Newburgh is celebrating Pride month this weekend. Before the parade, a drag story hour is scheduled at nearby Henley and Co.
Jonathan Hamilt, a founding member of Newburgh Pride and co-founder of Drag Story Hour, said despite increasing visibility of homophobia and transphobia in the media, it’s nothing new.
“A lot of these challenges are not new to queer and trans folks. They've been dealing with this their entire lives. A lot of people that have not been exposed to this, or maybe haven't had a death threat, or somebody yell at their face, or leave threatening comments, this is kind of a new phenomenon for them. And we are seeing a lot of this with our allies not kind of realizing how intense the situation is,” Hamilt said.
Hamilt said Drag Story Hour features Drag Queens and Kings, BIPOC and Royal Beings. And if you don’t like it, that’s okay.
“Maybe you like pineapple on pizza. If you don't like it, you don't have to participate. That's a lot of the feedback we get from people at libraries when they complain that our program is at a public library, but that's what the library is for. That's what the world is for. It's open forum, it's for anyone to be able to experience what they want to experience,” said Hamilt.
The Newburgh Pride parade will begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning behind the ADS Warehouse on Ann St.
