Warwick Gay Pride and Challenges

Parade enthusiasm eclipsed protesters, but lack of support from Warwick schools surfaced.

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A crowd of over 500 supporters and a dozen critics of sexual diversity showed up at the Gay Pride Day Parade that began at Warwick Community Center and culminated at a Pride show at Veterans Memorial Park on Sunday.

“I’ve never seen such expressions of love from bystanders,” said Warwick Community Center Board President Nora Elcar-Verdon, from Vernon, NJ.

Police K-9s had sniffed the event area for explosives in advance of the June 11 event, said Police Chief John Rader. No arrests were made nor tickets issued, he said. “Everything went fine.”

“I asked demonstrators not to bring signs into the show. They were given a safe place outside the performance,” said Warwick Police Chief John Rader

 Signs hostile to the event and transgender people, including signs suggesting pedophile involvement,  had recently been put up around Warwick, replacing signs promoting the event. Warwick police, unaided by other agencies, are investigating, Rader said. Meanwhile, enthusiasm and attendance this year dwarfed previous years, according to Dannie Sinisi, who was an organizer of the first Warwick Pride Day in 2012 and founder of Safe Space America. 

“I’ve had threats and a sledge hammer attack on my truck but never these pedophile accusations,” she said. “It’s hard for me to hear these attacks. Usually the chatter is only on Facebook.”

She recalled how Warwick Community Center had assisted her after her divorce years before. This year, Pride Day was organized by Karen Thomas, the Center’s executive director, and Wickham Works founder Melissa Shaw-Smith, who noted the lack of support from Warwick school administrators for announcing Pride Day and other LGBTQ events.

Melissa Shaw-Smith, pictured, organized Warwick Pride Day with Karen Thomas.

Dannie Sinisi began Gay Pride Day in Warwick 12 years ago.

Some known to be critical and accusatory of LGBTQ people and activities, especially online, appeared in person with protest signs.

“There are always people who just don’t get it. They’re afraid of the unfamiliar,” said William O’Dell, 22, a graduate of Warwick Valley High School and organizer of Acting Out Playhouse, a community youth theater group that he said aims to use drama to inform about social issues. This summer, mental health, poverty and gun violence will be topics, and in August they will perform “The Assassins,” by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. 

He spoke amid parade preparations and assorted information booths set up on the Community Center lawn. Among them, Orange County Health Department representatives Luis and Patricia Ocasio provided information about local health issues, such as increases in sexually transmitted diseases, particularly syphillis from unprotected sex. They noted the increase in suicidality over the last three years and the rise in xylazine use, a horse tranquilizer that results in destructive skin ulcers and increases fatal overdose risks, as Narcan, used to counteract opiates, does not counteract xylazine. The Ocasios provided free fentanyl test strips, condoms, information about free Narcan trainings and abundant brochures.

Luis and Patricia Ocasio represented Orange County Department of Health.

“Schools don’t want to address sex education and opiate use,” said Patricia Ocasio. “They need to be open to nonprofits.”

Nearby, We the People Warwick member Barb Hyde talked about plans for youth activities, including a drum circle and  classes on mindfulness and yoga. At another table, therapist Jenny Tanis, who works with youth, expressed concern about physical assaults on transgender youth in Warwick schools, as well as other kinds of harassment of LGBTQ youth.

“School administrators aren’t responding,” she said, an observation made by several other people at the event. Shaw-Smith noted later that school administrators had declined to support flyers for the Gay Straight Alliance Prom. 

“The middle school principal didn’t have an announcement about Gay Pride Day. No evidence of the Gay Straight Alliance is wanted,” Shaw-Smith said.

Meanwhile, parade participants, some in drag and rainbow colored hair, lined up to walk or ride on truck beds through Warwick streets, accompanied by the celebratory music of the Funkrust Brass Band, to Veterans Memorial Park for the Pride show, a shift from plans to use Stanley Deming Park.

People watched from their porches and brought their dogs along to accompany the parade. Janet Upadhye and Derek Smith, who moved to Warwick three years ago, brought Omelet, a sheepadoodle and labradoodle Berkeley.

“We always went to the Brooklyn Pride Parade,” said Upadhye.

Janet Upadhye and Derek Smith, who moved to Warwick three years ago, brought Omelet, a sheepadoodle, left, and labradoodle Berkeley.

