she said, was the ability to watch drag queens perform during the day without having to go to a smoky bar at midnight. It was more than I bargained for in terms of enormity,” Knight said. She said she was surprised by the number of people who showed up, including people who hadn’t planned to attend, but who simply stumbled upon the event while wandering through Market Common. Pride Myrtle Beach board member Beth Knight attended Pride with her wife and partner of 24 years. She felt that her presence at Pride was especially important as a black and gay person and to represent a community hit twice as prejudice. “Seeing the parents out there with the kids and everything, that really touches me every time, just to see where we’ve come to,” Richards said.
At 58, she grew up at the height of the HIV / AIDS crisis and in an era when it was much more difficult to be an LGBTQ + girl than it is today. What he liked the most was seeing dozens of children and families strolling through Pride and watching their performance on Saturday. A drag queen for decades, Richards stopped traveling so much when she moved to Myrtle Beach, and the lack of Pride events in the region for much of the past two decades meant she never had a chance to experience such a gathering. I don’t know, I just felt like I was in the right place,” said Pierce, who grew up in Myrtle Beach.įor Morgan Richards, a drag queen who performed at Pride in the Park, it was only the third Pride celebration she attended. He attended with a half dozen friends he had met at a Pride Myrtle Beach event earlier this summer, allowing him to connect with far more LGBTQ + people than he had the opportunity in the past. Pride in the park was the first time 17-year-old Josh Pierce attended a major LGBTQ + Pride celebration. But the SC Gay & Lesbian Pride Festival was a statewide operation, making this year’s events the largest ever hosted by the locals, for the locals. This year’s Pride was the largest Grand Strand has had since 1998, when the SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Festival came to Myrtle Beach for a year. “We couldn’t have dreamed of a better event.” “We were really overwhelmed with Saturday’s turnout,” said McGee, Pride Myrtle Beach CEO and a member of the city’s Human Rights Commission.
The organization that ran the event, as well as 11 others in the week leading up to Pride in the park, started just six months earlier.
McGee said the event drew about 3,000 people, much more than two years ago.
Pride in the Park, recovered after a year-long hiatus due to COVID-19, easily surpassed the popularity of its first round in 2019. Walking through Market Common last Saturday, she saw children, families, and adults enjoying the sights and sounds of one of the best times of the year for the LGBTQ + community: Pride.