Laramie’s LGBTQ+ residents “Blossom Out West” with the return of PrideFest
The annual celebration, remembrance and show of solidarity returns for its eighth consecutive year, stressing resilience amid an uncertain time for LGBTQ+ rights.
“Blossoming Out West” is the theme of this year’s Laramie PrideFest, an annual celebration that brings together the city’s LGBTQ+ community and their allies for a weeklong run of events that is equal parts exciting, thoughtful and somber.
PrideFest launches Friday with a community picnic on Prexy’s Pasture and a candlelight vigil for Matthew Shepard as well as all those who have been attacked or killed for being who they are.
Throughout the week and across the city, the fest includes a social justice roundtable discussion, a storytelling event, a movie night and karaoke.
The weekend beginning Friday, June 14, features an adults-only drag show, a morning march from First Street Plaza, a large celebration in Washington Park and a bar crawl that will bring PrideFest attendees back downtown.
PrideFest Chair Nicholas Jesse said Laramie’s Pride Month events are uniquely rural.
“I’ve been to big city prides, I’ve been to Denver, I’ve been to Santa Fe, but it’s not the same,” Jesse said. “We have a very unique community — in the sense that our events build community, I think, far more than larger cities.”
Jesse said this year’s theme, Blossoming Out West, is a reference to the prickly pear cactus — a desert plant native to the Rocky Mountain region that serves as a “fairly complex metaphor” for rural queer visibility.
“These things are incredibly beautiful all year round, but especially when they bloom,” he said. “And that vibrant color reminded me of LGBTQ+ rural folks in those rural spaces, and how hard they have to fight to survive and remain visible … Like the needles of a cactus, we have this armor that we are always prepared to put on and march with.”
But, of course, a cactus is more than just its needles.
“Around this time, they’re all starting to blossom and flower,” Jesse said. “And the prickly pear is not only a Western prairie desert icon, but it’s also something that must adapt to survive in rigorous environments, harsh environments.”
And the LGBTQ+ community in Wyoming has very much needed to adapt this year.
The 2024 Budget Session of the Wyoming Legislature, which concluded in March, saw the passage of two bills likely to impact the lives of young queer people and their families. One of these bills has turned school districts into “mandatory reporters” of vaguely defined “changes” in a student’s well-being — a new requirement that both supporters and detractors say will require schools to out queer children to unsupportive families.
The other bill has outlawed the provision of gender-affirming care to trans youth, instituting a state law that will require doctors or other medical professionals to go against the consensus and ethical guidelines of their professions or to risk losing their licenses in the state of Wyoming.
These bills pile onto a separate law, passed in 2023, that bans transgender women and girls from competing on high school sports teams consistent with their gender identity.
Taken together, the new wave of anti-LGBTQ+ and specifically anti-trans legislation in Wyoming is part of a national trend of increasing legal discrimination against queer Americans and especially queer youth.
Pride Month is a celebration, but it’s also a display of resistance — a display that is rooted in a history of protest, both civil and uncivil, against the bigoted laws of earlier times.
Today, Pride celebrations lean into that history of resistance more and more.
“I think it shows that we exist in these spaces, and we are willing to show up and be visible,” Jesse said. “We still exist, and we will continue to exist and we will continue to take up space no matter what they do.”
Like the prickly pear cactus, Jesse is from Wyoming.
“I was born and raised here in Laramie,” he said. “I didn’t come from Denver. I didn’t show up from San Francisco or New York. I was born and raised here, and I know quite a few other people who were born and raised in places like Cheyenne or Laramie or Sheridan.”
Jesse did move away for about five years, sampling the world outside Wyoming before deciding to return.
“I moved elsewhere and chose — I chose actively — to come back to help Wyoming out,” he said. “Sure, I needed a break from Wyoming and some of the politics that affronted me as a person, but I chose to come back because I saw hope and I saw a community, especially in Laramie, that was so raw and genuine with LGBTQ+ folks.”
There were now pride flags in shop windows and a host of other smaller things that, for Jesse, “reaffirmed my existence as a person in my hometown.”
