For more than two decades, Pride festivals in the Lehigh Valley gathered community members together to celebrate LGBT culture, history, and visibility, to advocate for LGBT regional and national policy changes, and to honor the ongoing work of local LGBT organizations and leaders. The Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive houses memorabilia and documents from past Pride festivals including Pride Guides, which were published in the early years of our Pride festivals. Pride Guides are regionally published magazines or event programs designed by local organizers to accompany annual festivals and marches. Although Pride Guides are less common today, most original Pride festivals produced annual publications because they updated community members about regional and national political struggles, LGBT friendly-businesses, nightlife, and cultural events. Additionally, the Guides featured articles on local LGBT leaders with colorful profiles. This exhibit commemorates eleven years of Lehigh Valley Pride Guides and provides an overview of the major topics of interest found in these publications.

For our community, Pride is Politics as the Guides inform us about national and regional fights for equality. So, too, Pride is Health as the Guides show a commitment to addressing discrimination in healthcare and honoring regional LGBT organizations’ work to improve the well-being of our community. Pride is Art as the Guides honor local artists with feature stories and advertise LGBT cultural events including film series, literary events, and visual artists. Pride is Sponsorship as the annual publications showcase businesses and organizations that contribute to annual festivals and support our LGBT community. Pride is Remembrance as the Guides name the ones we’ve lost and call us to acknowledge their unique contributions to our community. Finally, the Guides show that Pride is People as they memorialize the many individuals from our community who organized the festivals, giving of themselves to create annual gatherings. The exhibit allows for a reflection on these aspects of the Pride guides that continue to shape our annual festivals today.

Pride Is Politics. While our regional Pride festival certainly is a time to celebrate LGBT community, Pride Guides reveal that our festivals also provide time to honor political organizations and to learn about major political fights in our region, state, and nation. Each year the Guides advertise and promote regional activist organizations that have made a difference in our community like PA-GALA, the Pennsylvania Diversity Network, and the League of Gay and Lesbian Voters. Beyond providing information about organizations, the Guides update readers on local activist efforts, like letter writing campaigns, from the previous year; they also garner support for regional political goals for the coming year. The political advancement of the LGBT community at a national level is likewise represented in these guides through letters from local activist leadership and reproductions of letters commending Pride participants from national leaders like President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Pride Is Arts. Pride Guides consistently feature stories about regional and national LGBT artists and document arts programming that celebrates LGBT culture. During the earlier years of the Guides, they promoted performances at Touchstone Theater and the Theatre Outlet, Pride Week screenings of the Lehigh Valley Queer Film Festival, choral performances by the Lehigh Valley Gay Men’s Chorus, and musical lineups at Pride in the Park. The publications also showcase the talents of our local artists and celebrities; they include biographies of artist Keith Haring, writer Alix Olson, performer Jade Esteban Estrada, and actor Carson Kressley of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, to name just a few.

Pride Is Sponsorship. Lehigh Valley Pride Guides honor the numerous sponsors from small LGBT-owned businesses to larger corporate entities that make each year’s festival possible. In the first few years of our Pride events, most sponsors were small businesses that supported the LGBT community; American Hairlines, Emily’s Ice Cream, Diamonz, and EQUAL! Exclusive Technologies were early supporters featured in the Guides. As national acceptance of LGBT people shifted, larger and more powerful corporations like American Express offered to sponsor our Pride festivals. The Guides reveal the import of LGBT-owned and LGBT-friendly business in the history of Pride events and the successes of LGBT activism in garnering the sponsorship of major regional companies like Air Products, a major supporter today.

Pride Is Health. Each of the Pride Guides emphasize health disparities in LGBT communities and promote local organizations that are working to improve access to inclusive healthcare as well as to address the specific needs of LGBT people. The Guides include advertisements for health services specifically for people who identify as LGBT, including both physical and mental health resources. For example, organizations like Fighting AIDS Continuously Together (FACT) and AIDS Outreach of the Lehigh Valley are featured in many Guides as is Triangle Behavioral Health Associates, which caters specifically to the mental health needs of the LGBT community in the Lehigh Valley.

Pride Is Remembrance. Pride Guides offered spaces for our community to memorialize those that have died in the previous year and to celebrate their lives. In this way, they served to honor the memory of departed friends whose lives, love, and influence continue to shape the families and friends left behind.

Pride Is People. The Pride Guides would not be possible without the immense effort of leaders and volunteers involved with Pride of the Lehigh Valley. The Guides commemorated the labor of the pride organizers from the first 11 years of local pride celebrations: JD Aeon, David Baldwin, Chris Banko, Arlene Baron, Christine Bauder, Mark R. Bodkin, Bridgette Budhlall, Tim Caton, Carol Chadwick, Tim Chadwick, Thomas Cormier, John W. Dawe, Christine Dempsey, John Early, John Faggotti, Michael J. Fried, Tabatha Gartner, Angelic Fry, DJ Golda, Patrick Goodin, Allyson Diane Hamm, Don Hardy, Brenda Hoelman, Suesan Hunt, Madeline Iacurto, Micki Katz, Constance Kristofik, Jim Lipsky, Denise McKelvey, Donna Merritt-Kelley, Tom Mulderick, Lynn Nicolson, Pam Pillsbury, Terri Richline, Gary Lee Schaefer, Keith Schwartz, Liz Sherry, Ilse Stoll-Zinnes, Kim Synder, Ed Verba, Keith Weaver, Alan Williams, Brad Wentz, and Terry Worthington.