In a previous year, a performer at the Pride show had appeared minimally clad, which Shaw-Smith and other organizers had not expected. The performer and organizers involved with this act had been “banned” from further involvement, Shaw-Smith said.

Still, demonstrators mentioned this error and other concerns as reasons for their opposition. They stood with signs at the entrance to the park. Warwick Police Chief John Rader said that he had asked them not to bring signs to the show, staged at a park pavilion. Hosted by Broadway actor Chuck Ragsdale, in drag as Eve Starr, with his husband Paul Loesel, pianist for Wicked the Musical, playing piano, the show consisted of a series of sexually diverse performers, youth and adult, singing uplifting songs, many from musicals.

Chuck Ragsdale, as Eve Starr, hosted. His husband Paul Loesel accompanied singers on piano.

The venue had been shifted from Stanley Deming Park to Veterans Memorial Park after a small group, vocal about the issue on Facebook, had opposed the use of a site near a public playground, and Shaw-Smith had requested the change to avoid having demonstrators near the show.

Stephanie Kowalsky with her children

 A demonstration was organized by Stephanie Kowalsky, a member of the Orange County Moms for Liberty group (MFL), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a right wing “hate group,” deriding and harassing public schools, education departments and LGBTQ people; demanding book bans and school curriculum limitations, among other efforts. SPLC also noted that MFL members increasingly deny their involvement, as their MFL cohorts’ behavior lands them in legal trouble and results in banishment from social media sites.

Likewise, Kowalsky denied that she was a member of MFL but conceded that she had “commented” on MFL Facebook pages. She contended that no “registered” Moms for Liberty chapter exists in Orange County.  

However, a passerby, who noticed this reporter interviewing Kowalsky, later sent screenshots of Kowalsky’s posts as an MFL member. Others also noted her vocal presence on the site.

Approached with her signs and her children at Veterans Memorial Park, Kowalsky said, “I’m a parent. I was supportive of Pride. I have gay friends. I support the Day of Acceptance, but I don’t support the drag show hosted by the Community Center. I don’t support drag shows for kids. It normalizes drag. It’s created to mock women. You don’t see women dressed as men. The history of drag has nothing to do with LGBT. Studies show that if a child is struggling with their identity and they see drag and the attention it gets, they’re likely to imitate it. Drag is like blackface is for people of color. It’s adult entertainment for a private venue with an audience age 18 and up.”

As for the signs for the Warwick Pride Celebration being replaced by a vandal with signs that added the acronym MAPS, for “minor attracted persons,” with a related link, Kowalsky said, “I’m not 100% sure the signs were switched.”

Mason Vitiello, a Warwick Valley High School senior, sees drag and its influence differently.

“Drag doesn’t belittle women,” he said. “It’s just expressing a culture. Children love the showmanship.”

He noted that the history of men dressing as women went back to early Greek and Roman theater. Meanwhile, external influences on sexual inclinations have been called into question by the consistent failures of “conversion therapy,” devised to eradicate homosexual desires.

When parade-goer Gail Buckland, of Warwick, passed the demonstrators, she noticed one with a sign that read, “Pray for the children.” At the same time, an LGBTQ youth church group passed by and she heard one of them call, “We are the children!”

Homophobia in Warwick

Signs have been an anti-LGBTQ weapon of choice over the past few months. A transphobic sign was posted around Warwick recently, but no arrests were made. 

What are the sources of homophobia? Some research has suggested that hidden homosexual feelings, or fear of them, underlies homophobia. PBS identified nine tendencies of those with negative attitudes toward the LGBTQ population:

1. They are less likely to have had personal contact with lesbians or gay;

2. They are less likely to report having engaged in homosexual behaviors, or to identify themselves as lesbian or gay;

3. They are more likely to perceive their peers as manifesting negative attitudes, especially if the respondents are males;

4. They are more likely to have resided in areas where negative attitudes are the norm (e.g., the midwestern and southern United States, the Canadian prairies, and in rural areas or small towns), especially during adolescence;

5. They are likely to be older and less well educated;

6. They are more likely to be religious, to attend church frequently, and to subscribe to a conservative religious ideology;

7. They are more likely to express traditional, restrictive attitudes about sex roles;

8. They are less permissive sexually or manifest more guilt or negativity about sexuality, although some researchers have not observed this pattern and others have reported a substantially reduced correlation with the effects of sex-role attitudes partialled out;

9. They are more likely to manifest high levels of authoritarianism and related personality characteristics.

The Funkrust Brass Band accompanied the parade.

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