The town made infamous by a 1998 anti-gay hate crime has changed radically in the last quarter century. The hate crime itself, the simmering vitriol and unexamined assumptions it made explicit, and the lingering question of the local community’s culpability, inspired community members to look inward and examine previously unexamined assumptions and biases.
Wyoming never passed hate crime legislation, but Laramie was transformed. Today, it has the most inclusive city government in Wyoming and serves as a Mecca for young queer people across the state — many of whom come here for college and find, for the first time in their lives, a place where they are free to be themselves.
This year, for the first time, the prominent Downtown Laramie sign under the footbridge has been lit up with rainbow lights. As it has for several years now, the Laramie City Council has issued a Pride Month proclamation, which will be read again by the mayor before this year’s Saturday Pride march.
“The LGBTQ+ community is a vital part of Laramie’s economy and culture and contributes to a stronger City,” this year’s proclamation states. “Laramie’s economy and culture are more prosperous when the civil rights of all people are equal and we recognize the LGBTQ+ community as being vital to Laramie’s success as an economically strong and culturally vibrant City.”
Laramie was the first city in Wyoming to pass a non-discrimination ordinance and has since established a municipal human rights commission. The university hosts the annual Shepard Symposium on Social Justice — although this event is now threatened by legislative attacks on a wide range of diversity-oriented programs.
Laramie is not the only city making strides (Casper, for example, has been expanding protections for its LGBTQ+ residents), but the Gem City of the Plains holds a unique place in the imagination and lives of Wyoming’s queer and questioning young people.
In some ways, the PrideFest celebrations this year have been scaled back. While there were closer to 20 events last year, this year’s official events total just 13. But in other ways, the festival has grown. Pride in the Park, the signature event capping off PrideFest, has doubled since last year.
In 2023, Pride in the Park featured about 20 booths in the immediate vicinity of the Washington Park bandshell. But organizers released a map to their vendors and partners this week showing that Pride in the Park 2024 will feature some 50 booths and dominate at least a quarter of Washington Park.
Though the biggest, Pride in the Park is far from the only event that makes Laramie PrideFest what it is. Below is a complete schedule of upcoming events. Full descriptions for each event can be found through Laramie PrideFest’s official website.
Friday, June 7
Out on the Pasture: A University of Wyoming Pride Month Picnic
Time: 4:45-6:30 p.m.
Location: Prexy’s Pasture at the University of Wyoming campus
Matthew Shepard Candlelight Vigil
Time: 6:45-9:00 p.m.
Location: Matthew Shepard Memorial Bench, A&S Auditorium, University of Wyoming campus
Saturday, June 8
PrideFest Yoga
Time: 10-11 a.m.
Location: Washington Park
Pride on the Patio
Time: 1-3 p.m.
Location: Cowgirl Yarn, 119 E. Ivinson Avenue
Sunday, June 9
Dungeons and Demis: RPGs and Board Games
Time: 12-5 p.m.
Location: Accelerated Dragon and Phoenix Rising, 615 S. Second Street
Monday, June 10
Social Justice Roundtable
Time: 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Location: Canterbury House, 110 S. 9th Street
Tuesday, June 11
Stories of Queer Joy in Rural Spaces
Time: 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Location: Laramie Railroad Depot, 600 S. First Street
Wednesday, June 12
Movie Night: But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
Time: 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Location: Regal Fox Theater, 505 S. 20th Street
Thursday, June 13
PrideFest Karaoke (21+)
Time: 8-10 p.m.
Location: The Great Untamed, 209 S. Third Street
Friday, June 14
Blossoming Out West: PrideFest Drag Show (18+)
Time: 7:30-10:30 p.m.
Location: The Collective, 100 S. Second Street
Saturday, June 15
Pride Proclamation and Visibility March
Time: 9-10:30 a.m.
Location: First Street Plaza, intersection of First Street and Grand Avenue
Pride in the Park
Time: Noon-5 p.m.
Location: Washington Park
Rainbow Road Bar Crawl
Time: 7:30-11:30 p.m.
Location: Downtown
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated Jesse returned to Laramie with his partner in 2017. This is incorrect. Jesse left Laramie in 2017, returning with his partner in 2022.