The fourth annual North Georgia Marietta Pride brought together hundreds of LGBT people and friends to LeBuzz the weekend of July 26-28 that included drag legend, DJ and porn producer Chi Chi LaRue as mistress of ceremonies.
Each year the fest raises money for a local charity and this year proceeds went to the Health Initiative, which intends to use the funds to help LGBT people in Marietta with health care concerns.
A lot more has changed about North Georgia Marietta Pride over the years than just the dates and the official name. The festival, set for July 26-28, has become one of the major local LGBT events of the year.
Sponsored by the North Georgia Rainbow Coalition, the event is now in its fourth year. It began as the Marietta Rainbow Festival with approximately 1,000 attendees back in 2010, its first year, according to organizer Johnathon Murphy, who is the managing partner of the Marietta gay bar LeBuzz and president of North Georgia Rainbow Coalition.
In 2012, the name was changed to North Georgia Marietta Pride to incorporate the North Georgia crowd the festival attracted. Attendance neared 5,000, according to Murphy, who hopes the numbers will rise again in 2013.
Although there are some preliminary events on Thursday night, such as the Ladies Pride night/King’s Production Show, most of the activity will take place Friday, July 26, through Sunday, July 28. Most events will be inside LeBuzz but there will be events outside in the shopping center as well.
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Jubilant crowds packed Le Buzz, the Cobb County gay bar, July 29-30 for the second annual Marietta Rainbow Festival.
The event exceeded all expectations, said Johnathon Murphy, general manager of the bar located just outside the perimeter, who placed attendance as high as 4,000.
There was a kids' zone where drag queens interacted and performed for young children and their families on Saturday evening as well as packed bar with a long line to enter to watch the drag show later on Saturday night. A vendor space included local businesses as well as booths from Georgia Equality and AID Atlanta.
More than 75 artists performed over the weekend event and tentative plans for next year include possibly making the event a three-day festival including a parade.
The Marietta Rainbow Festival, the second annual gay Pride celebration in the Atlanta suburb, has been postponed from this weekend until the end of July.
"The Marietta Rainbow Festival, our Marietta Pride celebration, has been changed to July 29th -30th due to a licensing issue," organizer Johnathon Murphy posted on his Facebook page this morning.
"Instead of being negative, we will take the extra time to make it that much bigger and better! We are still working hard to get LeBUZZ Marietta in its new location by this weekend," wrote Murphy, also owner of LeBuzz.
The Marietta festival is hosted by the North Georgia Rainbow Coalition and was set to take place indoors at LeBuzz, Marietta's sole gay bar. The club is moving to a new, larger home at 585 Franklin Road SE in Marietta, and the festival was to be held there and at Enigma, next door.
Hundreds of people packed into the plaza where the new LeBuzz is located for the very first Marietta Rainbow Festival — a celebration of gay Pride in Cobb County where county officials once declared being gay was considered incompatible with community standards.
“We’re having a really good time. We’re really pleased with support from the gay community and the straight community,” said Johnathan Murphy, the president and managing partner of LeBuzz who also heads up the North Georgia Rainbow Coalition, which organized the first Marietta Rainbow Festival on July 24.
Religion is often a controversial, hot button issue when it comes to the LGBT community. Although many of the more devout members of various faiths are notoriously anti-gay, numerous Christian churches as well as the LGBT-led Congregation Bet Haverim came to the 43rd annual Atlanta Pride to show their support and love for those who identify as LGBT.
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Clearly, they were in the majority. However, there was a small contingent of anti-LGBT individuals – most armed with placards quoting Biblical scripture – who attended specifically to protest.
St. Mark’s United Methodist Church has been attending Atlanta Pride for several years and is a well-known place of worship in the Atlanta gay community. Eighty percent of the congregation is LGBT, according to church member Larry Lucas. St. Mark’s has seen its fair share of opposition, especially from First Baptist Church of Atlanta.
“They were boycotting us because of our support for LGBT people, but First Baptist is no longer in Midtown. They moved to Marietta,” said Lucas.