Photos and story
By JOE GIDDENS
You could hear the gleeful voices of the students from Rincon-University High School’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the participants of the “2019 Pride in the Desert” got ready.
“Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me,” they sang.
The 42nd annual Tucson Pride in the Desert Parade and Festival took place Sept. 28.
This year’s theme was “Rise Up” for the Stonewall Riots’ 50th anniversary.
The theme was of particular significance to one parade participant. Ira Nadborne was born in Brooklyn and came out in 1965, which caused “all hell to break loose” in the house. Later, he was sent for conversion therapy and was abandoned by his family.
Four years later, he was living in Greenwich Village behind the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan.
“I could’ve parachuted off my rooftop garden and landed on the front of the bar,” he said.
On June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn following months of targeted harassment. This incited a riot of the bar’s patrons lasting for three days. Out of this was born the Gay Liberation Front with the first Pride marches taking place in 1970.
Tucson Pride is Arizona’s oldest LGBT orgazination and was founded in 1977 in the wake of the murder of Richard Heakin Jr. Heakin was visiting the city from Lincoln, Nebraska.
Charles Shemwell, Herman Overpeck, Scott McDonald and Russell Van Cleve were in a group of 13, and after getting tired of cruising Speedway Boulevard in Tucson, decided to turn their attention to the parking lot of the Stone Wall Inn Tavern Disco off North First Avenue at 12:30 a.m. June 6, 1976, according to the Tucson Citizen.
The group appeared to have been looking to start a fight, having tripped patrons leaving and attempting to punch another while using a slur. Harkin was attacked by the group, and he died 45 minutes later from brain injuries.
Only those four were ever charged; those charged in Heakin’s death were given probation.
Heakin’s death sparked a collective organizing of the LGBT community, with the City of Tucson passing among the first anti-discrimation ordinances in the nation the following year.
Pride in the Desert has grown from 50 attendees in Himmel Park its inaugural year, according to the Daily Star, to this year’s expectation of 4,000-plus.
Pima Community College was a part of the event’s growth this year, and became one of its sponsors — a first for the college.
“We’ve come a long way, but there’s a long way to go yet,” Nadborne said.
David Dore staffs Pima’s booth at the main festival area in Reid Park.
