The Power of Pride: 3 stories of Columbus LGBTQ+ people telling how they celebrate, endure
Every time Francesca Schumann, William D. Stinchcomb and Jaylah Hollins stride down the street during the Stonewall Columbus Pride March, they feel the power of the generations that came before them.
While they're marching in the footsteps of history's LGBTQ+ activists, they're doing so for the promise of future generations.
Schumann, Stinchcomb and Hollins are from different corners of Columbus and don't know one another. But they were all young when they witnessed their first pride parade or saw an LGBTQ+ person who made them feel a sense of belonging — a sense of who they really were although they didn't yet know how to express it.
They keep showing up and fighting, they said, even when it's difficult, painful or scary.
In each of the past several decades, LGBTQ+ people have faced many battles to defend their rights and gain additional rights, advocates said. From the listing of homosexuality as a mental illness in the 1950s to fights for marriage equality in the past two decades, the community has found reasons to unify, fight and celebrate despite resistance.
LGBTQ+ people come together during Pride Month in June and for Pride parades that commemorate the Stonewall Riots. The riots lasted six days in June 1969 and started when police raided a gay bar in New York and patrons fought back.
As the 2024 Stonewall Columbus Pride March steps off at 10:30 a.m. June 15 from the corner of Broad and High streets, the LGBTQ+ community will celebrate its vibrancy and variety despite what they describe as near-constant discrimination.
The march is also a form of protest, organizers and participants said, and a way to advocate for further rights.
It is an act of defiance against the bevy of anti-trans bills in the Ohio Statehouse. Against violence like the Pulse Orlando Nightclub shooting of 2016. And against anyone who wants to promote hate, like those who were the subject of the recent warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that foreign terrorists may target large Pride events, they said.
"It is a moment of protest," said Zac Boyer, Stonewall's director of community engagement. "It is a moment of, 'Hey, we are here, and we still have human rights that are being violated.' ... We still live in a state that is actively trying to erase transgender people just from the face of existence."
Francesca Schumann wants others to know they are not alone
Francesca Schumann finds beauty in her own survival.
The 57-year-old transsexual woman says she is a survivor of multiple violent attacks due to her gender identity. But Schumann said she endures and attends Columbus Pride celebrations each year.
"It's like a holiday to me. It's like the ultimate celebration," she said of Pride.
She loves being surrounded by the LGBTQ+ community. And people at the Pride festivities call her "mama," "girlfriend," and other affectionate monikers.
"It's just wonderful to see and to feel the loving spirit that you may not get all throughout the year," she said. "But on that day, everyone wants to hug you, everyone wants to touch, everyone wants to say 'Hello,' 'How are you?', 'What's going on?'"
There are also resources there for her and others, and the Franklinton woman is reminded that she's not alone in her identity.
Schumann also wants to remind others that they are not alone and that she is there for them.
She is present at the Stonewall Columbus Pride March and will continue to be for young people and adults who can't be out, those who don't feel safe, or who may not see people like themselves elsewhere.
"Whenever I'm marching, I'm putting my life out there," said Schumann, who has ridden on Equitas Health's floats in previous parades. "I want to be visible."
Schumann isn't sure she's physically able to walk the parade route — which measures 1.9 miles — due to her fibromyalgia, but she said she will do her best to walk or ride if someone will donate a scooter.
Schumann is HIV-positive, a status she's had for 25 years. She was raped and held hostage in 1999, she said.
Today, she's raising awareness about HIV status and advocating that Ohio laws that criminalize people with HIV be repealed.
"I am a child of one of our first plagues, and we're still fighting it," Schumann said of HIV.
"Our purpose of being human is to be humane, to be compassionate and to be empathetic," Schumann said. "Everyone has value, everyone has dignity. When you tell someone they are not valuable because of how they identify, because of how they look, because of their body shape, because their skin is too light, too dark, too whatever. My belief is we all bleed red, and we need to come together."
To people who may feel they have to hide their identity or struggle with it, Schumann said "don't fight your identity."
Schumann's identity first clicked for her after she saw a 15-second scene in the 1970s sitcom “Barney Miller." Someone on screen was arrested for cross-dressing and called a "transvestite," and Schumann thought: "'Hey, this is me.'" She was about six or seven years old at the time, she said.
Today, she hopes she can help others realize who they are by being visible in her identity.
"Those who are fighting their identity at six or seven (years old) can find heroes," she said. "They can know they're not alone."
William D. Stinchcomb balances his three identities during Pride
Before people see William D. Stinchcomb's queer identity, they see his skin color.
The 39-year-old Black man identifies as pansexual, but he doesn't outwardly present his LGBTQ+ identity.
