3 days ago
Pine City Pride 20 years later: a proclamation about being yourself in rural Minnesota
(Photos courtesy of themncolumn, from "Pine City Pride 2012," Flickr.)
Two decades ago, a quiet but radical act took place in Pine City, Minnesota.
It didn't involve picket signs, marches or sweeping legislative change. It was a picnic. In a park. With a rainbow flag fluttering from a folding table, a handful of brave souls gathered near the Snake River to celebrate who they were — out loud — for the first time in their rural town.
That picnic was the beginning of East Central Minnesota Pride. And, unbeknownst to many at the time, it was the first rural LGBTQ Pride event in the United States.
This June, Pine City — population 4,200 and growing — will celebrate the 20th anniversary of that event. In doing so, we celebrate more than a milestone. We honor the legacy of a place that chose community over conformity, compassion over silence, and inclusion over fear.
The story of rural Pride didn't begin in a metro center with corporate floats or glitter bombs. It started in a town known more for fishing derbies and Friday fish fries than for progressive firsts.
Back in 2005, when rural queerness was still mostly whispered or erased, a small group of LGBTQ locals and allies chose to be visible. Their gathering was met with curiosity, quiet resistance, and eventually, something even more powerful: acceptance.
In fact, the event drew enough attention that by 2007, the Star Tribune ran a headline that captured both the controversy and the charm of it all: 'Hot-button issues with potato salad.' The picnic may have seemed simple on the surface, but it challenged deeply held assumptions about who belongs in rural spaces — and how loudly they're allowed to exist.
Over time, East Central Minnesota Pride became an anchor — both for LGBTQ residents, and for the whole region. Today, the event features live music, drag performances, speakers and families pushing strollers past booths staffed by churches, businesses and nonprofits. The small town where it began now hosts crowd sizes that crack the thousand mark each year, including people from towns that still don't have a Pride of their own.
What Pine City proved is that Pride doesn't require a skyline. It requires courage. And community. And a willingness to believe that small towns can be big-hearted.
Don Quaintance, one of the event's founding members, put it best: 'Small-town Pride events are the ones that create the change. It's easy to blend in with 500,000 of your friends at the Twin Cities Pride festival — and another to be one of 500 in Pine City. That takes a good deal of courage.'
In many ways, Pine City's embrace of Pride helped shape its evolution. Last year, the town elected Minnesota's only openly gay mayor, Kent Bombard — a lifelong resident who volunteered for the other big event in town, the Pine County Fair — long before running for office. The city continues to grow, becoming more diverse, inclusive and welcoming with each passing year.
Of course, it hasn't always been easy. There have been critics, letters to the editor, even threats. But each year the rainbow returns to the town square at Robinson Park, each year families attend together, and each year more younger people see a future for themselves here — without needing to leave home to live authentically.
That matters. Because for every rural LGBTQ person who finds support in their hometown, we chip away at the idea that queerness belongs only in cities. We push back against the false choice between authenticity and belonging. And we remind the world that rural America is not a monolith.
As someone who grew up in Pine City and has watched this transformation firsthand, I can tell you that the real success of rural Pride isn't measured in crowd size or media mentions. It's measured in conversations between neighbors. In rainbow stickers on truck bumpers. In the kid who doesn't flinch before saying 'my boyfriend' at Walmart. That's where the revolution lives.
There are now more than 20 rural and small-town Pride celebrations across Minnesota, and dozens more nationally. Some have grown big and bold; others remain intimate. All of them owe a quiet debt to Pine City.
As we gather again on June 7 to celebrate 20 years of rural Pride, we do so with gratitude — for the founders who risked being seen, for the allies who showed up, and for the small-town queers who keep choosing visibility.
Because visibility in rural America is powerful. It's political. And it's deeply personal.
Pride in Pine City may have started as a picnic, but it became a proclamation: We are here. We've been your neighbors. And we're not going anywhere.
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