Between sparkling drag performers in Heritage Square Park and a downtown filled with rainbow banners and bustling vendor booths, there was the “chalk zone.”
On this arc of pavement, attendees at Saturday’s Walla Walla Pride Festival — June is Pride month — could draw a picture or scribble a message. Many people wrote sentiments long shared in the LGBTQ community:
“Love is love.” “Be the best you.” “Be Loud Be Proud.”
Doug Taylor, of College Place, remembers Walla Walla before the “loud” part was a thing.
Taylor, 70, moved to the area in the fall of 1973 to attend college.
At 18, he knew he was gay, but “I wasn’t out, I wasn’t looking, so (it) wasn’t really affecting me,” he said.
Gradually, he learned that Walla Walla had a robust LGBTQ+ community, but “in a hidden way,” he said, calling it “definitely underground.”
He remembers, for example, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, private but well-attended get-togethers, like dances. These socials were typically held in remote places, such as a meeting hall in Touchet and a grange in the Lowden-area wheat fields.
Taylor trained as a hospice volunteer to take care of AIDS patients. He became a founding board member of the nonprofit Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, which began in the early 1990s as a case management group for people affected by HIV and AIDS.
Walla Walla, in Taylor’s view, has always been a relatively tolerant place. Prominent gay business owners were a known presence in town. Gay-friendly cultural institutions like Whitman College, the Marcus Whitman Hotel and the Gesa Power House Theatre created safe settings and hosted LGBTQ+ events.
Taylor’s seen ignorance — such as when AIDS came to Walla Walla — but never open hostility, he said.
“Even among the conservatives, it was more along the lines of, ‘You do your thing, we do our thing, and as long as your thing isn’t messing with my thing ... you can be you, just don’t push it in our face,’” Taylor said. “… And because we weren’t pushing it in their face, there was a lot of just quiet acceptance.”
For Taylor, an event like the Walla Walla Pride Festival “gives those that are already out an opportunity to be really out amongst themselves. And (for) those that are closeted, it’s a chance for them to come to a gay event, because it’s a community event — you’re not gay just because you go to a Pride festival.”
And for the non-LGBTQ+ community, it’s a chance to “see that we are their friends, their neighbors, their coworkers — just see that we’re normal people just living our lives one day at a time just like them — that’s just a chance for us to be ourselves at the same time,” he said.
Saturday’s event drew no protests or notable pushback, according to Pride chair Jeremy Mendenhall.
Taylor showed up midway through the festivities, strolled among the booths and chatted with acquaintances.
“It was a great festival — I thought it turned out well,” he said.
Kids blew bubbles. Families and friends gathered at the park to watch entertainers, who lip-synced to pop songs like Jessie J’s “I Want Love,” Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and Kesha’s cover of “This Is Me.”
By early afternoon, the chalk zone had been filled with words of love and support.