"It's not like I wear that on my sleeve," he said, adding, "I can't turn off my Blackness."
His race has defined a lot of his experiences in life. Since the Columbus Pride celebration always falls on the same weekend — which is also when Juneteenth is often celebrated as well as Father's Day — Stinchcomb has had to balance celebrations of all the ways he identifies.
But he didn't always celebrate Pride.
Stinchcomb first became aware of local Pride celebrations about 23 years ago when he was a teenager working at Cheryl's Cookies inside the former City Center Mall Downtown.
"I didn't know what it was, and I had questions about it then," said Stinchcomb, who lives on the East Side. "It was an eye-opener for me. ... It looked fun."
He was in awe. Stinchcomb always knew he was part of the LGBTQ+ community, but he didn't outwardly share his identity until he was in college. During that time, he was able to explore and get comfortable with his identity before choosing to express it, he said.
Now, the parade he once was just an observer of is part of a weekend where he celebrates being Black, being a father and being queer.
While participating at the Stonewall Columbus Pride March for the past 15 years, Stinchcomb said he has experienced joy and jubilation.
"Pride really is encompassing of a couple of things, but primarily the fact that I can be this happily out, queer-identifying person that loves his community," he said.
Stinchcomb said he thinks young people need to see the Pride parade and all the people who are a part of the local "queermunity." There are so many identities within the LGBTQ+ community locally, and Stinchcomb wants people to see all of them.
He also hopes people who observe the Pride celebrations see that queer people can thrive, not just survive.
"There are opportunities for you to be the best queer person you need to be, want to be, in this world," said Stinchcomb, who works as a therapist.
At this year's event, he hopes that people understand they can access robust health care locally that is centered on them, and that people of all identities know there's a "beautiful place for you."
Stinchcomb is the vice president of the nonprofit Black, Out and Proud and wants people to know that they don't have to choose between their identities.
Though the weekend of Pride, Juneteenth and Father's Day is hectic, he doesn't have to choose between his identities in his everyday life, he said.
"I'm all those things at once," he said of being a Black queer father. "You should be able to be your unapologetic self at all times, so that's why going and being in those spaces all weekend long is always going to be important to me."
Jaylah Hollins wants all LGBTQ+ experiences to be celebrated
Jaylah Hollins saw her first Stonewall Columbus Pride march at just 10 years old.
In the car with her father and brother, she gazed out the window at the floats as they passed by.
Her father and brother were disapproving, but the beautiful colors, smiling happy faces and the community feeling fascinated Hollins.
Years later, she got to attend the Pride Festival at Goodale Park, which is held the same weekend as the Pride March.
It was one of the first times the now-20-year-old transgender woman was able to express her identity.
“I really enjoyed being able to fully be myself for the first time,” said Hollins. “And be able to be around all of these people and be able to feel like I don’t have to hide or cover up anything about myself, but instead be able to find pride, confidence and joy in who I am.”
Hollins, who lives on the city’s North Side, loves the feeling she gets while attending Pride events, but she has wrestled in the past with not going due to safety concerns.
“It’s very worrying, something like that happening, especially in a place where people go to feel more pride about themselves, to feel more confidence, to feel like they are a part of our national community,” Hollins said.
Recent protests at Pride and Drag events by the Proud Boys, Neo-Nazis and others emboldened by hate scare her. The security at Pride gives her a sense of safety, though, Hollins said.
“We’re celebrating the fact that we earned these rights to be seen as individuals and not as stereotypes,” Hollins said. “We earned the right to have our experiences be accounted for.”
She especially feels that as a transgender woman, as the Pride movement is very big, and people's identities are varied. Sometimes they intersect and sometimes they dissect, Hollins said.
"People can be of the same community as you, but they may still hold ignorance and bias toward you," she said.
Hollins has heard other members of the LGBTQ+ community say trans and nonbinary people can make it harder for the rest of the community to have rights because they won't stop talking about their rights.
"We've never shut up," Hollins said. "We've suffered the most and endured the most for everybody else."
It's important to Hollins to go to Pride and be visible as a Black transgender woman and hopes her presence can help make places more open to others like her. She wants to uplift intersectionality.
"I want people to understand that even though we're all within one community, our experiences can differ from one another and it's important to always have open ears and to listen to those experiences instead of just assuming 'my white gay friends and lesbian friends, that's all there is,' when really, it's not," Hollins said.
"I want people to understand there's so much more to community than people think there is, and I just think there needs to be more acknowledgement of that."
She plans to keep marching and celebrating Pride.
“We don’t get to celebrate ourselves as often as we want to,” she said.
@DanaeKing
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Pride: Ahead of parade, local LGBTQ+ people share stories
