Source: Tri-Cities Herald, KNDO/KNDU TV
Pasco, Wash. -- The LGBT community in central Washington's Tri-Cities -- Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland -- celebrate this weekend with the second annual Mid-Columbia Pride 2008.

Events include an afternoon softball game Pasco City Hall and coronation of Miss Gay Columbia Basin at 9 pm at Out & About in Pasco.

A parade from Out & About to Sylvester Park will start at 11 am Sunday, followed by a six-hour celebration in the park featuring more than two dozen vendors and live entertainment from The Shades and comedienne Vickie Shaw.

Speaking with a reporter from Tri-Cities Herald, longtime lesbian activist Dorie Flatt recalled a time not so long ago when the Tri-City gay community kept itself so far under wraps that even the help line phone was in the closet.

Things have changed a great deal, Flatt reflected.

"We don't care what your sexual orientation or gender identity is," said Tamara Johnson, an organizer of this weekend's Pride events. "We just want everybody to come together and be prideful of what we are. We open our arms to the entire community."

Gay pride parades are common in larger cities, but now an open and public celebration in smaller communities like the Tri-Cities is a greater feat.

The committee chairman for this pride event, Jason Kildall, told KNDO/KNDU that the Pride celebration shows the growing population of diverse people in the Tri-Cities. 

He says, "Diversity is everyone, in some way, is a form of diversity.   Whether it's our color, our race, our sexuality. It's just important that we accept one another and respect each other's differences, and come together and just celebrate."

Flatt, 54, remembers a time when gays and lesbians were more anxious about their place in the larger community.

When she and her partner moved to the Tri-Cities in the 1970s, many people were reluctant to let their sexual orientation be known publicly because they feared they might lose their jobs or be assaulted.

If the population of the three cities were combined, Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco would form the fourth largest city in Washington, following Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane, but the area is generally considered one of the most conservative in the state. Although its economy has become more diversified in recent decades, the area's growth in the last century was fueled by the Hanford Nuclear Reservation nearby, and many residents still depend on jobs related to the Dept. of Energy.

Washington State University opened a branch campus in Richland in 1989. WSU-Tri-Cities began admitting freshmen and sophomores in 2007 along with upper-division and graduate students, making it a true four-year college and giving young people a reason to stay in the Tri-Cities.

Flatt recalled for the Herald that many gays and lesbians in past decades were eager to find others like themselves. Flatt recalled one woman she knew who arrived in town and called the police department to ask where they were having problems with gays so that she'd know where to find friends.

Flatt has been open about her sexuality since she was 19 and a college student in Spokane. It was during her college years that she first found the words to describe herself, and she said it became important to her to identify herself as a lesbian because there was so little information and so few role models available.

"Now I would say I'm so far out of the closet it's become a podium," she said.

Flatt was active within the Tri-City gay community in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and said she helped create the Rainbow Hawks student group at Columbia Basin College about six years ago while back in school for job retraining.

She said the community had a softball game and picnic that served as a discreet kind of pride celebration in the early 1980s. There were no banners and no parade -- just a few dozen friends gathered to share their common bonds.

She's eager to attend this year's celebration and revel in the changes of the past couple of decades.

"I am so tickled at how things have changed," she said. "It is much easier to live here and be gay. I have been constantly amazed and pleased with the people I have met in the Tri-Cities. ... I thought I'd have to deal with the conservatism of Eastern Washington, but a lot of them have metropolitan ideas. They have dispelled their homophobia, and it's not something they had to do."

Full article: Tri-City gay community to hold open celebrations | Tri-City Herald
Second Annual Pride Celebration in Tri-Cities | KNDU/KNDO TV