Jill Aul and Beth Finder, two St. Charles County moms with LGBT children, were staffing a booth at Pride St. Louis last year when Finder posed a seemingly innocuous question:
Does St. Charles have a gay pride event, like St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, Joplin, and the Metro East do?
Get a fresh take on the day’s top news
Subscribe to the St. Louis Daily newsletter for a smart, succinct guide to local news from award-winning journalists Sarah Fenske and Ryan Krull.
“I kind of laughed at her and said, ‘No,’” Aul remembers. When Finder asked why not, Aul didn’t have a good answer. “I guess nobody ever really thought about it,” she told her.
That changes Saturday, when Pride St. Charles kicks off at St. Charles Community College.
Aul and Finder co-founded the event after that fateful conversation. They first envisioned a couple dozen families coming together for a picnic under rainbow-colored balloons. But word spread quickly, drawing the attention of musical acts, corporate sponsors, food trucks, faith organizations, and local politicians.
“From the moment this idea was conceived last summer, it has gone viral,” Aul tells SLM. “This is an idea whose time has come.”
You’d be forgiven if your first reaction to hearing about a gay pride event in St. Charles was surprise. “Traditionally, people think St. Charles, St. Charles County, and everything past the [Missouri] River is extremely conservative,” says Darin Slyman, CEO of Vital Voice, a magazine that covers LGBT issues statewide. “However, there are tons and tons and tons of LGBT-ers that live out there. The LGBT community has evolved so much now that even in the heartland of conservatism, they can now stand proudly and have their own pride festival.”
Thanks to a media partnership between Vital Voice and The Advocate, the oldest and largest LGBT media outlet in the U.S., the event is destined to make a splash. The Advocate will feature coverage of St. Charles’ first-ever pride event for a nationwide audience.
Pride St. Charles has grown far beyond what Aul originally expected, and it hasn’t even happened yet. She’s already getting goosebumps imagining the crowd that will turn out Saturday to celebrate, dance, eat, shop, and support LGBT people and allies.
“I hope to see happy families with kids having a blast,” Aul says, “but also older people who struggled so much when they came out as young people. I hope they will just look around and feel they are part of history.”
Once she started organizing, Aul heard from LGBT adults and youth in St. Charles who never thought they’d get to celebrate pride in their hometown.
“Even for people who, for whatever reason, won’t be able to physically attend, I think just knowing there is a pride festival happening in St. Charles is going to move us ahead by leaps and bounds,” Aul says. “St. Charles County is a diverse place. I know we have more work to do, but this is a giant step forward, and I’m so incredibly proud to be part of it.”
