Pride 2025 in Greenwich: Celebrating Shared Humanity

Greenwich officially kicked off Pride Month with its annual Greenwich Pride celebration at Town Hall on Sunday.

The event, organized by Greenwich Pride in partnership with the Town, featured remarks from elected officials including, First Selectman Fred Camillo, Selectwoman Lauren Rabin, Selectperson Janet Stone McGuigan, State Representatives Steve Meskers (D-150) and Hector Arzeno (D-151).

Also, Colin Hosten, director of the Leonard Litz Foundation and member of the board of the Triangle Community Center Board, explained that TCC is a social services agency, offers community resources, and a safe and welcoming place to hang out.

“It’s a welcoming and heartwarming thing to see pride in every community,” he said, adding that for a time Pride events were confined to the largest cities. He noted there were numerous local events planned on Sunday, including in Westchester, Bridgeport and Ridgefield.

Several members of the clergy spoke, including Rabbi Jordie Gerson, from Greenwich Reform Synagogue, Reverend Patrick Collins from First Congregational Church of Greenwich, and Ann Post, Director of Children’s Ministries at St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Riverside, and Cantor Michelle Rubin from Greenwich Reform Synagogue.

Some of the most moving words came from Ethan Cooper from the GHS 2025, read by Arzeno:

Our national anthem, the Start Spangled Banner says we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those words were written in a moment of crisis, during a time of war, when a young republic was under attack.

They mean as much today as they did when Francis Scott Key first wrote them. Because Freedom requires bravery.

It takes bravery to march for civil rights, like John Lewis on Bloody Sunday.

It takes bravery to face tyranny, like the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy.

And it takes bravery to stand up and speak out for a marginalized people, like the crowds that gathered outside the Stonewall Inn.

A people lacking bravery will lose their freedom. A government lacking bravery will prey on the most vulnerable to take it away.

But you, all of you standing here today. You are the brave.
You know that freedom is worth standing up for.

So today, as we come together to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, a community that is under attack by some of those in power who feel threatened by diversity.

Let us be brave for one another, for this community, and for this country.

Let us look to our leaders and our government to be equally brave.

And so today, right here in front of this hall, the flag of pride will fly beside the stars and stripes.

Both symbols of freedom, and both symbols of brave people standing together.

Representative Meskers talked about inclusion and celebrating diversity while acknowledging differences.

“It is fundamentally about respecting each other,” he said. “Pride is about us all living our lives with dignity, integrity, joy and courage,” Meskers said. “Pride is about the basic ability to build inclusiveness in our community, without the fear of being judged. In the end that pride is about celebrating our shared humanity.” 

Karsten Vagner, who organized the event with Allison Kahn, asked everyone married to someone they love to applaud.

“That is the sound of equal rights,” he said to cheers.

Vagner thanked the board of Selectmen for consistently standing with the LGBTQ community.

Origins of Pride

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn, in New York City.

On June 28, 1970, the one year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, the first Pride marches were held in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and thousands gathered to commemorate Stonewall and demonstrate for equal rights.

Selectwoman Lauren Rabin who said she’d never sung in public, belted out Cyndi Lauper’s song, True Colors, which goes in part:

I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful
Like a rainbow

Select Person Stone McGuigan said that knowing only one story about a person reduces them to stereotypes. “Pride is not just a day. It’s every day and everywhere.”

 

Rabbi Gerson from Greenwich Reform Synagogue talked about Pride and love.

“Love, human and divine, and a God that loves us regardless of who we love and loves that we love one another without regard for gender or Heteronormativity or religiously informed homophobia. A God that teaches that all love is divine.”

Patrick Collins senior pastor from The First Congregational Church of Greenwich said he was often asked where God shows up. “I believe the answer is right here, in moments like this, when we show up for each other.”

“Today we raise a flag not just as a cultural symbol, but as a bold promise that this town and entire community, that we are committed to affirming the  dignity, humanity and beauty of all the LGBTQ+ people, not in despite of all of our differences, but because of them.”

Collins’ message, especially to young people, was:

“You matter, you are loved and there is nothing wrong with you. This flag is for you and we raise it to remind you that you don’t have to hide who you are. You don’t have to shrink or change to be worthy of celebration. There is still too much fear in this world, too much hate, and too many messages, especially from some corners of religion that tell people that they are less than.”

Ann Post, from St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Riverside, said there was a family friendly pride service planned at her church, in the meadow, on June 10 at 6:30pm.

“I want to say that 2025 has been a year, hasn’t it? But we’ve been here before. I’ve been at this for decades.”

She said in the 1980s when she came out, it was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. “Fear and hate were everywhere. We’ve been here before.”

“I’m here to say to the youth that, It gets better!” she said.

“We’re all going to need to be activists in these next four years,” Post said, going on to share a series of affirmations after which, the crowd chanted, “We resist. We affirm.”

“We resist the distortion of so-called family values that exclude and condemn our faithful LGBTQ+ loving families,” she said. “We affirm that LGBTQ families that are bound by love and faithfulness are worthy of recognition and deserve protection under the law.”

“We resist the false and misguided belief that only straight, cisgendered persons are created in the image and likeness of God.”

“We affirm that we will do all in our power to respect and protect all of God’s beloved children from social, physical and spiritual harm.”

“We resist a conflation of church and state, and the propagation of the dangerous ideology of Christian Nationalism.”